Thanks Jason for your fond thoughts.

So the 32 PSA 8's on the pop report for the #332, would you say there are probably only 10 of them to obtain?

4 reasons why I pursue 1952 Bartirome much harder then the 1953 Bartirome
 

You guys asked why I am not buying the 1953 Bartirome.

Actually I have bought about 10 of them, usually PSA 6's. I imagine I will buy a few more PSA 5's and 6's here & there, a few times a year going forward.

But I am not equally obsessed about "hoarding" the 1953 Topps Bartirome UNLESS it is PSA 7's & up, as I am about the 1952 Topps Bartirome in ANY condition.

I did win this 1953 PSA 8 last week:

http://i1027.photobucket.com/albums/...psrn2vy7wq.jpg

& previously won a few PSA 8's on eBay in the $150 range.

I see a PSA 7 on eBay now from PWCC, so I will be bidding at the end.

I would love to find the 4 PSA 9's of the 1953 Bartirome.

I equally want to hoard the 2011 Topps Gold Canary Bartirome. 10 exist, and I have 1 of them.

I do not know why it does not interest me to go down the entire list of 1953 Bartirome listings & buy them all up. I did flirt with the idea of doing so a few times, but when I looked at the offerings, there were too many. Is discouraged the right word? There are a 100 listings right now, & I assume that a week after I clear the listings, another 100 would pop up. I assume there are 10,000's of them? So the fact that they are not rare, & we value & find "special" in what's rare is 1 factor why hoarding ALL 1953 Bartirome does not interest me. Also, I want a challenge & the challenge has to have me be able to at least see, if not reach the finish line. With the 1953 Bartirome, I perceive an endless supply & therefore the challenge seems impossible & pointless. Then there is the emergency doomsday factor, that if I did in fact need to liquidate (because as was mentioned, life happens, maybe a financial catastrophe happens or unemployment, or a combination of having to get a wedding ring, having children, & wife expenses happen - then I don't believe I could liquidate 1953 Topps Bartirome's except the PSA 7's and 8's. Gold, silver, $500/$1000 bills are easy to pawn/liquidate immediately. That goes for the 1952 Topps Bartirome too. Easy to liquidate for a fair share of my money back if it was an absolute necessity to do so. I don't want to pour thousands into 1953 Bartirome when I can never recover much of it back!

Finally, & most importantly, is the lack of story attached to the 1953 Topps set. The powerful story of the 1952 Topps set is what hooked me on collecting my family member's card! As a kid I would always see a single, ungraded, not even in a top loader, 1953 Topps Bartirome in my Dad's desk drawer. Never did I even know Tony had a 1952 Topps card. Never did my Dad even know! I played little league in the 1990's and idolized Griffey & mimicked his swing. My Dad was never a card collector, & was unaware of the 1952 Topps set. I was only aware of 1989 Upper Deck and the 1990 Topps No Name Frank Thomas & all cards after that.

So I saw that 1953 Topps Bartirome just sitting around in Dad's desk drawer for years & years, maybe even taking it to school in 3rd 4th 5th grade bragging how my family member was a pro baseball player!

We have always known the 1953 Topps Bartirome to be worth just a couple of dollars. We had searched it before on eBay, but never saw a 1952 Topps mixed into that search.

It wasn't until 2014 that I read the story of 1952 Topps HIGH NUMBERS. How it was a huge failure & they dumped cases upon cases into the ocean! Read about Alan Rosen & the 1952 Topps find in the guys attic. All the rich legendary stories about this card set! Found out Tony Bartirome was in this set! I knew this set to be the famous Mickey Mantle card set, & was blown away that #332 was none other then my family member! Tony a part of the same set as Mickey Mantle's famous card!!! I printed out the numerous stories about the infamous ocean dump & how the high numbers came to be so rare, & gave my Dad some reading material along with a PSA 2 #332 Bartirome. I told him, "Can you believe that Tony is a part of the most popular trading card set in history!?!?" & that it has this amazing story about dumping the last fourth of the cards in the set INTO THE OCEAN!?!?!? AND THAT TONY'S CARD HAPPENS TO BE IN THIS INFAMOUS FATED HIGH NUMBER GROUP!? LOOK AT THESE PRICES THAT TONY'S 1952 TOPPS GOES FOR!!!!!"

I showed him a printed out recent sales from eBay showing $100-$300 for Bartirome PSA 1's to 5's. He was so amused, & just shaking his head like WOW. We know Tony was not much of a ball player, but we are proud nevertheless that he made it & that he is part of this historic, most popular card set & legendary story about dumping high numbers into the ocean. He took that PSA 2 to his work where he proudly shows it off thanks to me.

I got a late start on collecting it, & have only been at it since fall of 2014, but I've made up for lost time well, nearing 100 #332's now. It sucks doing a google search for Bartirome #332 & seeing that these different auction houses sold #332 for much lower amounts then I am used to paying, but some of these sales I see go back to 2005. Wow, it would have been nice to have grabbed this PSA 8 for $682 or this PSA 8 in 2010 for $528. I would have bid $1,000+ on these!!! I even missed this PSA 6 just last year for $170, are you kidding me!?!? $170!?!?!? I would have bid $400!!!! (just months before I became aware of the existence of the card, but still didn't think to look anywhere, but eBay until this month!!!!). Even once I was buying them up on eBay this year, I was unaware that sellers would be willing to sell them off eBay, so I even missed this PSA 3 for $120!!!! I would have bid $300 for it!!! I see such higher prices on eBay, & so much more competition in the bidding, then these off ebay auction houses that are showing only 1 bid for some of these Bartirome's!!!!!! I don't know what would possess these websites to not sell what they get - on eBay! What's 6% ebay fees if you have an eBay store for $15 a month!? Well, now I know & last few weeks I have been signing up with every off ebay auction house there is. Disappointed only Heritage Auctions has an alert feature for BARTIROME search, & disappointed I just paid $1,500+ for my first true PSA 8 from REA (with buyer's premium added) when I see HA had the most recent PSA 8 sold for $597 just in 2013! I have been sending the owner offers through HA's offer tool, but the offers have gone unanswered. I did see a PSA 8 hit eBay very briefly last year when I just begun buying them, & did not yet comprehend that a PSA 8 is hard to find so when I saw the seller's $1,000 buy it now with offer option, I thought offering $700 was good enough, but someone offered $950 & the seller took it fast.

So can someone explain why even just in a 2 year period a PSA 8 would have stayed around $600 in 2005, 2010 & 2013 with these off eBay auction houses & then gone all the way up to $1,300 this month with my purchase?

Now you know the 4 reasons why I gravitate to the 1952 Topps Bartirome over the 1953 Topps Bartirome.

Thanks everyone for making this a great conversation.

I think I will post again with an updated picture of the collection. I will push hard to get 100 of them in the picture. A few $300 offers to buy a few PSA 4-5 ungraded condition #332's have presented itself, & waiting on REA's PSA 8 to arrive.

Neat story......I would argue that you cost yourself some on the REA PSA8 at $1500 as there may have been someone here reading this story that pushed it up. Who knows. Regardless, your quest continues. At 100, you probably have 5-10% of the known population if it's 1000-2000. You talk about liquidity and I'd argue that if you needed to liquidate the 1952's, it would be at a fraction of what you could liquidate the 1953's at in terms of a percentage. Of course, they just don't hold the interest for you. So how far into this are you? $50,000? That would buy a lot of much more liquid Gold or Silver Bullion or $500/$1000 bills in a much more liquid, much more widely-held market. Some people are silver stackers, you are a Bartirome stacker.............

This thread is surreal, but also fascinating. I feel bubbles in my head, like I've had too much champagne.

I'm curious as to why you want the 10 2011 Topps Lineage Gold Canary cards of his? Should you acquire all of them, how do you determine which family members get these?

Why if you're also hoarding the '53 cards do you only want PSA 7 +? That seems, to me anyway, to reinforce the notion that you are hoarding these cards for future profit. The '52 Topps cards are from the first full set Topps ever did, and are from the high series. They are innately valuable, condition not withstanding. But the '53s don't have the same demand. However, collectors pursing the 1953 Topps registry will want high grade examples of the card. Can you comment on that?

I took moderator privileges and moved this to the front page from the BST. It's an interesting discussion...

I"ve written, commented on kind of sort of similar circumstances:

Here are some other exampels

The man who chases 1964 Curt Flood cards

The man (and he has a cool blog and I've sent him cards and will do so again) who chases every Tim Wallach card ever produced (No he will not get them)

The story Roger Neufeldt told me about George Kernek who at point had more than 100 of his 1966 SP Hi # Rookie Card (and his only Topps card I believe(

Now this ---

WHen I was a dealer/collector in NJ in the 1980's -- ( bought a ton of Joe Cunningham carfds in case I ever wanted to open a store in my home town.

Love to hear mose stories such as this and would love to talk to the OP -- and Tony became the Pirates trainer for many years.

Rich

Who is this 1964 Curt Flood chasing guy...we talking Topps? Theres 5 or 6 of them on ebay right now and several on no reserve auction including a psa 8....

I assuming he no longer chasing them....the cycle repeats..

yeah I know that..but wondering if he is still active ..as there are many on ebay..psa 8s in the 260 range with make an offer as well....

The Tim Wallach site is really interesting and he is up over 15,000 cards already. I think he could continue collecting them all for years and not affect the market.

It also made me wonder how many Wallach cards Tim Carroll has cut up for his art. I'm sure 99% of people are all for thinning out the 1980-90's card population, while making art out of them, but the Wallach collector would likely shed a tear or two thinking about cut up cards

http://timwallach.blogspot.com/

As for the original poster, I know from personal experience that it's best not to talk about a player collection for a tough card, it only drives up the price. I think he would be better off just waiting them out instead of offering big money at this point. It's definitely costing him more than it should. If he's not in a rush, enjoy the hunt.

All he has to do is refuse to buy from someone that paid a premium for that card which would then cost that person money.....if someone pays 1500 for the next psa 8 and he turns them down..then that's easily a 600-900 loss...

As mentioned in the article, he is still chasing them....in my dealings with him, he has been a shrewd negotiator and cites both the "Flooded" market for this card (90+ ebay listings) and the fact that he is responsible for creating it. Within the past year I refused to accept his (low) offer price and subsequently sold to another buyer at a higher price. In other words, at this point he appears to be in the market for only the more reasonably priced copies of this card and is now a victim of his own creation. Copies of this card, that based on their condition (low to midgrade) used to sell for $20+ in past years, sit today as unsold BINs for half the price.


The collector chasing the 61 Topps 242 Hal Smith card is still very active in regards to collecting every reasonable priced copy of this card. I would not be surprised if he has more copies of this card than the Flood collector has of his card.


If I were a collector of just a single copy of a card, I would patiently wait and buy as the cards appear versus publicizing my quest thus driving the price up.

right a guy chasing a card without paying a premium is a non-issue to deal with.. that was my point...

I probably cut a few when I first started, but I have been placing the Wallachs aside for the Wallach guy for the last 4-5 years. I'm probably up to about 200-250 cards in the stack, and I'll send them out once feel like I have run across all I have. I like reading about off-beaten projects like this, regardless of how impossible they are.

I'm actually surprised there are not more collectors like the OP going after as many copies of a single card of a family member, etc. With so many players making the majors and only having 1-2 cards, I would think family hoarders would be more prevalent. I know there were a couple of guys in the early 2000's going after every 2002 Prince Fielder UD Prospect Premieres Autographs, and there was one collector trying to land every copy of a specific Mark Teixeira serial numbered rookie. I believe that guy had over 100 of the 750 copies printed, and that was over a decade ago. I wonder if he kept going, and if so...what % of the population does he now own?


Tim

Interesting thread, for sure.

Life would really get crazy if multiple collectors with deep pockets chose the same card! Maybe nephews of both HOFers go after the 1982 Fleer "Steve and Carlton, Carlton and Fisk" or John Hilton and Ron Cey both tried to gobble up their 1973 Topps issue.

TIm:

On Mark Teixeira: I believe there are 2 super collectors (one of which I know in the DFW area and I see him about 3-4 times a year) and their dedication is fascinating.

Way back in the day -- there was a collector who chased after a strang specific serial # for each card (and this wsa the days of 10K runs); today it would be far different

1933 Goudey Tommy Thevenow hoarder
 

I do not know if he is still active or not but there used to be a guy in Madison, Indiana who bought every 1933 Goudey card of Tommy Thevenow. Thevenow was a relative and the guy was, like some others who are hoarding cards, buying them to give to other relatives.

David

This has a somewhat familiar ring to it. Did you happen to know Bruce Dorskind?

Good luck with your quest, and Happy Collecting.

Best regards,

Eric

After a little investigating it seems our OP has registered on our forum with a bogus last name and is now suspended per the rules. If anyone is interested they might google a bit on Cole Bart.iromo .without the period.....Thanks to a member for the PM and helping to keep our community safe....Had this guy wanted to do the right things now he wouldn't have registered with a bogus last name.

or you can cut to the chase with this link to some of the older stuff, there is some newer stuff too.....and Jake, it is the person who started this thread..

http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/cole-bartiromo
...

man all this talk ...I wonder if he was truthful on other things

And here I was thinking I was being cynical about all of this.

and a whole blog....with newer stuff..

http://scammedfromcolebartiromo.blogspot.com/

right I kept posting things challenging him on things...didn't believe it.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/-279710--.html

Interesting history, but perhaps he has rehabilitated.

I looked at that and then looked at his registration which is false...AND maybe I could undestand that but what about the blog I posted a link to, that seems to be a lot of newer things? Now if all of this was over and all debts were paid then so be it. But I don't have time to spend the next 3 days reading about this person or chasing down real names.

+1 Leon, a waste of your time. Plus, unless we've re-defined pre-war as before Vietnam, he's in the wrong place... :D:D:D

It was an interesting thread and I try to help keep the place interesting.....but I didn't expect that turn of events.

He was better off buried on the BST. :eek:

I'm confused now. Was he ripping people off buying these cards or was all this card buying legit and he was banned only because of the name issue?

I bet his ears don't match either.;)

The name issue is actually technical. But the blog about him is very recent. Do we really want scammers on the board? I am not sure I have ever seen more crap on one person. I am all about 2nd chances but if anyone clicks on those 2 links I posted, and reads them....and thinks him registering with a fake name is good.....please help me understand that line of reasoning? Like I said abve, had he registered with a good name, maybe. Plus the half dozen or so extremely threatening emails I just got from him kind of solidify it :).

Nothing surprises me on this board anymore. Amazing.

Leon:

And I thought running a show was difficult :)

See you tomorrow --

And man, you've had a fun week

That was my same thought. The guy was celebrating being a hoarder, like that knucklehead who tries to hoard T212 Millers (link: this jerk). If you announce on a hobby forum that your singular goal is to thwart other collectors, find another forum.

Everything this guy wrote screamed "scammer". Then, not surprisingly, he turned out to be a scammer.

Bill

I wasn't criticizing the decision to ban him. I was just confused as to why. I thought maybe he was ripping people off somehow with the card hoarding scheme.

If you are referring to the, "Dots Miller" collector here on Net54, I seriously doubt the good doctor is doing anything nefarious.

If I am mistaken, please forgive an aging man who is getting closer to retirement...and his failing memory.

Best regards,

Eric

What a strange trip it's been.

Here is a quote from a relatively recent article--

《The topic of Donald Sterling lights Bartiromo up. “How do we know Sterling wasn’t attacked and raped by black men years ago?” he asks, triumphantly raising his eyebrows and offering his pointer finger.》

The bulk of the article details his obsession with outing underaged perpetrators and victims of sex crimes.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...s-it-news.html

Not that anyone cares at this point but he falsely cites CNBC's Maria Bartiromo as a relative. And here he asserts Tony Bartirome, even though the names aren't the same.

He claimed Tony changed his name to give announcers an easier job. Not only is that a pretty bizarre tale but it doesn't seem to check out anywhere but in the OP.

This feels like a scam in action and perhaps should be reported as such. I wonder if the N54 guys he bought from will ever see their money.

What a bizarre and interesting thread. Good job investigating. Whatever he was up to couldn't have been good.

No, I can vouch for that doctor, too. He just likes giant mitts :). I mean the guy who wants to buy every T212 (Obak) Miller (link). For all I know, he's still making set collectors pay for that card because he runs them up. He's a jerk and I'm positive that is a fact, not just my opinion.

Bill

Man, I was all involved in reading through (and enjoying) this thread and suddenly BAM!!!!!!!!!! a huge plot twist out of nowhere like a Hollywood movie. Yowza. So, Bruce Willis was dead the entire time??

332
 

Good thing he wasn't into Reiser gray backs...or maybe he was and that's why it never shows up

What a strange, strange thread. I'm sure an armchair psychiatrist could have a field day here reading not just this thread, but the articles linked and Cole's own Newsball blog.

... has become the voice of reason!

Ok, Leon, thanks for protecting everyone here. Huge job you have and everyone is grateful that you have our best interests in mind.

Now, here's the part I need some help with. Undoubtedly there is a scam hidden in his hoarding. I just can't seem to figure out what it is. Can someone give up some possible scenarios?

(OP failing to post an updated pic after stating multiple times that he would was starting to send up red flags)

Thanks. Jeff

The dude is looking for a roommate to share an $1800 apartment yet buying $1500 PSA 1952 commons......really odd stuff. Thanks for the sleuthing. I just engaged him in some discussion and didn't think he was a nut but the plot thickened.......

I'm wondering the same. Idiot comes here, declares he's hoarding a card....to what end? In all these scenarios HE is the one sending out money.....

Anyone that is sane can't get inside this guy's head. He sent one hail mary threatening email and then in the same email asked me to do him a favor and post a 5 paragraph post that he was doing when he got axed. The guy is definitely, and I mean definitely, unbalanced. I see him being back in prison in no time if he continues the way he is. Very, very unstable. (and I am not just saying this for effect)