1909 Obak Gandil
 

Thought the price was pretty healthy on the Gandil card that ended this afternoon. Congrats if someone here was able to snag it.


http://cgi.ebay.com/T212-Gandil-Sacr...item415697d254



Anyone else pick up any of the other 1909 Obaks from the same seller ?

It is a great looking card. I was watching it pretty carefully but it got a little high for the trimming. Still a great pickup though

I would say that was a great buy. Although it will only grade AUT due to the cut as most frameless backs are hand cut as this one was. it is a great example. I paid 5x's book for the 1st one I bought, which I still have.

Guess I have to change my search parameters from "1909 Obak" to T212 Obak. :mad:

Me and you both Steve. Never even saw it........

I think the card was a steal. I searched long and hard for mine and was lucky 10 years ago to find a nice one. $778, even if the card is trimmed, is a very good price IMHO, for a Gandil with great eye appeal.

seems like a good candidate for this week's ultimate flip...

I picked up the Spider Baum for $118. Thoughts ? I thought it was a very nice looking example for the price.

Same wacky cut as the Gandil, obviously a group of cards that have been together for 102 years.

Had the Gandil been offered at auction and not Ebay it appears pretty clear it would have fetched a much, much higher price. Suffice it to say, very few people check Ebay anymore(myself included)and even if they do, the good stuff is lost in the myriad of crap. I am sure the buyer is pretty pleased, especially if he is reading this thread.

The seller made a few mistakes. He didn't list the cards in the pre-war section, he didn't specify the year (which would have triggered some Obak collectors' saved searches), and he had about 12-15 card auctions that all ended at exactly the same moment. Another Ebay seller had been selling some nice 1909 Obaks over the past month or two, but she staggered the ending times about 5 minutes apart, which created a feeding frenzy. Buyers who missed out on the earlier cards would invariably raise their bids on the cards that followed.

You couldn't do that with this seller, because all the cards ended concurrently. I had snipes set for about 4 cards, but I set the snipes lower than I usually would have because I didn't want to win all 4 cards (I had some unexpected expenses last month which have effected my card budget). Consequently, I ended up being the under bidder on the Gandil, which I'm kicking myself over. I won the Whalen, which will be a nice upgrade over the Whalen I currently own, even if the back does have a bit of paper loss.

I'm with Steve and Tony, I never even saw the Gandil, Baum or the other 1909 Obaks which were offered and I check the new listings a couple of times each and every day :(
The Baum looks nice despite the hand cut. Interestingly, SGC used to regularly grade every 1909 Obak which the frameless back variation as "Authentic" until only a few years ago. I have several beautiful frameless cards in AUT slabs because of this and all of them appear to measure correctly and don't have the funky cuts these cards do. I have picked up some upgrades with frameless backs the past few years which SGC DID grade with numerical grades. I remember 4 or 5 years ago Leon and I discussed this problem and I believe Leon spoke with the graders at SGC about this and apparently he made his point as they started being graded not long afterwards. The other "gripe" I had was SGC knocking down the grades on 1910 and 1911 Obak because they had those small purple numbers stamped on the back. This was also rectified a few years ago with slabs saying "stamped on back" or something of this nature. Too bad that there are some otherwise SGC 60s and 70s which are in SGC 30 holders because of the stamped backs.
I like the Baum card and think it was a nice buy. The background color seems a little different than mine, maybe one of us has a color variation similar to the T206 reds/oranges of Tinker, etc?????:confused:

I think the prices were relatively low on all of the cards.

As already pointed out, having them end at exactly the same time hurt higher sales.

Bob... is your backround darker/lighter ?

Thoughts
 

I like the fact that the bottom right corner of the Baum card actually has the border line of another card, something that I don't remember seeing before on Obaks. And I think the Gandil, a much more difficult card than the 1911 Obak Weaver, was a real bargain and a very nice looking example to boot.

I too missed these cards (not that I would have bid)...just glad I snagged the Fitzgerald, which finished my 1909 set, previously from the other seller which Anthony mentioned in his post, as this seller had two of them available, and I would have been pretty upset that a great shot to finish my set had been missed.

Brian

I think that you are right about the Gandil being tougher than the Weaver. I already have the Weaver and have been looking for a nice Gandil for about a year. The card did look good and was a great pickup. Congrats to the winner.

http://cgi.ebay.com/1909-T212-Obak-C...item2c5afb563f

Talk about a FAST flip. Good Luck with the sale.

09 Gandil vs. 11 Weaver
 

Many, many, many moons ago I traded (with a board member through another board member) a 1911 Weaver in OK shape for a 'cut' 1909 Gandil...and would probably do it again today if I had to. The 09 Gandil is much tougher than the 11 Weaver even though the Weaver has been valued at more in recent years, I would assume because of demand...certainly not because of supply.

To be fair, it helped that I had 2 Weavers at the time also :)

Try using this search to include 1909 and T212 along with obak:

obak (1909, t212, t212-1) -(t212-2, t212-3, 1910, 1911, 2009, 2010, tristar, tri-star)

Light yellow background. SGC 30.

Thanks Jason. Works like a charm.