[Exhibitman]

Here's my Hull relic:



My blog posts on the Hull collection sale:

September 27, 2008: Wow
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I am not easily impressed but the current auction offering from Heritage Auctions is monumental. Jeff Hull, one of the most prominent boxing card collectors in the world, is liquidating his collection. The auction, which runs through October 17th, is chock full of rarities; literally every lot is an "Oh, wow" offering. Visit their site at ha.com for a look at some cards that are rarely offered for sale. Hopefully, the economy's recently bed-wetting episode won't affect sales too badly (except, of course, on lots I am bidding on!).

October 18, 2008: Cha-Ching!
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The first increment of the Hull Collection sold through Heritage yesterday. As promised, the auction contained some spectacular cards and broke price records in many categories. I can’t do more in terms of analysis than simply report that prices were very strong considering the overall economic news lately. Several results were of special note:

1886 N167 Old Judge Jem Smith, Horizontal Reverse SGC 30 Good $8,962.50: This card is a rare format N167 with a horizontal back. Any N167 is great; this one is one of only one or two known specimens. Quadrupled the last known sale.

1887 N269 Lorillard's #17 John L. Sullivan, Three-Quarter Profile SGC 50 VG/EX $4,481.25: Oddly, within $13 of the record for an N269 Sullivan.

1889 N386 Spaulding & Merrick John L. Sullivan SGC 40 VG 3 $4,182.50: I am surprised how much this one went for as it is a bad miscut.

1889 N386 Spaulding & Merrick "Echo Tobacco" #8 Jake Kilrain SGC 20 Fair 1.5 $3,107.00: Despite the low grade the rare ad variation made it fly.

1889 N386 Spaulding & Merrick #8 Jake Kilrain SGC 40 VG 3 $2,629.00. Ho-hum, another record price.

1889 N386 Spaulding and Merrick #7 John Sullivan SGC 60 EX 5 $6,572.50: This is now the highest price ever paid for an N386 at auction.

1890's Old Judge & Dog's Head Jack Burke SGC 10 Poor 1 $2,629.00: A rare tobacco wars card from England, this is the record price (triple the last known sale from the issue) and the card was significantly damaged.

1910 E125 American Caramel Jim Jeffries SGC Authentic $19,120.00: The killer card of the auction. I expected it to go into five figures; I did not expect it to become the third most expensive boxing card ever auctioned publicly. It is exceeded only by the 1948 Leaf Graziano I reported on earlier in the blog and a 1951 Ringside panel of Murphy-Fitzsimmons in PSA 8 that sold for $20,000.

1911 E80 Philadelphia Caramel Jack Johnson SGC 40 VG 3 $1,673.00: More than doubled the last known auction price on an SGC 30 Johnson.

1890's N537 Little Rhody Jas. J. Corbett SGC 10 Poor 1 $1,434.00: This card had a lighter image and a munched back but still pulled in a nice price. Probably the best deal among the marquee 19th century cards in this auction.

Despite the highlights above, many of the "common" cards were quite reasonable, selling at or slightly below the levels seen in the December 2006 epic sale of N269s on Ebay Live, for example. Again, given the extraordinary turmoil in the economy since 2006, I found the strength of the prices on these cards to be quite reassuring. Great, rare cards continue to bring strong interest, even in rough economies.

April 25, 2009: The Hull Collection, Round 2
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Over Thursday and Friday Heritage finished the second round of Jeff Hull's collection. Overall, I'd say that the results were mixed. Marquee lots sold well though not as well as they might have pre-crash, nice lots were mixed, and mundane stuff was cheap:

T226 Red Sun Set: This was the biggest, most anticipated sale of T226 cards ever. In 2004, 46 spectacular Red Sun cards surfaced in a 19th Century Only auction. They were by far the nicest condition and most complete group ever offered for sale. They were offered in three lots: the Jack Johnson, 9 high grade cards, and 36 other cards. Overall, they brought $22,736.65, with Johnson fetching the then-spectacular price of $3,714.50. Missing from the group were Jim Jeffries, Dick Hyland, Grover Hayes and Ad Wolgast. Jeff filled in those four cards. Jeff snagged them all and filled out the set. The full 50-card set was offered this week broken into 39 lots. There was only 1 multi-card lot offered. In total the set brought $57,605.23. Jack Johnson led the way at $19,120; Jeffries was second at $4,781.20. Also of note were the following:

Joe Gans SGC 70 $2,629.00
Joe Jeannette SGC 86 $3,585.00
Harry Lewis SGC 88 $1,434.00
Abe Attell SGC 70 $1,912.00
Stanley Ketchel SGC 86 $2,629.00
I really thought the Johnson card had a shot at breaking the record for the most expensive boxing card [1948 Leaf Graziano; see below] but in this economy over $19,000 is nothing to sneeze at. Now tied with the E125 Jim Jeffries as the 3rd most expensive boxing card ever sold. Funny how Jeffries and Johnson stay linked together...

Here's a fact to contemplate in the dead of night while you look over your IRA statement: If we back out the four cards missing from the 19th Century Only offering in 2004 and recalculate, the group from the 2004 auction sold here for $51,853.08., better than 100% more in 5 years. Now, where was the S&P 500 in 2004 and where is it now? But I digress.

As I said before, other card prices were mixed:

N167 Old Judge Jem Carney SGC 40: $1,075.50. This was a $1,500+ card a few years ago. Someone will be very happy in a few years, I predict.

N28 Allen & Ginter John L. Sullivan SGC 84: $1,314.50. I thought this was a strong showing for the Boston Strong Boy. N28s are the easiest 19th century set to locate, but people are really into the grades. Candidly, I don't like easy cards that take their values from grading and I've gotten rid of near sets of N28, N29 and N43, except for Sullivan. It is the only N28 I care to own, because the image is that iconic.

N332 S.F. Hess Peter Jackson: SGC Authentic $657.25. There were a few Hess cards in this offering. This card tested the value of a card in any shape. The Jackson had a relatively strong image (always a key with an albumen card) but a vicious crease across the middle and was basically hanging on with the help of a piece of tape on the back. I really don't know what to make of the result: rare card, great HOFer, strong picture, but rotten condition.

N332 S.F. Hess Abe Micken SGC 30: $388.38; Harry Gilmore SGC 40 $388.38: These were low prices. Last April these are $500-$1000 cards.

N332 S.F. Hess Yankee Sullivan SGC 40: $1,135.25. This was an appropriate price for Sullivan. He was a heavyweight championship claimant in the rough early days of the sport, a gangster, and was probably murdered by the San Francisco Vigilance Committee while in prison awaiting trial; it was wrist cutting and looked like suicide but he was allowed to be buried in consecrated ground, so it was likely a "wink, wink" suicide determination.

N310 Mayo John L. Sullivan SGC 50: $1,434.00. I thought this was a very strong price. N310s are not all that hard to find and while this was a great card, it wasn't a super high grade one. By contrast, the Mayo Corbett offered in the same grade went for $478.00 and the Fitzsimmons in SGC 70 went for $448.13

N310 Joe Chonskia SGC 80: $448.13. Another surprisingly low price. Heritage had flagged this as a Platinum Lot as it was the highest graded by two full grades and expected it to go for much more. So did I.

C52 lot of 12: $286.80. Someone got a great deal here. C52, the Canadian version of the T218 set, is very tough but get no respect and it got none here.

E77 complete set of 24 plus 3 name variations: $1,912.00. Another surprisingly low result. The set was in lower grade but included Jack Johnson (individually and on two other cards), Abe Attell, and several other HOFers. A few years ago this is a $3,000 lot.

T219 Complete Set of Honest Long Cut backs: $1,912.00. This is a very tough set to put together. It has Johnson, Jeffries, Attell and many of the other stars of the T218 issue. Doing the whole thing in one shot for under $50 a card is very fortunate.

T219 High Grade Lot of 5: $388.38. Another steal. This group had 2 SGC 84 cards adn three SGC 80s. These cards are very tough to find in high grades.

T219 Red Cross back lot of 17: $4,182.50. The absolute steal of the auction. That's $246.03 per card, kids. Just last week a single from the set of Frank Klaus in comparable condition sold for $484 in the Lipset auction. There were no stars in this group comparable to HOFer Klaus (Leach Cross was probably the best fighter of the lot) but it was still way lower than I'd have expected. Heritage probably cost their consignor $100 a card on this lot by not breaking it up better.

T220 Silver Borders short set (23/25): $1,553.50. Missing the Mike Donovan Today and Jas. J. Corbett cards. There have been a few of these offered in the last year. This one was nice but not spectacular, with a few higher grade cards but most vg-ex or lower.

T223 Dixie Queen John L. Sullivan SGC Authentic $418.25. A surprisingly high price for this card, IMO.

V153 Robertson Sugar Candy lot of 4 SGC 20 (2) and SGC 40 (2) $1,314.50 and lot of 3 SGC 40 $956.00. About right on the money on these. Another very tough Canadian issue.

E78 Burke SGC 60 $956.00, Erne SGC 70 $776.75 and McGovern SGC 50 $629.77. All very strong prices for these cards, as all were at the top tiers of the graded population.

1926 Sports Co. of America (Spalding): There were two offerings of these Spalding scrip cards. Dempsey SGC 84 $388.38 and a group of 5 [Kaplan SGC 84, Corbett SGC 80, Leonard SGC 80, Rosenberg SGC 80, Tunney SGC 40] $836.50. These were strong prices, comparable to pre-crash prices.

1927 F52 Fro-Joy Gene Tunney Complete Set $507.88: A full set of these cards could be redeemed for a prize, and was offered for two weeks in the summer of 1927. This group was high grade for the issue, SGC 60 and 50. The price was well below the price of even lower grade cards, so another lot that flew under the radar in this auction.

1929-30 Rogers Peet Tunney SGC 84 and Schmeling PSA 5 $262.90. Man, have these cards fallen from grace. IMO a supply and demand thing. There have been some unopened packs found yielding nice cards and when they were selling for several hundred each, quite a few made it to market.

So there you have it, folks, the Hull Collection's 2nd phase sale. I wonder how the third group will do in August. Tune in again, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel!

October 3, 2009: Fall Auction News and Views



The fall auction season has closed with some really interesting results. Heritage Auctions finished up with the Hull collection on October 1st. Some highlights and lowlights were as follows:

There were several high grade N174s of common fighters offered. The results were tepid:

N174 Mike Cleary SGC 84 $836.50
N174 JP Clow PSA 6 $567.63
N174 Mick Dooley SGC 80 $717.00
N174 George Godfrey SGC 84 $776.75
Only a few of the N174s broke the $1,000 mark and most finished between $400 and $750, which is ok but not great given that many of the cards would be considered among the nicer known examples. Generally, the cards pulled in about what cards in 2 or 3 grades lower would have pulled pre-Great Recession. There was only 1 N174 that did spectacularly well by comparison to any market: not surprisingly, it was the N174 John L. Sullivan SGC 40 $2,629.00

​A nice additional group of N269 Lorillards were offered. Prices on these were solid, with the singles going between $567.63 and $776.75 for cards that were mostly vg and vg-ex. The biggest name, "Butcher Bill" Poole, fetched $776.75 in vg. A group of 8 including another vg Poole pulled over $3,500! I guess someone really needed some of the cards in that lot.

An N162 Sullivan went for $1,015.75 in SGC 40 vg condition, which is a very strong price.

Another of those oh so elusive SF Hess cards sold well, John "Old Smoke" Morrissey going for $1,015.75 in SGC 10 poor condition, which was misleading since there was back damage but a nice card front. Disclosure: I was underbidder on that one. Whoever got it, I hate you...

N310 Mayos had to be disappointing for Heritage. The single cards did not even hit $150 for the most part and the big lot of 21 lower grade cards went for under $700. Sorry but basic cards from this set just aren't that hard to find.

Now I have to be a grading scold again. Someone paid $286.80 for an SGC 88 John L. Sullivan card from the 1909 Jim Jeffries playing card set. Yes, it is nice but is is really worth about half of what a full set in nice condition goes for?

T223 Dixie Queen has suffered of late from several liquidations by collectors having financial issues. Consequently, the Heritage offerings from this set did not do particularly well. A mixed grade near set (49 of 50 cards) sold for $4,481.25. By comparison, pre-Great Recession, a group of 51 cards (40 different) sold on Ebay for $10,100.00. Another group of 11 sold in a Collectible Classics auction for about $143 each. A few higher grade singles from the set also were offered and also fetched low prices: SGC 80 Jack O'Brien $478.00, SGC 84 Frank Klaus $657.25. A few of the cards did well: SGC 60 Peter Jackson $537.75 and the surprisingly strong John L. Sullivan SGC 50 $956.00.

There was a really interesting head to head offering of two T225 Series 101 sets. The lower grade set with various brands sold for $717.00. The higher grade set, which had matched brand of tobacco backs and several high grade cards sold for $2,712.65. A series 102 set went for $1,912.00, which is a good premium over what singles have been fetching lately on Ebay. Goes to show that a tougher set to assemble will fetch a premium at auction.

After April's T226 Red Sun extravaganza it is impossible to believe that Hull still had more cards but there they were in Heritage. This time, though, the prices were very modest. Eleven single cards were offered; none reached $400, not even an SGC 80 common. A lot of 8 cards including an SGC 10 poor Attell sold for $896.25. There has been an abundance of these cards offered lately on Ebay and combined with the April sales I think the collecting base for these cards has been worked out lately. I would not be surprised if these cards ended up being the big bargains of the auction.

The last group of cards from Heritage that I want to focus on are the T229 Pet and Kopec offerings. These are among my favorite T cards, with some really nice art, good multisport selection (though no baseball) and scarce Pacific regional appeal. Prices were strong on these cards with only 3 under $500 each (only 1 boxer). The SGC 40 vg Sullivan went for $1,912.50. A stellar lot of 19 Kopec backs mixed between boxers and other sports went for $7.170.00; frankly, I thought that lot should have been broken down a bit more since there were a few big names in there that could have gotten into four figures on their own.

A 1923 Olympia Games deck stank up the joint at $388.88. This is a rare set that is seldom offered. It barely made $10 per player card, which sucks for the seller and is very nice indeed for the lucky winner.

My favorite postwar research project set, the Kid Herman heavyweight champs issue, had an offering in this group and it further cemented the research I have been doing and publishing on the catalog updates page. A full set original issue with the envelope intact was offered. The kicker was an actual Kid Herman card in the group with a printed back listing him as "Park Row's Fighting Newsboy." Further proof that he was affiliated with the New York newstands where these cards were sold. I've never seen this promo before and went after the lot. Alas, I was outbid.

I would add that Hull got out at just the right time. There were several very wealthy collectors who dove into boxing in 2006-2008 and they went to town on this collection. Most of them got out during the recession or shortly thereafter and that cratered boxing for years.

Hope this helps.