Has anyone seen this joke ?

[Archive]

Posted By: ScottIngold

Link to cardtarget.com

http://www.cardtarget.com/cgi-bin/pm_details.cgi?productID=1049452954>

Please read the message board posts. I could be wrong finding this idiotic..... But i doubt it.

[Archive]

Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Scott, I'm simply speechless after having read that board.

[Archive]

Posted By: Mike

When I see something like this...it makes me think that maybe God might want to scrap this whole experiment of his, and start over. Something has gone terribly wrong. Sheeeesh.....there is no hope for us is there?

[Archive]

Posted By: Russ Bright

I have a few shares. I don't find this idiotic. I will never have 7 grand to buy some of these cards. Speculation is huge on that board too. With IPO starting at 10 dollars a card, I have made more money there than in a lot of my other card deals (yes, even on this board.)

It's strange, and there are a lot of "less informed" there. Buy they are a group of people helping drive the vintage market...

They just picked up (from the last auction) huggins-scott "Collection of 36 T206 Back" to split up and sell IPO to. People there clambor for strange, rare cards. T206 seem to sell the best, Broadleaf 460 is hot as well. I actually found this board from cardtarget's discussion on the Broadleaf 460.

Think what you want. I like the idea.

at least they're not turning priceless artifacts into slivers of wood... they're just selling them as if they had...





edited for spellcheck

[Archive]

Posted By: Max Weder

I would suspect this violates securities laws. I wonder what the SEC thinks.

[Archive]

Posted By: ScottIngold

Russ,

At least in my case and me thinks in most other's. Without owning the card to hold and have as my own it just would not be the same.

As well as how do you know the market is not artificialy inflated by the owner of the site ?

Is there any oversite ? By whom ?

Just to strange to wrap my small South Jersey mind around.

I'll stick with Ameritrade for that stuff.

[Archive]

Posted By: warshawlaw

Now that is an unregulated securities market, with non-registered securities being offered to the public. People can be so gullible.

[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

Russ- an an uninvolved third party I have to tell you I would hesitate to sink money into this kind of venture. I can't even begin to think of all the things that could go wrong, but the fact that you made some money so far may be misleading. These are the kind of schemes that work in the short term and then come crashing down in the long term. I would put as little money as possible into this.

[Archive]

Posted By: leon

We have had a very extensive discussion about this before. The owner of cardtarget does come on this board somewhat regularly. Last time we talked about it he was made aware of the SEC issues and supposedly had his legal folks (lawyer) make sure it was ok...or something like that. IF folks want to buy into this then more power to them. It's not for 99.9% of this board, including myself, but at least it's not an outright scam like the Prize Sports creeps. I agree it's sort of hard to believe this kind of thing gets people to buy into it but what the heck....To each their own...

[Archive]

Posted By: Russ Bright

It's for fun. The fact that I can make a little money and "pretend" I own a part of a rare card is nice for me. It got me here. I found out about Net54 from Cardtarget, and now am 124 cards into a T205 Master set. i have been making trades and deals with people from here. I also do have a stock portfolio and am selling a condo that I bought to flip and do my best (I'm 27) to play the invest/property game (also not the safest market).

Scott, yes, not holding the card isn't the same. But owning Disneyland Stock (or stock in the Electric company) doesn't mean you can hold that either. It's an Idea, people profit from that all the time. And it wasn't too long ago that I heard (Yes, on this VERY BOARD) "We don't own these cards, we just have them for a while until they go to their next owner". Always a state of flux. Buy, sell, trade, flip, whatever you do with your cards, you won't have them forever.

Barry, Thanks for the caveat. If I planned on retiring on Partial Shares Market cards, yes, that would be sad. Frankly, I'm amazed that they have lasted as long as they have. It's not for the long term. But if I get a share for 10 dollars and can then (2 weeks later) sell it for 20 dollars, that's fun. And it stretches my ACTUAL card buying dollars a little farther.

I recently sold 5 shares that I had purchased for 50 dollars total for 98 dollars. Which I spent on an (actual, I WILL get to hold this in my hand) T205 Bresnahan Mouth Open. Not Bad for 50 bucks and 2 weeks of waiting.

The novelty will wear off, people will lose money, whatever happens, happens.

I think all told, I have put 300 total dollars into this and walked with around 500. Not huge, but since I wasn't making a ton of money and couldn't invest in my portfolio (for a while) it was something to play with.

Again, I have fun, I enjoy it, I'm not doing this forever, I rarely do it at all. I also like Shiny Crap, I've been a pack buster for years.

I am finally financially secure enough to start making bigger purchases and auctions.

Thanks for everyone here that helped me with all your kind words and advice. This is a great community and I learn more every day!

sincerely,

Russ Bright

[Archive]

Posted By: CardPricer

First and foremost, please remove the reference to our company. This is about cardtarget.com, not cardpricer.com.

Kindest Regards,
CardPricer.com
The Web's Most Comprehesive Price Guide

edited by TDG

[Archive]

Posted By: Frank Wakefield

Well it has taken a while for you guys to educate me, but you have done it. I now understand that the fact that this Matty card is slabbed makes all the difference. Now selling shares in a raw card would be a bad deal. But this is a steal!!! You guys are soooo right.

This takes things one giant step further. Instead of owning a slabbed card you can't hold or touch, now you can own a fraction of a card you can't even see.

All that can be left is PSA futures and SGC derivatives.

And I see no need to delete anything... all of this Cardtargetpricergrader stuff seems much the same to me.

[Archive]

Posted By: Mike Masinick

Hi Everybody,
I will introduce myself again. I'm Mike Masinick and I'm one of the co-founders of CardTarget.com. Since I'm not entirely sure what the "joke" is that is being referred to, I'll assume it's the concept of people getting together as a community to purchase some nice high grade cards.

I've said this to each person I've met on these boards and people who collect cards elsewhere: This was not intended for you. I know that you like to touch your cards. I know that you like to control your own collection. I met Leon and Scott and many others at the National and I think they at least understood that we never set out to convince people that owning 1/100th of a PSA 9 card is more interesting than actually owning a PSA 3. But, believe it or not, there are many of us who feel that way. Many of us, for a variety of reasons, enjoy having our collections in more of an online format and not sitting in our closet. If this is weird for you, then our marketplace was not meant for you.

If you would like to get into the issue of "unregistered securities", please feel free to write up a nice legal brief regarding EXACTLY why these are unregistered securities citing actual sources and I'll be happy to respond and discuss it privately (I'd actually really enjoy that). However, if you are just going to attack the concept without doing any research yourself, please stop now. I've posted my research on this topic before and there is no evidence anywhere that sports cards or any type of collectable is covered by any of the Securities and Exchanges acts. Just becuase more than one person owns a single card or group of cards and they can be traded electronically does not make them securities.

Let me be plain in saying that the goal of CardTarget is not to make money for the market participants and it has never and will never be marketed that way. We are a community of collectors. Period.

Yes, some of our users aren't as "hip" to how the vintage card marketplace works and they overvalue and undervalue cards in our marketplace. I do my best every day to pass on little things that I've learned on these message boards to the guys in our community and I hope that I have brought many people into the vintage card collecting world and passed on a ton of knowledge of vintage cards to our guys. If this is a joke to you, fine, but I don't appreciate your laughter being made public in a forum such as this.

If you have any questions for me about CardTarget, the legality of it, the question of "what happens when" or anything else, please feel free to email me anytime at mike@cardtarget.com. Please understand that I don't plan on getting into any further discussions in this thread as I don't see it being productive and most people here really aren't interested in our current product. I look forward to being more a part of this community as I've just started a T206 set (after over a year of reading and research). Thanks,

Mike

[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

Russ- if you are only investing $50 or a $100 then I agree it's just fun money and it doesn't matter if you win or lose. I know that if you buy shares of Disney all you own is a certficate (and I think even that is obsolete today) but the beauty of baseball cards is you can own them. Wouldn't you rather have a card you could look at and enjoy than just a piece of something in cyberspace? That's where collectibles differ from stocks.

[Archive]

Posted By: howard

Well put, Mike. I find the concept strange but no more so than paying to have a star named after a loved one or owning one share of the Boston Celtics. Frankly the whole concept of collecting cards at all is a bit odd : )

[Archive]

Posted By: RC McKenzie

The matty and gabby street bl 460's are nice cards. If i wanted to purchase one or both, are they available for sale?

If so, how would i go about an offer?

I looked at the faq's and didnt see anything about buying the cards? Are they actually for sale, or only for sale in theory?

If i made a 'hostile takeover' and bought up all the shares do u ship the card to me or how does it work? thanks and regards

[Archive]

Posted By: Anonymous

Thats what I would really like to know. If I buy all the shares then there is no reason why ownership of the actual card shouldnt be yours. If that doesnt take place, then i would never agree to participate.

[Archive]

Posted By: davidcycleback

My feeling is if someone wants to participate, that's fine. And if someone doesn't want to participate that's fine. People play fantasy sports, have NCAA basketball pools and buy online eTopps. I don't see that any of these activities is better or worse than the others.

[Archive]

Posted By: Frank Wakefield

If someone owned all of the shares of a particular card was able to demand ownership, Mike M could thwart that by always retaining ownership of one share himself.

Maybe I should sell shares in my collection....

eTopps used to fascinate me.... it seemed I could "buy" a card, and then for an additional fee I could even get the card sent to me. I started to buy one, just as a type card. But I didn't.

Any of you guys have an eTopps, either in the ether or in hand??

Frank.

[Archive]

Posted By: Tom Boblitt

I had a few. Oddly enough, it's a BAD experiment. Topps issues these IPO's. For like $4-$10 you buy an electronic card which is then put into your portfolio. They do have a pretty dynamic market for moving the cards between portfolios through the guise of ebay or of Cardtarget (which, by the way IS an efficient marketplace from what I've seen--for eTopps). Much like the shiny card market, once you buy the cards, 5-10% of them go up. Typically the Ben Roethlisberger rookie card or Lebron James, etc. Which, in most, if not all cases, are like a TRUE IPO where you get few if any shares. The other 90-95% of the cards decrease in value. Mike has some fantastic statistical tools at Cardtarget. Just take a look at the graphs of the sets or what the IPO price WAS versus what the current price IS. Really neat experiment but a failed one. Topps has noted problems with eTopps in their investor notes almost quarterly. They've had a HUGE contraction in the market from the 2002 or so timeframe when they were issuing 3000+ of each card. They still had demand and sold out and those cards are basically worthless now. Now they do 500-1000 of each card. The physical cards are very nice quality but a single card, encapsulated for $4-$10 is pretty expensive overall--especially when you have to PAY to take them 'in hand'.

I wonder about the 'Partial Shares Market'....I think Mike is selling to an audience already accepting of losing money on the secondary market on 'shares' of cards just like they lose money in their eTopps portfolios. At a certain point, when an issue has been devalued enough, can someone come in and buy up all the shares and have a valuable prewar card at 50% of the 'issue' price? That would leave Cardtarget still having the $$ to purchase more vintage cards to continue the Market. This seems to be a similar model as eTopps. Not to disparage Mike because I think Cardtarget does a great job at what they're doing and the people who buy these shares are doing so willingly, fully understanding of the potential risk/reward.

[Archive]

Posted By: Bruce Babcock

I've got a scan of Leon's Four Base Hits card of Kelley and many other cards I don't own. I've grabbed scans of many of the rare and cool cards posted here day after day, as I'm sure many of us do. Many of these cards I can't afford and/or they are so tough they may never even come up for sale.

It costs me nothing to do this.

No offense intended, but put me in the category of "I don't get it."

[Archive]

Posted By: leon

Don't hold back...you can tell everyone I sold you 1 share for $5., with picture ...problem is there are a million shares outstanding.....