You thought YOU were having a bad day...
 

Every time I think I'm having a bad day or I overpaid for a card, I go to PSA's homepage and click on the "PSA Record Breakers" link. The 3rd highest price ever paid for a PSA-related collectible was some poor fool who paid $3 million dollars for Mark McGwire's 70th Home Run ball. 3 MILLION DOLLARS.

To put that in further perspective, Bonds 73rd homerun ball sold in 2003 for $450,000. So essentially, the guy with the McGwire ball paid 3 mill for the 2nd most single season homeruns and only if you consider the steroid records as legit which many collectors do not.

Unreal.

I think that particular "poor fool" will be just fine. Todd McFarlane isn't exactly hurting for cash. I believe he actually owns both balls you mentioned.

Yep; it was likely just throwaway money for a guy like Todd MacFarlane, the comic book creator of Spawn and a guy who came out with his own line of sports action figures which put the original Kenner Starting Lineup figures to shame.

Yeah, I'm guessing that he might want the money back today. Just a guess. Lots of insanely rich people wake up one day and notice they are not insanely rich anymore. And I'm suspecting we might see a lot more of that in the coming months, years.

Actually in that case the money he spent was a good investment in getting him into the sport figurine world and other collectibles world. For him, it was not an issue. Now if I had bought that ball (not that I have that much scratch available), the result would not have been nearly as good.

Rich

Agree. But.....

At the time, the home run chase was the cultural moment of a lifetime. It was approximately 40 years to break Ruth's record. And it was approximately 40 years to break Maris' record. Who could foresee Bonds record breaker only 5 years later? Hindsight is 20/20.

Today, $3 million for that ball seems like it will never be retrieved.

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Nothing that big. But I think of the guy who paid me $420.00 for a PSA 10 Fleer Bonds rookie.

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Todd McFarlane has a net worth of $300 Million!

You're right he might be hurting because that ball cost him 1% of his net worth of $300,000,000 He's probably losing sleep over it.

I wonder if that was before or after COVID-19 tanked the stock market?

It was considered an overpayment even at the time

:eek:
Now, THAT'S actually hilarious.

No idea who this guy is and couldn't care less how much money he has now or how much he lost yesterday. But I've know a few people up his financial realm and none of them would brush off a $3 millions dollar investment/purchase that has lost nearly all of its value. Their attention to finances is usually pretty obsessive.

Exactly. There's a reason they became rich, and it wasn't by throwing away money or being oblivious to value.

There was a Japanese billionaire who duct-taped his shoes when they got old instead of buying a new pair. May seem bizarre for a billionaire, but it was that type of prudence and thinking that made him rich.

I'm not a collector of autographs so to me, the baseballs would be only for bragging rights. But interestingly, this bad day post reminds me of many great days. I made a lot of money in the early 90's selling Todd McFarlane Amazing Spiderman comic books. Back then I was purchasing 100+ of many comic book issues and getting them at 40 percent off of cover price. Then I was selling them new at full cover price for the month and then 10 times that a month later. All while I was in high school lol. I went to school to make money, not learn :D

Today he is worth a lot less :)

Like a lot of us.

I think Todd MacFarlane is awesome. When he bought the McGwire ball, it was a lot of money for him. Not so much now.

He gave the big speech at a graduation I attended at Eastern Washington University. Was very good and he seemed quite happy to be there (he graduated from EWU).

At the time he got 3 million in media publicity when he purchased the ball.

I had that ball, along with two other McGwire homerun balls in my possession for about 4 hours. I transported them from a museum in Washington DC where they were on temporary display to Guernsey's auction house where they were sold.

They guy that originally owned the ball was super nice. I spent a day showing him around Washington DC. He was given tickets to the game by his employer and the ball was hit into the corporate box where he was watching the game. The ball was hit so hard that everybody jumped out of the way as it came through the window. The ball bounced off the back wall and into the guys hand. Security rushed the room immediately and took the ball from him so that there could be no question that it was "the ball". The guy became a multi-millionaire by pure luck.

Riches
 

Based on my investment values, I have recalculated my retirement date..... it has been moved from "Someday, Maybe" to "Never". Jus sayin

The Red Green quote: "When I retire at 65, I'll be able to live a comfortable retirement so long as I die by 67."

McFarlane purchased a ton of "significant" home run balls and is on record as saying they weren't bought as investments, but rather because he wanted them. Scott G's point about publicity is also a very good one. There has been a 30 for 30 made about the ball, he got an AMAZING amount of press at the time etc... you could add up the price of all the balls he bought and then figure out what the hundreds of print articles and TV air time those purchases garnered would have cost as advertising space/time and he came out WAY ahead.

A little perspective:

http://content.time.com/time/arts/ar...650788,00.html