Rea is in action
 

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How many things do you or your brother have consigned? :)

Another great auction btw...

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Great selection at REA, good luck to members bidding tonight at Heritage.

Sensory overload.

This is an amazing auction with a great cards and memorbelia and variety of it all

It's actually kinda light on the T205s, and REA usually has the best selection of those. But that PSA 8 Mays rookie would be nice...

Jeff, I was going to tell you not to look if you were worried about losing focus on your collecting goals! Another stunner from REA.

Serious question - Can someone please explain to me how you all keep track of so many auctions happening at one time ?

For me it is simple.
1. I am obsessed
2. I have know life
3. This forums reminds us of many auctions both via the advertisement on top and the posts when things are open or interesting
4. Auctionreport.com has most(not all auctions) and their schedules

I as long as I stay focused on my collection it is a look and pass or a look and watch/bid.

No worries Chad (not yet for a year or so at least)

Already over spent and there are other things in my focus if I do

LOL :D

I get 30 emails a day from auction houses. I’m more likely to forget my wife’s birthday.

I go through the auction once very early on. Drop from 0-10 bids at very low levels. Then reappear in the last day and decide how badly I really want any of the things I put bids on. Often times the answer is not at all, or I picked up something nice in the interim and no longer feel compelled to buy anything.

If there is an auction with something that I really want I will calendar the closing on my phone so it’s on the radar.

Often I will sort by “recent bids” on the final day and see if per chance something cool was missed.

Agree on both counts. They had the PSA 8 Mays rookie on display at the Philly Show, and I could not believe how well centering that card is.

Rea
 

I thought this auction and most other auction houses have actually been looking pretty sparse these days. The important / historically significant stuff appears to be drying up a bit IMO.

Seems to be a mad frenzy to sell collections as fast as one can sell. Or lots of collectors are dying at the same time.

Market seriously off Feb-April peak. Be interesting to see what the next 6-9 months hold.

Like real estate, the top stuff will hold it's price. Not sure the middling stuff will. Speculators will move on to whatever is the flavor of the month. Non fungible pieces of people's genetic coding on a popsicle stick or something.

Drops mic!

Interesting observation. While I see a great deal of stuff up for auction (and some great stuff, too), I agree that the truly significant items are sparse. That said, since the vast majority of collectors may not have the budget for those items, the market still seems pretty robust. In fact, a lack of historic items for sale may indicate a market where the best items are being held tight...kind of the opposite of the latter comment about a frenzy or liquidation.

Tickets and photos in particular (not for this REA auction in particular) seem really desirable at the moment. I'd love to see more game-used uniforms. Even though I don't collect them, I love the photos and write-ups in the catalogs.

Cheers!


Disclosure: I have no items consigned in this REA auction but have sent stuff to Love of the Game and Hake's.

Exactly how I do it too.

steve is a sharp one.

Master of the obvious some might even say.

I don't know about that.

Anyone looking to finally complete the set, will certainly be interested in what they have to offer!

Steve

I wonder to what extent auctions like REA cannibalize their own prices realized by having, in some cases, so many copies of the same card including in the same grade?

REA did not used to do it but HA does it, often, and it does not seem to hurt them in the least.

Agreed. I would hate to consign an item only to see a duplicate or higher grade show up in the same auction.

Ton of good stuff on there!

I agree I had that happen and sadly the prices of all were down compared to other auctions both before and after with similarly graded cards

Steve, you and I debate this a decent amount. Whoever was competing with me on e93s last night did not get the memo that prices are off their peak. Although it only takes two idiots to drive a price and I was one of them.

Another area where prices seem to be exploding: high-grade T205s. Seems like that PSA 7 Cy Young that Memory Lane sold for 110K was just the beginning. The same PSA 7 Walter Johnson that Goldin sold last December for 18K went for 78K last night, and even Joe Tinker went for 60K!

I'm looking at the Texas Tommy LaJoie. Used to be in a PSA slab. Does it look like the wrinkle was pressed out? I can see it's still there, but is it actually less prominent or does it just look that way in these two scans?

https://lelands.com/bids/1914-e224-t...nap-lajoie-psa

https://bid.robertedwardauctions.com...e?itemid=93613

The market is up for anything I want to buy and down for anything I want to sell.

I just don't understand the market anymore. But that's the same for stocks, real estate, and lots of other things, so why should cards be any different.

Just jumped over to VCP and thought of the first iconic card that came to mind. 1933 Goudey Gehrig #92. What's a real nice condition for that one, but not insanely high end. Let's look at PSA 5. Here are the most recent sales reported:

0/24/21 $14,000.00 Auction
Image 60 PWCC Monthly
10/9/21 $10,269.60 Auction
Image 12 Memory Lane
4/15/21 $17,400.00 Auction
Image 22 Heritage
1/24/21 $7,799.00 Image

I'd say this 2021 history is probably fairly representative of a lot of cards I've been watching recently. Exploded in March-April. Came down a fair amount over the summer - early fall. Now back up some but not up to April high.

I emailed REA about it, and they said the difference in appearance was likely due to scanning versus photographing the card, but now the scan posted at REA does show the crease very clearly whereas it was barely noticeable this morning. Weird.

Very nice T210 collection in this one! Nice to see a new grouping come out.

Agreed. Though the in-between frequent auctions have secondary stuff usually.

I think the grading services backlog and prices are a big deterrent. I know I would grade (and maybe sell) a lot more stuff if I could quickly and reasonably get things graded.

Funny opening line!

Funny story regarding the opening bids…i do that too. Open up or place early bids on stuff and then decide later which I am really interested in at what prices, so I don’t have to comb through the whole auction again or forget…..

Soooo…I was bidding in an auction of large Gromit (Wallace and Gromit, i find it hilarious and its another obsession) artist-designed sculptures/statues some years back. You know, they make a trail of them outside at places and its a great promotion and tied to charity. There was an auction of them that i missed in the UK (Gromit’s home base) where the prices went crazy, $10-60k. so then there was one in Hong Kong, and i went through the 50-odd pieces and found 3-4 i was interested in with the intention of buying one to have. They started at $1000-1500, so I figured, what the heck, I will put opening bids in on the four and then decide….

Well, as would have it, not so much interest. In fact, i won three of them. And I didn’t realize two of the three were enormous! 5 feet tall plus a 2 foot mount. Shipping was really expensive from HK, so I had conveniently not factored that in (turned out to do in bulk wasn’t that bad…probably prohibitive today!).

Here is a photo of the two large ones for kicks….

I am glad I have them though, still think they are very cool and great fun, and good story to tell. Kids love them.

Paul, they look great how you have them displayed

Either flippers trying to maximize on cards.


Long time collectors trying to get out.

Nobody passed away or ran off of funds and needs to sell 3 of the same card at once.


At some point, the market will be/is saturated. I've never seen anything quite like 4 or 5 52 May's in a major auction house.


Also, lelands, the first 300 lots are all modern. I cant believe the demand is there in an auction house for these items

I agree. I didn't even bother looking through the auction after that.

A lot of Killer Great looking 52’s in this auction. Willie Mays PSA 8, Eddie Matthews PSA 7, Pee Wee Reese PSA 8 is killer and many more including a 52 Topps Pack PSA 7 WOWZERS.

AH
 

Could we see a future where the most desirable cards get bought up and are held by collectors / investors long enough to impact the quality of what is publically available at auction? Is this already happening to some extent? If so, could this create an environment where those that consign might be able to see increased return for high quality items? Seems like a lot of the good stuff is being held or moving privately...or even through Net54 networking.

This has been happening for a while now. A few years ago Goudey Ruths and t206 cobbs were plentiful on ebay at reasonable prices. No more.

I've been watching Gehrig's #92 Goudey as well. It's definitely been on an upswing recently, price wise. A PSA 4 just sold in Heritage for 11K.

Creating my Watch List was like writing a letter to Santa.

Incredible stuff!

Agreed

Just hope they are being bought more by collectors than flippers.

I always like hearing about and seeing other people collections and hearing about the adventure of the hunt on there sets

So REA submits over 100 cards in this auction to SGC and PSA. If cards from the same set are sent to both grading companies, how do they determine which cards go where? Why not send all cards from the same set to the same grading company? Is PSA harder on corners and SGC is harder on centering and print defects?

There are some items in this auction that are beyond rare and almost never come up for auction. I am curious if there is a chance that some of these items might slip through the auction given that people may not be focused on sports collectables and instead focusing on the holidays coming up.

They've noticed everything I have my eye on...

It was up when you sold me the T206 cobb :)....love the card and would do it again.

and yes, REA has some super rare and fantastic cards.
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Re: REA
 

In my case, I specifically instructed Brian not to deal with PSA.

It’s my belief the only thing that could bring card prices back down to the mid 2020 levels would be a major crypto meaning btc.bs/eth.com correction.

I can't say you are wrong, but me thinks the number of crypto rich guys in vintage baseball is much smaller than some think. I would think that new crazy money is going more towards Luka and Zion refractor cards, Patty Mahomes and Brady "rarities", and even soccer cards. Honestly don't think there a ton of 33 year olds who care about Ty Cobb.