First Copeland Collection Pedigree Emerges from the Hobby Shadows
 

Years ago, I ran into Joe Orlando at a National and told him about a nice collection of Kahn's football that had been put away for many years and
was from the Copeland Collection, as auctioned by Sotheby's. He told me that no one (except for probably Ken Kendricks) had been able to trace
their cards with the proper provenance back to this famous collection. Well, I went on a mission to be the first. I had to provide iron clad proof to PSA
leadership over nearly a three-year span with a pandemic in the middle.

As you know, Jim Copeland bought the best quality cards that were obtainable, and money was no object. See the discussion thread below.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...light=copeland

His collection launched this hobby of ours: the quest for high grade, PSA grading (the Gretzky Wagner), dedicated sport memorabilia auctions, and the beginnings of cards as an alternative investment. It is estimated that this market is now a $12B industry. The Kahn's run as Bill Mastro described "Mint from the factory, never seen a hot dog". Of course, they aren't all Mint, but were the best that could be found. I think the average is 6.3, but
it should be noted that all 250 cards were encapsulated and received a numerical grade. IMO besides Burdick, which is in a museum, can't think of a better collection pedigree to have.

Here are a few pictures.

Awesome!

Just to give us a bit of a peek behind the process, what kind of proof did PSA require?

Congrats Carl!

I spoke to a VP at Soethby’s who helped me decode the sticker that was present on the original album/pages. The original albums were kept in tact with the cards undisturbed for thirty years housed in the 4-pocket black pages that were Made in Germany. Very distinctive. The numerator is the auction lot, the denominator is number of pieces. Sotheby’s went into their archives and retrieved the original auction invoice. The in-person purchaser wrote me very nice letter of provenance. It had to be a “one and done” submission. Hats off the Jackie Curiel who relayed all my backup to first Joe Orlando, then Steve Sloan, then Kevin Lenane. They take pedigrees pretty seriously.

I saw someone post about his T206 collection. So, no cracking out and resubmitting, improving. I almost kept them in the original album, almost just graded the stars, almost just the HoFers, but after talking to a lot of people (like Scott Brockelman, Gary Nuchereno, Paul Kaufman, Jim Ragsdale) I decided to grade the whole shot. $5K This way there would be no questions.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

One can only speculate how many of Copeland's cards were, like the Wagner, improved.

No one cared about football cards in 1991. In some ways, this submission vindicates Bill Mastro. The grades on the five Jim Brown cards were ‘59 PSA 5, ‘61 PSA 6, ‘’62 PSA 6, ‘63 PSA 5.5 and ‘ 64 PSA 4.5. I thought PSA was pretty conservative on these. 250 cards not a single one came back altered.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's pretty amazing provenance!

I've got a piece that I'm confident is from the auction, but haven't been able to convince PSA about it. Although I haven't worked that hard at it either!

Scans from the item and from the catalog below. Due to the rarity of this item, particularly with the size and full hot dogs on the side, that alone might be good enough. But when you add in the very obvious and oddly shaped scratch from just above the "A" in "trading" would seem to make it conclusive to me.

Yeah those grades sure look harsh. I mean maybe the cards aren't mint as advertised given today's standards, but neither are they as low as PSA graded them.

Nice, Mays. Anything that came with hot dogs must be rare.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Right? Props to my friend Fred McKie (whiteymet) who helped me to track this one down, and tipped me off to the fact that it was from the Copeland auction.

I will post my ‘59 Kahn’s Jim Brown PSA-5 and I compared it to the ‘59 Kahn’s Jim Brown PSA-7 that Memory Lane just sold. It looks superior. When you tilt the card there is a very slight scratch barely noticeable. According to PSA standards it should have probably been a PSA-6. I may have it reviewed. Everyone is trying to be the toughest graders. I’ll concur with many of the comments, it does seem like they are being much tougher.

Also, Greg Rice made a good point to me. The Kahn’s cards are large cards with a lot of surface area. So, they are very susceptible to a scratch or slight indentation. Corners, creasing, centering notwithstanding.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They are hammering anything and everything these days.

Carl--Not sure what the big deal is. I have the 1916 Boston team postcard that was Copelands. It is easy to identify from the message on the back, but I also have the auctual auction tag and bought it from the lot winner in the original auction. I also know the collector who has the Copeland Anson in uniform. Again, easy to identify.

Jay - Then it should be easy to get the pedigree? If that interests you. Did they show the back in the catalog or description.

Also, you must have thought it was a big deal or you never would have bought the auction tag, right? You were wise to do that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I believe they did show the back. I didn't pay extra for the tag--it came with the piece. I just don't think that the fact that it came from Copeland is that big a deal.

Great effort and interesting stuff and yes amazing collection it was

Love the football stuff

Can you post a picture of the tag? I actually have one from the Topps Guernsey auction.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...e7d657ba78.jpg


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I went and looked at the catalog. I assume your talking about the Lot 732. Wow. The one with Babe Ruth. That postcard is outstanding, but you should have bought the 604 different Old Judge cards….lol



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Here it is:

Fantastic Jay.

I picked up a Sotheby’s catalog from the Copeland sale off of ebay. That was an amazing collection. Everything from a Baltimore News Ruth to a complete run of press pins and everything in between. That has to be the single greatest auction ever for sports cards. I do wish that there are more pictures though.

If I owned something from that sale, I think that it would be really cool to have the original documentation.

Jay — I love that postcard, but isn’t it from 1915? The catalog does not show the back. Can you show an image of the back message that you mentioned? Is it one of the examples with a postmark from the 1915 World Series? That would be amazing.

Even if you won the powerball the other day and all the resources available to buy cards, you couldn’t put a collection like that together in 2022. I guess if you didn’t buy the 1914 Baltimore News Ruth, the postcard would be a nice consolation prize.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah, but we would all have a lot of fun trying!!!

Yes, I don’t understand that either.

I think it's really a question of what deserves to be annotated as being part of a particular collection. If this historically significant collection doesn't deserve to be listed, then does any collection? And the historical significance stems both from the breadth and depth of the items, as well as the significance of the auction to the market in which the collection was ultimately sold.

Admittedly, having a piece that I believe was part of the Copeland collection probably makes me biased towards thinking it's cooler than the average collection that is denoted on a flip.

And maybe for some people, the right answer is that annotating the provenance of any given collection on a flip is not particularly meaningful, and the TPGs should not bother doing it at all.

Ah. One of my friends made a good point. In coin collecting it’s a real big deal. That hobby is a lot more mature than cards. They really like knowing the provenance and what famous collection it came from.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

First Copeland Collection Pedigree Emerges from the Hobby Shadows
 

I agree it’s not a big deal, I think Jay should sell me his Copeland auction tag.

Seriously, Jay if you want the name of the vp at Sotheby’s who helped me dig the original invoice out of the archives so you can match the bidder to the auction tag you have send me a message. I think your postcard would look great in a holder with Copeland Collection on the flip, but that’s up to you.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

+1. Great postcard.
Looking through some of those old catalogs is fun.
.

For what it's worth, I think provenance is cool, and to me, it adds value. Anyway, nice cards.

It's pretty much the same for stamps, although it depends on the collection. FDR was a big collector, but had mostly cheap stuff. His collection was auctioned off almost as souvenirs. I have a couple Christmas seals he had that were just randomly in a collection I bought.
For expensive stuff that provenance is often a plus.

r312
 

Carl, I want to thank you for your post. I think I bought a set from the Copeland collection. In July of 1991 I bought an R312 set from Bill Hughes for $3,300. He told me the set had been sold in the Sothebys auction, but I did not know anything about the Copeland collection until reading your post. The cards are in sheets with black backing and are made in W Germany. Thanks again for your information about this collection.

Ironically, received this email as many have you have tonight from Heritage Auction.


Provenance.

For those not familiar with the word, what is it and how can it impact a collectible?

In the simple terms, provenance is evidence provided that establishes or documents the origin of the piece. It should never be considered a replacement for judging an item on its own merit, but it can add peace of mind and value to virtually any type of collectible.

Furthermore, there are varying ways to establish provenance that range from letters from the original source, accounts provided by someone else in the chain of custody to photo-matching. The key is evaluating the credibility of the provenance. This is where your intuition comes into play. The more complicated the story gets or the more each detail needs to be explained in order to connect the dots, the greater the credibility of the provenance comes into question.

On the other hand, when provenance is extraordinary, the collectible can separate itself from the rest of the pack because it completes the story behind the piece or, at minimum, adds to the story of how the item got here today. You can have two relatively identical items that are of the same quality on their own merit, but the factor that will often break the tie between them is credible provenance. Price premiums, sometimes enormous ones, are usually paid for the collectibles that possess it.