REA March encore...
 

Had some bids on two different Sam Crawfords for my personal collection. The D304 Butter Krust went WAY higher than i thought it would and the E102 Anonymous Set of 25 also went pretty decently. Nice to see some Crawford cards for auction, but no deals for this guy.

I also won nothing

Rea
 

Some real good deals I thought and other lots not so good!

I won the catalog😳😳

Does anyone have any insight into the T210 prices? The Series 8 single cards went from $72 to $3120 with no discernible difference (as far as I can tell) in the condition of the cards or fame of the player. I guess two guys trying for a complete T210 run and fighting it out over the cards they still needed?

Mine always arrives after the auction is over.

Not sure if people are just joking about the catalogs, but what REA calls its "Encore" auctions are online only. The only ones with catalogs are the larger Spring, Summer and Fall auctions. https://robertedwardauctions.com/about/schedule

I would have liked that D304 but my pockets aren't deep enough for everything I like.
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Outside of some tobacco cards, I thought prices across the board were lower than expected.

I won but I always forget about the extra costs. Won at $ 250 then buyers premium , sales tax and shipping and the final is $ 339. I'll never learn.

Haha, pretty sure that's the exact point of buyers premium. To make you forget about the total cost when placing a bid.

Don't feel bad Leon. I can't even afford to buy pants with pockets anymore.

I really wanted the Matty T205. Someone got a nice one.

Endless cycle of auctions. . . same stuff again and again . . . . rinse and repeat . . . didn't used to be like this . . . .

Speaking of how things used to be... What is always the case that 20% of the items won at auction immediately show up on eBay for 3x the price?

Rea
 

One of the rare occasions where my bid held up throughout extended bidding. Maybe things are settling out a little bit or I bid too much in pre-bidding. Always hard to tell. Anyway, l’m happy with what I got. So many auctions, it’s hard to keep up.

REA usually separates the men from the boys. :D

Yes, it's 2 guys going for a set, I think. Also, some high prices on Tolstoi and Carolina Brights. It's why I told the poster asking if he should make a big purchase to "be sure you are right, then go ahead." I did not know he was buying a Wagner. If he had said, "Should I buy a Wagner?", people would have just said, "yes."

I snagged these...

Some of the series 8 cards are vastly more difficult than the rest.

It's not pre-war, but I won 1 card.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...d7b87b2d_z.jpg

Thank you. I knew Series 8 was the most difficult series but I did not realize that within the series there were cards known to be tougher. I just figured they were all equally tough.

Without the underbidder, it sells for $72.

Its funny how that works right?

I would love to know how many dealers vs collectors are buying in these auctions.

Now it seems more like 40% of the items and are at 4 times the prices and set on eBay for twice as long.

i was the underbidder on it, someone got a great one.

Picked up a Transogram complete box for my McCovey collection.

And the price seemed reasonable to me.

Unfortunately I fell asleep and missed out on the two Memphis T210 cards I was looking at. Bummer.

I bid on it as well but fell asleep before the auction ended. It was a nice one.

Congrats Brian!

Yeah. It now seems like forever since there was not one sale after another. Do we have to go back to before 2010 when we could actually catch our breath between offerings?

Won some diamond stars i needed, down to 2 to complete the set now and finished the high numbers (which are really tough). Prices were all over the place, many DS went pretty cheap (psa 7’a for $100 or less on a couple is cheap).

I wanted the Butter Crusts, too, really like those cards but just too much for them. Clearly not the only ones who like them!

Correct me if I'm wrong but quality ecards have become more scarce since 2010 no matter how many auctions are out there.

REA win
 

Thanks Rob. I guess I should include a picture. One of my all time favorites, but first card of him.

Attachment 563621

After taxes fees and premium I paid about $750 for this guy. Pretty happy about it

But Alan, the question is which is which. Are the men spending all that money for little pieces of cardboard, or the boys?

Great card and pickup on that Jimmy Collins T205 card Alaska, but those corners really have me puzzled as to the grade. That looks like an early TPG slab, so I get it that grading standards were a bit more relaxed back then. But even so, in those earlier times I still wouldn't have elevated that card to that technical level.

Don't get me wrong, still a great pickup, and in great shape for a T205.

Excerpt from one of my recent columns:

"There is a substantial social science devoted to understanding how bidders behave, which you can find online readily. It all gets rather complicated and prolix. I boil it down to asking why are auction rules set up the way they are?. ... Why would the auctioneer add a buyer’s premium to the hammer price rather than just selling for the hammer and deducting a commission from it? ... because people don’t think to add the buyer’s premium to the bid in the heat of an auction. Many cannot. It all has to do with how we react to stressful environments. Homo sapiens is not a nice guy; he didn’t get to be the apex predator on this planet by being laid back. We are hard-wired to focus intently and compete with absolute concentration, to the exclusion of other things, when it matters. That last bit is called tunnel vision, and if you ever got into a ring to fight, you know exactly how it feels when the world around you goes fuzzy and slows down and all you see is the guy trying to smack you in the nose. ... The auction format produces stress that taps that primal beast, floods us with the same fight or flight hormones in the heat of the moment, and impairs our rational minds, the place where we do math, so we overbid to achieve the kill, the win. And when we win, we have the same burst of endorphins we experience when we prevail in a fight or conquer an obstacle. Followed shortly afterwards by that “oh f**k” moment when the high dissipates, the math mind turns back on, and we add 35% (buyer’s premium, shipping, and sales tax) to the hammer price and realize that we just set a record price on that card."

While I don't dispute that, the reason buyer's premium was started was competition for consignments between Sotheby's and Christie's mainly in the Art realm. Basically they used the "hey we're only charging "x" commission" line, and glossed over (if mentioning at all) this newfangled Buyer's Premium.

Buyers not paying attention, getting caught up in the heat of the moment, etc. was an unlooked-for side bonus as hard as that may be to believe.

I dunno, I see this topic on here a lot and am trying to understand better. I agree with PeterS's take that it's not that complicated, but I have participated in thousands of auctions throughout my life from a very early age beginning with going to them with my parents.

If the analogy is boxing, then I'm treating it like Roy Jones Jr., moving around the ring without even thinking about getting hit. To me, auctions are for bargains, and doing the math is all part of the game.

Congratulations.

I was in early on those boxes but quickly pivoted to other areas of interest. Price doesn't seem bad to me but I have absolutely no idea on comps.

My larger wins in this one were the near complete set of Icee Bear basketball and the "standard set" of Atlantic Oil baseball.

Buyers premium always seems excessive. I do the mental math and always factor in 30% on top of the hammer price. You really have to do your homework to factor in a fair price that includes the premium. I think it screws over the sellers more than the buyers. At least the buyers know what they are gonna pay. Sellers have no idea what they will get.

Good point, and also points to the psychological feature to entice and attract more consignors. Think about it, if someone is looking for an AH to sell/auction a card for them, guess who that consignor/seller is more likely to choose if one AH says they only charge the seller say a 15% commission, while the other says they only charge the buyer say a 20% commission? You know that some sellers/consignors will hear that the AH will only be charging the buyer a fee/commission, and think that means they'll end up with more money, and also because they like the idea of no money coming out of their pocket to pay the AH. Truth is, assuming that the buyers are smart and properly do their math and factor in their buyer's premium in the amount they end up bidding, the consignor/seller is actually better off choosing to pay the seller's commission in my example. But as mentioned, many times the buyers also forget about the buyer's premium in the heat of the moment.

If people’s emotions didn’t easily override logic in the right environment, there would be no such thing as casinos and racetracks.

Other than Texas Holdem, I'm not a gambler. If I'm dragged to a casino, I play $5 blackjack and count facecards while the Don Rickles guy glares at me.

I like to watch horseracing, but have never bet more than 10 to win. Everyone is different.

Assuming that people will always react and be thinking smartly and rationally...............isn't smart or rational! LOL

Or as many humans populating our world.

Brian

I don't really buy their justification; trying to gloss over the total size of the commission tells me that they were thinking carefully about how to bamboozle people and that was the driving force. Regardless of the origin of the practice, however, the 'side bonus' is the main reason it persisted and persists.

Don't get me wrong, I am not trashing the right of auctioneers to make a living, I am just searching for the underpinnings of a practice that is harder for people to understand and work with than a straightforward consignor's commission would be and I think that the various practices of auctioneers have been crafted carefully to maximize the outcomes for consignors and themselves. Like it or not, auctioning items is a classic zero-sum game: someone winning means someone else loses. In this case, every bidder who loses track of the math and bids more than he would have otherwise puts money into the pockets of the consignor and auctioneer.

That's for sure! The bulk of my practice used to be contingency fee construction claims, so my professional life was more than enough of a gamble. When I did go to casinos I preferred games of chance over games of skill, precisely because I didn't want someone looking daggers at me. Watch a blackjack table and then a craps table. The card players look...pissed. The dice players look like they are having fun. I'd rather have a drink, play a few rolls and saunter over to dinner than have to concentrate on strategy and the play of others.

Couldn’t resist a nice T210 MIS cut with fat borders. My first in collecting this set.

Regarding the other T210-8 prices, Series 8 is easily the toughest to collect. I am guessing two guys really needed Dobbs and a few of the others. Some of these are so tough that if you don’t pick them up when you can, you may not see them again for a long, long time. I think that we have seen T210’s slowly rising for some time now.

Attachment 563777

Three guys.