How many known collections have been lost
 

over the last 10 to 15 years due to natural disasters? What type of impact does that have on the hobby?

117.

Positive impact for sellers.

Negative impact for buyers.

I'm also getting 117, using the records at the Known Collections Archive (KCA) website, and filtering to the last 15 years exactly.

It's bad for the hobby if one wants more cards, it's good for the hobby if one wants there to be less cards.

I counted 118 but I could’ve counted a collection twice.

Oops, you're right, 118. I missed the great Alaskan avalanche loss of 2022.

So how often is it updated? I'd imagine California wildfires have added to the total? Are most raw or graded, and are the cards listed that were destroyed?

They're fucking with you. They think it's a stupid question.

I don't think it's a stupid question, but arriving at a useful estimate would take more thought than I have time to give it.

I recently read about an art dealer/collector who lost around 200 paintings to the Palisades fire in California.

Among them were several dozen Andy Warhol and Keith Haring paintings.

I think this is a good question. There must be a few large collections that were sadly lost over the past year (flooding, wildfires etc). I too have wondered if any notable collections were lost.

It's an interesting topic of discussion to ponder. It's an impossible question to answer (hence the sarcasm). While there is no way of knowing, I'm sure there are some big, rare cards that have been lost to disaster over the years.

a thought provoking question with no answer.

Doug you forgot to add a :).

Judging from the oversized AH catalogs that land with a thud on my porch appx. every 2-3 days, not many. Sometimes 2 or 3 catalogs show up in one box.

I do not know the answer

but any loss is not good for the hobby, for that collector or reseller.

Yes it shrinks the inventory and could obviously effect Supply/Demand depending on the card or item but

1. to me losing pieces of history and pieces that bring people joy is sad.
2. Insurance cannot replace the item so lost is lost
3. most people do not have insurance or the proper amount of insurance to cover the lost
4. often times these items have memories attached given down thru family and generations and no more
5. the loss of income from the money put in and the time put in etc.

How much was lost that was never known or found or the families did not know what or the value of what they had

But that is part of the collecting cycle just as discovering of cards that were lost or never known to exist (ie the Black Swamp find), The Yatzee box find etc

Thanks, should have known with a few of them.

I just figured you hear about the lost treasures that show up after an older collector passes so I wanted to see about the other side, and the known effect. For graded it has to throw off numbers unless they can be accounted.

Yep, and a bunch of classic collector cars. I also read a vintage guitar shop was in danger as well.

Interesting question for sure. What I've wondered more about is what items of significant importance and value have inadvertently been tossed or thrown away. I mean everyone's mom tossed their cards growing up right?:cool: So many of my advertising pieces were found in the craziest places and could have been easily overlooked and lost to the elements of weather (Ruth tri fold under porch in Portland Oregon) or simply the landfill (Spalding Base Ball Good sign found behind a cheap framed picture) to others found in the walls of homes that were set to be demolished.

The KCA database is a joke. There is no database of all 'known' collections that gets updated as events happen with an inventory of what everyone has. Nor is it plausible this could possibly exist, there is no regulatory body over collectors/not collectors. Most collectors don't even have an inventory of what they have, much less everyone else.

facepalm.jpg

I've met some collectors of various items that lose track of stuff shipped to their house, or items sit in boxes unopened for months/years. Often they can't even tell you what's in the box when they rediscover it unless they open it.

I've met more than a few card collectors that open package, add to an existing stack of stuff, and "I'll sort it later" with months+ old shipments waiting to be put away somewhere.

I keep telling myself if I ever get to any of those points I need to question my own motivations behind collecting.

Not to speak for those guys but I don't necessarily think they thought it was a stupid question, more just goofin' :D

In terms of disasters, I still remember the story of the 2.4M collection lost when an airplane crashed into a house in Buffalo in 2009. Stories here: Link Link 2

I thought it was a stupid question from a guy with multiple stupid posts, hmmm it's kind of windy outside, I wonder how many leaves will fall from that tree?.

If somebody with a better track record on the board had asked the same question, I may have thought it was less stupid.

Couple of thoughts

1) I know many in this chat are not fans of graded cards, yet in a circumstance like this, well the graded cards are much easier to everyone to determine value.

2) A historical note, Reggie Jackson back in the day was accumulating his 1969 Topps RC so when he made the HOF he could sign and sell 563 serial numbered versions of that card. At some point, Reggie's house burned up in one of those California wildfires and all those rookie cards went up in smoke.

Rich

If 100,000 Reggies burned up it wouldn't make an impact, there are so many.

I would imagine some collections were lost to Katrina?

I do seem to remember years ago on this board that someone posted about a collector in Louisiana losing a Louisiana focused collection. I can't remember if it was from Katrina or not.

David

Yeah, it's vintage Vintage Vern. Trying to build his post count up, probably.

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

It mattered to Reggie

Potentially formerly known as Bigfootisanidiot

Sometimes while looking at old baseball photos, I ponder the reverse question - How many (or what percentage) of those bats, jerseys, cards, gloves, etc. survived?

For example, how many of the bats in this photo of Honus survived? Or, what happened to the sweater he is wearing?

Tough crowd here 😊

Yeah, old pictures just have something about them.
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i recall someone in the hobby retelling how he accidentally threw away a 33 butter cream ruth card. that's a big loss!

Nothing special, a few years ago I went through and got rid of a few 100K junk wax cards by burning them. Anyway I ended up burning some 1990 Donruss Aqueous Test cards. I never looked at the card backs.:o

The skydash collection also had some huge losses.

Does anyone think a large collection of Curtis Ireland E123 will ever surface?

I have told this story before but back in the early 1990's, I went to a large collector's show looking for sports items. One dealer from St. Louis had a lot of sports items displayed. Then in a showcase were a stack of baseball cards.

The stack consisted of American Caramel and Curtis Ireland Candy cards. There were at least 20 Curtis Ireland cards including a Ty Cobb with black construction paper on the back. The dealer was asking $1300 for the stack and he wouldn't sell any cards individually.

Being a college student, I didn't have $1300 so I called my friend Ted Koch and he came to the show and bought the stack for $1000 cash. He gave me a Curtis Ireland card as a finders fee. He kept the cards for some years before consigning them to Lew Lipset around 2002. If anyone has a catalog from that auction, I would really like to see how many Curtis Ireland cards there were.

David

I've never seen this cool photo before , I assume the big dude right in the middle, staring at the photographer, is Rube Waddell ?

ooops
 

"I've met some collectors of various items that lose track of stuff shipped to their house, or items sit in boxes unopened for months/years. Often they can't even tell you what's in the box when they rediscover it unless they open it.

I've met more than a few card collectors that open package, add to an existing stack of stuff, and "I'll sort it later" with months+ old shipments waiting to be put away somewhere.

I keep telling myself if I ever get to any of those points I need to question my own motivations behind collecting."

Is there still hope for me?

Countless materials and textiles were reused, repurposed or recycled starting during the depression and straight thru WWII.

Some collections and high valued cards like this 52 Topps Mantle pictures during the 1981 MLB strike, can count themselves among the casualties…

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...3DUUNbmCTpQwZk

I think it’s crazy that Topps, Panini, Leaf, Upper Deck, etc. would acquire these and cut them up for baseball cards

I don't think it is. He passed away on April 1st 1914. This was the 1914 Louisville Colonels team photo. Has Verne Clemons in it.

Waddell was in a sanitarium in San Antonio in early 1914, and died that year, on April Fools' Day.

At first I thought the guy lying down in the middle looked like Mordecai Brown, but it can't be because he still has his right index finger on.

Would be interesting to see the Collectors Insurance loss claim database to get an idea of what has been lost.