Really good thread ! I'd like to add a couple OBSERVATIONS not controversy or debate , And want to be very clear that what I'm about to say is in no way a negative observation of ANY TPA, as that topic has already been discussed into the ground and no need to go over it again other than to say that those services obviously fill a market demand and as a result make alot of money doing it which basically is what any business is designed to do.
Using hindsight as an example , I can remember being a regular on the baseball card show circuit. Even BEFORE the advent of card grading. In those days everyone that wasn't a baseball card dealer WANTED to be one because there was so much money to be made. I never dealt in baseball cards so I used to just marvel at buyers carrying hand trucks full of boxed card sets out to their waiting vans.
Almost all of the time I was the only person in the show buying and selling autographs. A good show for me in those days was if I sold maybe $500.00 over the course of a 3 or 4 day show. By comparison the card dealers on either side of me would be taking in $5,000 to $10,000 in sales. As a result card shows were BOOMING , there was a baseball card shop in almost every town. It was just a GIVEN that you could NEVER LOSE MONEY buying baseball cards because they would ALWAYS go up in price NEVER DOWN. And for awhile that was true.
Around that same time card graders came on the scene and I can remember veteran card dealers being very bitter about it and not being involved with baseball cards I could not understand why. Their mantra to me was "If a dealer can't grade a card he has no business being a dealer"
But what was happening is that the card graders were filling a nitch in that it allowed many new card dealers who DID NOT know anything about grading a card to become involved in the "Boom" and the cost of the encapsulation was nothing compared to the theory that EVERYTHING WAS ALWAYS GOING TO GO UP IN VALUE Most of you know the rest of the story.
As interest in baseball cards began to wane , interest in autographs began to grow, there was only a handful of sports autograph dealers that were involved "full trottle" when that wave hit, There were some "dabblers" but most collectors knew very little about autographs. Enter the 3rd party authenticators which allowed many card dealers to "dodge a bullet" and transition into another business and allowed many dabblers to become either collectors or dealers overnight, They filled a void as evidenced by their popularity today.
And as long as the value of autographs continue to go UP, everyone is happy......BUT , when you take a $5.00 autograph and pay $10.00 to slab it , you STILL have a $5.00 autograph , No worries though because next year it will be worth $25.00 and in ten years $100.00. Or will it ?? Use the same theory if you want using different dollar amounts but it all boils down to the same thing...... as long as the values continue to climb the cost of authentication becomes INCONSEQUENTIAL.
As many long time collectors drop out of the hobby , and MANY of them are doing it and fewer new collectors enter. Its inevidable that autograph values will stall and maybe even.....gulp....plunge downward, what then ?
Like it or not the cost of having something authenticated HAS made the selling price higher. And one can use the argument suggested here that "It pays for itself" in that the item will sell for more.
Looking at the current landscape I'll admit it does seem improbable that autographs will ever lose value. But I can remember hearing real estate agents telling me "real estate will NEVER come down in price because they have stopped making it" Or baseball cards are the best INVESTMENT you can make because well.....or fill in any one of a thousand examples of things that people once thought would never happen and did.
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jim@stinsonsports.com