1916 M101-4 Sporting News Babe Ruth PSA 4 on Goldin

[BobC]

Originally Posted by mrreality68

People are describing it as Margin some as loans but it is not exactly like margin. It really is a loan that you are securing with the cards. And then you have terms to pay it off at a designated interest rate. And you can pay over time or pay back when you choose. Just like a mortgage on your home or a credit card (but credit cards are unsecured).

Fyi the Card is now at $400k($480k with BP) and with 13 days to go. So put on your over/unders

Don't disagree at all Jeff, but if people are using these cards as collateral for their loans, and the terms require these loans to be at least XX% of the card(s) value, what happens if/when the card(s) acting as collateral fall below that required percentage? I may be wrong, as I've never seen any of these agreements, nor have ever thought (and probably never will) about borrowing anything against the value of cards I may own. Also, I seem to remember back during the National this past Summer that there was a lot of talk about people bringing cards to put in some "vault", and how they could then get loans against the value of their cards. IIRC, this "vault" supposedly received more than $1M of cards being put into it. If true, the fact that people were specifically bringing their cards to then have them put in this "vault" means they were not able to take advantage of the 'no sales tax" advantage of having card purchases sent directly to a "vault" in a non-sales tax state. That tells me there had to then be some other advantageous reason that so many people would bring in so many cards to put into a "vault", in-person, then. And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess they did it to take advantage of loans they could then get against the value of their cards.

Now I don't know if these people were then given actual cash/money from these loans, or if they received credit they could then use against additional purchases they would then go on to make through the company behind the "vault. Either way, that sure sounds like the definition of a basic margin type loan to me. Maybe not exactly the same terms and conditions as to what you could do through an investment firm/brokerage you got a margin loan through, but still along the same lines and reasoning.

As I said, I don't have enough first-hand knowledge about how any of these "vault" loans work, or their specific terms and conditions. Hopefully someone with direct, actual knowledge can chime in. Wouldn't be surprised though if they end up having some elements of both regular type loans and typical margin loans in them.