What is the most valuable vintage sportscard collection worth

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Posted By: Marc S.

Jim:

Your question is not an easy one to answer - as has been lengthily debated here. The key issue, as I see it, is one of disclosure. Charlie, Marshall, Don Louchios, Don Spence and a handful of others [yourself included] have very public collections that lend themselves to both liquidity and comparability. I think some of your $$$ amounts are probably understated, given the strength seen in certain of those sets in the last 2-3 years.

That being said - there is a whole aspect of the hobby that is left undisclosed. There are numerous collectors out there - more raw, but some graded - that simply do not want to be a public persona and have their collection flaunted on a Registry or elsewhere. One cannot simply discount that these do not exist because we do not see them on a Registry.

And, you must also consider that high-grade is not the end all of investment. There was a rumour going around the National this year of a raw set that would be considered extremely low-grade by your standards that sold for in excess of a million dollards. One only need to look at Rob Lifson's auctions or many of the Mastro lots over the past few years to see the extreme strength paid for many exceptionally rare pre-war pieces, regardless of grade.

You cannot fail to include Keith Olbermann's collection simply because it is not known. It is generally regarded the strength of collection he has for Old Judges and many rarer, test type sets. There are numerous collections out there where low-grade commons from each set would yield thousands each - and many of the people here are at least aware of who some of those collectors are.

Also - perhaps baseball cards is a too narrow a category. Marshall's original baseball photography collection is unparalleled to my knowledge - and Brian Seigel has an extremely extensive game-used bat collection. Those factors can add millions to any estimate.

Jim - you are absolutely right that Charlie, Marshall and Don own the best graded sets of many of the major sets of the pre-war and 1950s era. That being said - there is inadequate information to make conclusions about much else. What is the potential value of an N172 set with most of the known poses? Or a large run of N173s? I could not presume to know - but I can say that based upon the thousands paid for rare poses in Poor condition - those sets are worth a ton of money.

It is easy and fun to debate the value of these liquid, known collections like Charlie and Marshall. Unfortunately, all we know is that these analyses are incomplete because of the numerous, very advanced collectors who have been building world-class collections long before grading was a known factor.

~ms