Will provenance become more important?

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I think provenance as relates to authenticity and state (condition, alteration, etc) will become more important and should.

A simple example is a Barry Halper card that looks the same as in the auction catalog 10 years ago, so you know hasn't been altered or trimmed recently (or probably ever). That the Halper collection is famous likely will had an addition dollar or two to the value.

For some Gem Mint 10 card sellers I would like to say "Prove to me that this card existed in this state one year ago" or "Prove to me that you purchased this card in this grade." If the seller was the trimmer, he couldn't prove the latter. With the Halper card you can see a picture of the card 10 years ago and will have more confidence about the card's state.

Knowing of Lionel Carter and his collecting history and care of cards, collectors will be more confident in the state of a card from his collection.

While authenticity of a card can usually be determined without known provenance, in other areas of collecting provenance is very important. For example, when judging the authenticity of a famous-artist photograph, it's helps to know the photo came from the archives of a magazine the photographer worked for or even from the photographer himself. With a game used baseball jersey, collectors desire documentation from the player, team, team employee or relative. Gives them more confidence the item is genuine. An NFL Auctions COA doesn't itself prove the authenticity, but shows the jersey came from a good source (an NFL jersey purchased from the NFL sounds like good provenance to me).

Collectors create their own provenance (history of ownership and sale) when they pick and chose their sellers. If you purchase a rare card from a trusted and well known seller, say Leon, you are more confident about the purchase. When you turn to sell the card you can tell that you purchased it from Leon, a trusted a well known seller. One reason why I would buy autographs from well known autograph expert Mike Gutierrez is, so when I turned to sell, I could say the autographs were purchased from Mike Gutierrez.