Insane signings prices at the Sun Times show

[travrosty]

Originally Posted by Mr. Zipper

Scott, I certainly understand the point and in a perfect world who could argue it?

But, if you were going to drop $500 or so on a group signed item, wouldn't you want to protect its resale value to some degree? Certainly you don't need PSA for your enjoyment and validation, but when the day comes to sell it, chances are you'll take a bath on it if you try to sell yourself with no independent authentication. Love it or hate it, that's the reality of the market.

I think about the thousands and thousands I dropped on show signings back in the 90s. I KNOW all the stuff is good. But if I want to turn it, I'll get pennies on the dollar based on MY word alone. I wish there was some way I could have protected the investment back then for as little as $7 a signature.

thats a bunch of baloney, we sell lots of boxing on our word and get the same as if we had a psa or jsa cert, and the cert cost money out of our pocket so we would make less. i bought an early muhammad ali cut for a good deal and ended up losing money because i dropped 120 to get a james spence LOL that killed my profit margin when i could have sold the thing for the same price and kept the 120 in my pocket. dont believe the baloney that you need a psa or jsa cert to get the big bucks. the real collectors can tell its real and will pay for quality, they dont need a psa or jsa crutch.

[isaac2004]

Originally Posted by travrosty

thats a bunch of baloney, we sell lots of boxing on our word and get the same as if we had a psa or jsa cert, and the cert cost money out of our pocket so we would make less. i bought an early muhammad ali cut for a good deal and ended up losing money because i dropped 120 to get a james spence LOL that killed my profit margin when i could have sold the thing for the same price and kept the 120 in my pocket. dont believe the baloney that you need a psa or jsa cert to get the big bucks. the real collectors can tell its real and will pay for quality, they dont need a psa or jsa crutch.

This is a post about crazy prices for autographs, not a thread on how much TPAs suck in some peoples eyes.

[cubsfan-budman]

he's just saying that you dont *need* to have something authenticated to ensure good resale.

you can save the money you would have spent on authentication.

[Mr. Zipper]

Originally Posted by travrosty

thats a bunch of baloney, we sell lots of boxing on our word and get the same as if we had a psa or jsa cert, and the cert cost money out of our pocket so we would make less. i bought an early muhammad ali cut for a good deal and ended up losing money because i dropped 120 to get a james spence LOL that killed my profit margin when i could have sold the thing for the same price and kept the 120 in my pocket.

So you do make money buying and selling autographs?

In this post, you state, " i am not an authenticator, a dealer, and i haven't made ten cents in the hobby..."
http://www.net54baseball.com/showpos...9&postcount=61

And in this post, you state, "I am very experienced in boxing autographs, that makes me a pro in that sense of the word. I haven't made it my profession that i make a living or part of a living off of..."
http://www.net54baseball.com/showpos...5&postcount=89

Which is it?

Your factual inconsistencies aside, the fact remains that the average collector looking to sell will generally obtain higher prices for his material if it is authenticated by one of the accepted third party authenticators. Certainly there are exceptions such as Richard Simon, Jim Stinson and some others, but for an otherwise unknown collector selling his wares, the general rule applies. If you are unwilling to accept this reality and prefer to live in a world as you WISH it was, so be it.

[mighty bombjack]

Originally Posted by travrosty

thats a bunch of baloney, we sell lots of boxing on our word and get the same as if we had a psa or jsa cert, and the cert cost money out of our pocket so we would make less. i bought an early muhammad ali cut for a good deal and ended up losing money because i dropped 120 to get a james spence LOL that killed my profit margin when i could have sold the thing for the same price and kept the 120 in my pocket. dont believe the baloney that you need a psa or jsa cert to get the big bucks. the real collectors can tell its real and will pay for quality, they dont need a psa or jsa crutch.

We seem to be talking baseball here. You have convinced me that boxing is a different beast, one that TPAs are worthless on, but that is because I don't give a crap about boxing and haven't done any reading about beyond this board.

In baseball, those TPAs make a resale difference. I've seen it. I don't like it, but I've seen it.

[cottnat]

Back to the original topic, I agree these prices are absolutely nuts, especially for guys that really haven't accomplished much yet in the grand scheme of things. The value of prospect autographs/cards makes no sense to me. I mean, how many HOF pitchers are charging $200 for an auto? Even if Strasburg does great the rest of the way, he will have signed enough autographs to likely be in the $80-$90 range at the best and it wouldn't even have HOF inscription.

I guess I can't quite see the draw to seeing a guy sign it for you either. Granted there are a few guys that are a treat to be around. Johnny Bench was in a good mood when he was up here in MN for a show and Harmon Killebrew always made you feel like you were his grandson but most guys make the whole process very transactional. Pete Rose for example appeared to be pretty hung over and crotchety, even to a kid in front of me (that paid for an autograph). The point is, there are only a few guys I think I would be pretty tempted to go get in person (paying the inflated price) to see them and my guess is I would walk away disappointed and with a lighter wallet.

[Exhibitman]

I am at the point where there has to be a very good reason to bother with an in-person signing. Like an item I have been working on for a long time. That is the only way I can even conceive of it. And those grip and grin "encounters" seem so contrived and seamy that I want no part of it.

[JimStinson]

Just my "take" on this based on passed experience. I hope I am wrong about this but the whole contemporary autograph scene seems to be heading in the same direction as a phenomena I witnessed when I was actively doing baseball card shows in the 1980's.

I never had much to do with baseball cards except when I was a kid, but I'd set up at shows with my display cases full of vintage autographs. Most of the time I was the only autograph dealer in the room and would always get alot of "Oh's and Wow's" from people viewing what I had to sell but very little in the way of actual sales. I felt like a museum curator.

In the meantime the card dealers on either side of me , had STACKS AND STACKS of unopened boxes of baseball cards , their biggest complaint was that "They couldn't get enough product" and my biggest complaint was being afraid one of those 20 foot high stacks was going to fall on me and kill me.
I watched throughout the course of a 3 day show , customers actually loading up HANDTRUCKS full of unopened boxes of cards and wheeling them out to their cars while talking about the cards being an "INVESTMENT" in their kids college fund or retirement, or stuff like that.

I became friends with some of the card dealers and innocently asked "What are they buying so many boxes of cards for ?" I got alot of different answers but basically the condensed common theme was this.......If you had bought boxes of Topps or Bowman cards in the 1950's and then never opened them and sat on them for 30 years they would be WORTH A FORTUNE ! So the theory was to buy up all the 1980's cards you could find and just stack them in the basement and wait 30 years and they too would be worth a fortune. WRONG !!!!

At the end of the show the card dealers would ask me how I did and I'd check my wallet and tally my autograph sales and would usually end up with about $150.00 , They would laugh almost to tears. I'd ask them the same question and the numbers were staggering the guy to the right of me took in $7,000 and the guy to the left maybe $8,000 and I would shake my head and wonder why I wasn;t a baseball card dealer.

Well, most of us know what happened to all those baseball cards pristine sitting in their unopened boxes 30 years later.
Slowly I've begun to see many of the same parallels happening with autographs , I shutter when I hear the word "investment" , I'm asked all of the time "What will this autograph be worth 10 years from now ? 20 years from now ?" and my answer is usually always the same "How the heck do I know....smile, maybe if you are lucky you might be able to trade your whole collection for a cup of coffee and a loaf of bread".

But I'm afraid many of todays collectors (and dealers) somewhere along the line got stuck in the same mind set as those same card "investors" mentioned above. Buy it, slab it, stash it away for future "investment". Because its SURE to be worth more someday. Money is nice , to be sure , And collecting autographs is great fun , for a fact. But if your collecting today is motivated by "whats it gonna be worth tomorrow" well .....just think about those unopened boxes of baseball cards from the 1980's and 1990's that were mass produced to supply an artificial demand. Or that athlete sitting at a table somewhere signing 1,000 autographs a day every single weekend and maybe the two comparisons have something in common.
__________________________________
Buying and Selling Vintage autographs for over three decades
jim@stinsonsports.com

[isaac2004]

Originally Posted by JimStinson

Just my "take" on this based on passed experience. I hope I am wrong about this but the whole contemporary autograph scene seems to be heading in the same direction as a phenomena I witnessed when I was actively doing baseball card shows in the 1980's.

I never had much to do with baseball cards except when I was a kid, but I'd set up at shows with my display cases full of vintage autographs. Most of the time I was the only autograph dealer in the room and would always get alot of "Oh's and Wow's" from people viewing what I had to sell but very little in the way of actual sales. I felt like a museum curator.

In the meantime the card dealers on either side of me , had STACKS AND STACKS of unopened boxes of baseball cards , their biggest complaint was that "They couldn't get enough product" and my biggest complaint was being afraid one of those 20 foot high stacks was going to fall on me and kill me.
I watched throughout the course of a 3 day show , customers actually loading up HANDTRUCKS full of unopened boxes of cards and wheeling them out to their cars while talking about the cards being an "INVESTMENT" in their kids college fund or retirement, or stuff like that.

I became friends with some of the card dealers and innocently asked "What are they buying so many boxes of cards for ?" I got alot of different answers but basically the condensed common theme was this.......If you had bought boxes of Topps or Bowman cards in the 1950's and then never opened them and sat on them for 30 years they would be WORTH A FORTUNE ! So the theory was to buy up all the 1980's cards you could find and just stack them in the basement and wait 30 years and they too would be worth a fortune. WRONG !!!!

At the end of the show the card dealers would ask me how I did and I'd check my wallet and tally my autograph sales and would usually end up with about $150.00 , They would laugh almost to tears. I'd ask them the same question and the numbers were staggering the guy to the right of me took in $7,000 and the guy to the left maybe $8,000 and I would shake my head and wonder why I wasn;t a baseball card dealer.

Well, most of us know what happened to all those baseball cards pristine sitting in their unopened boxes 30 years later.
Slowly I've begun to see many of the same parallels happening with autographs , I shutter when I hear the word "investment" , I'm asked all of the time "What will this autograph be worth 10 years from now ? 20 years from now ?" and my answer is usually always the same "How the heck do I know....smile, maybe if you are lucky you might be able to trade your whole collection for a cup of coffee and a loaf of bread".

But I'm afraid many of todays collectors (and dealers) somewhere along the line got stuck in the same mind set as those same card "investors" mentioned above. Buy it, slab it, stash it away for future "investment". Because its SURE to be worth more someday. Money is nice , to be sure , And collecting autographs is great fun , for a fact. But if your collecting today is motivated by "whats it gonna be worth tomorrow" well .....just think about those unopened boxes of baseball cards from the 1980's and 1990's that were mass produced to supply an artificial demand. Or that athlete sitting at a table somewhere signing 1,000 autographs a day every single weekend and maybe the two comparisons have something in common.
__________________________________
Buying and Selling Vintage autographs for over three decades
jim@stinsonsports.com

Great comment Jim and I agree with you completely, but here is my take on what you said. Those boxes of cards sitting there having no value is 100% because of the market at the time. You are right, people bought those cards by the hand truck because of the 50s and 60s and the somewhat perceived value of those cards based on scarcity. So people bought cards, and that increased demand. Card companies saw those hand trucks of cards as potential dump trucks of cash, so they kept printing cards, hence flooding the market with cards and lowering the perceived value of them. We still see this today, and that is why card companies have added inserts to "raise the stakes" so to speak because they sell so many boxes.

Autographs are different in that aspect because there isn't "mass production" of them (we are talking thousands of cards a minute), the worst you get are guys like Rollie Fingers who sign 15 times a year, lowering the value of his signature because of the sheer volume in the market. But for most players, they sign once or twice a year and their "value" of their signature stays the same, until they die, and based on volume, typically rises again, or at least levels out.

Its my 2 cents but I see a difference between the 2. The issue I have is that the figures to sign at these shows is grotesquely higher than the value of that person's signature, even including overhead for everything because the agency that represents the player wants a little more on the top.

FWIW, Willie Mays does his own thing, no agency, rarely appears at huge shows, and charges $100 for his autograph, straight profit for him with some kick back to the venue he is signing at. No chance in hell I pay $200 for Strasburg or $80 for David F'in Freese...

[Mr. Zipper]

Originally Posted by isaac2004

Autographs are different in that aspect because there isn't "mass production" of them (we are talking thousands of cards a minute), the worst you get are guys like Rollie Fingers who sign 15 times a year, lowering the value of his signature because of the sheer volume in the market. But for most players, they sign once or twice a year and their "value" of their signature stays the same, until they die, and based on volume, typically rises again, or at least levels out.

I'm not so sure I agree with this. I suspect autographs are being produced in mass quantities (and I'm not even counting the endless forgeries that water down the market).

Jeter may only do one or two private signings a year, but he is cranking them out for the Steiner warehouse year round. Between private signings, direct deals with dealers, etc., etc., supply will far outweigh demand for the majority of today's players (and retired ones on the circuit).

In my opinion, if the person was alive and signing in 1990 or after, there more supply than you can imagine. Of course there are rare exceptions, but not many.

[Scott Garner]

"FWIW, Willie Mays does his own thing, no agency, rarely appears at huge shows, and charges $100 for his autograph, straight profit for him with some kick back to the venue he is signing at. No chance in hell I pay $200 for Strasburg or $80 for David F'in Freese..."

Isaac,

I don't believe that Willie Mays has signed for $100 in quite a while. Plus, because of him losing his vision and health issues, his sig has become pretty sketchy at best.

I'd have to agree with you on the price of the two guys that you mentioned. If you pay those prices you will absolutely own them forever, IMHO.

[Gary Dunaier]

Originally Posted by isaac2004

No chance in hell I pay $200 for Strasburg or $80 for David F'in Freese...

If I had the money, AND if I were so inclined, I MIGHT consider paying $80 to have David Freese sign THIS image...



...a screen capture showing him making the final out of Johan Santana's no-hitter!

[Mr. Zipper]

Originally Posted by JimStinson

But I'm afraid many of todays collectors (and dealers) somewhere along the line got stuck in the same mind set as those same card "investors" mentioned above. Buy it, slab it, stash it away for future "investment". Because its SURE to be worth more someday. Money is nice , to be sure , And collecting autographs is great fun , for a fact. But if your collecting today is motivated by "whats it gonna be worth tomorrow" well .....just think about those unopened boxes of baseball cards from the 1980's and 1990's that were mass produced to supply an artificial demand. Or that athlete sitting at a table somewhere signing 1,000 autographs a day every single weekend and maybe the two comparisons have something in common.
__________________________________
Buying and Selling Vintage autographs for over three decades
jim@stinsonsports.com

Hi Jim
I can’t help but wonder if my use of the word investment in a previous post is what you may be alluding to in yours.

First, I agree with you 100%.

I don’t see my hobby as an “investment” … that’s what stocks and mutual funds are for in my opinion.

That said, given the high prices these days, it seems wise to me to protect the price paid in some way. Speaking for myself, the hobby is not an investment, but I do hope that they have some resale value down the road when the time comes to pass them along. We are no longer talking about $12 autographs.

If I was inclined to pay $175+ for an in-person Stephen Strasberg signature (I’m NOT!), it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to get a PSA or JSA sticker for $7… so if I want to sell it in 5 years, I can get a few bucks back out of it. The reality is that without it – or without a known reputation like yours – the average Joe Collector will get pennies on the dollar.

Certainly some experienced and educated collectors know the difference and don’t rely on TPAs to make purchase decisions. But, what seller thinks it’s a good idea to restrict his potential audience only to one part of the collecting community? If the TPA provides reassurance to the casual collector, then you are greatly expanding the number of potential customers, or in an auction scenario, bidders.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by JimStinson

I watched throughout the course of a 3 day show , customers actually loading up HANDTRUCKS full of unopened boxes of cards and wheeling them out to their cars while talking about the cards being an "INVESTMENT" in their kids college fund or retirement, or stuff like that.

I had a friend who did just that - he had a separate closet in his house stacked to the ceiling with wax boxes of 1987 Topps. It was the sickest thing I ever saw.