Money in the hobby

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Here is something I simply do not understand regarding the large sums spent on baseball cards. Let's take two lots in the recent REA Auction: Lot 12, a PSA 9 Hank Aaron rookie which sold for 216K; and lot 13, a PSA 9 Sandy Koufax rookie which sold for 156K. We all know those are both very common cards, and only attained those lofty bids because they were graded Mint 9. For someone willing to pay such an extraordinary amount of money for them, there had to be a strong belief that what they were buying is exactly what it says on the label. But here is what we also know:

1) A card submitted for grading that comes back "Evidence of Trimming" can be resubmitted a month later and come back NR MT 7.

2) The same card can be submitted three times and come back with three different grades.

3) Countless trimmed and altered cards make it into holders with numerical grades with alarming frequency.

So can somebody tell me why there is such a blind faith in that little white label? To me there is a disconnect here that makes no sense. Why is something so subjective and so inconsistent treated with such absolute trust? You don't spend a quarter of a million dollars on something if you are not completely confident you are getting what you are paying for.

IMHO, Barry (and good to hear from you, by the way), a lot of these guys paying huge, enormous premiums for "9's" vs "8's" and "10's" vs "9's" are quite literally paying for the holder/flip inside. There simply is no way that the difference in the quality of the card can match the price differential, so what are they getting for their money? A holder with a piece of paper in it, for which they have paid tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars more than they would have for a beautiful card graded just one level lower. Far better to invest in something like the 1907 Seamless Steel Ty Cobb rookie Orlando Rodriguez of this board won in the REA auction ($24,000?), where both grading services have slabbed a total of four examples, and both Orly and I believe that that number is not going to increase much at all over the next few decades. Same with cards like the 1914 Baltimore News Ruth (11 total graded?), the Dietsche Fielding Pose and Wolverine News Cobb rookies, etc., etc.

I have studied the coin hobby extensively, as it has followed essentially the same path as that of cards, only with a 120 year head start. In that context, where there is a vast difference in the price of a coin, for example, in Mint State 67 vs Mint State 64 or 63, but little substantive difference of any real note between the quality of the two, and the item at issue is not all that rare, the values of the higher numerically graded items have tended to be cyclical, ebbing and flowing with the ingress and egress of investor types. On the other hand, truly rare and significant items tend to keep appreciating in virtually linear fashion (although those gaining the most in value over time among that group are those in better condition). And while on the subject, coins have also been the target of many counterfeiting attempts, with very little real success over the years. Items made through different methods always tend to leave different footprints, so I don't think we will be seeing a few hundred undetectable, newly manufactured Baltimore News Ruths in the next decade, century or even millenium! Same case scenario with Orly's Seamless Steel Cobb rookie (and presumably my own Wolverine Portrait and Dietsche Fielding Pose Cobbs).

Regards,

Larry