Heritage Rosen Mantle - Greatest Card Ever Auctioned?

[BobC]

Actually need to correct some of what I said in post #181 a little bit. No one actually comes after you to get the money/property back if it has been improperly spent or you gifted some of it away during the five year period before you file for Medicaid. Instead, what the Medicaid people normally do is figure out how much you spent/gifted and divide that total amount by the average daily/monthly amount it would cost to have someone cared for in a nursing home or like facility. That way they then figure out how many days/months of care what you gave/gifted away would cover, and delay the start of your Medicaid coverage by that same period of time. So you and your family basically have to somehow cover your nursing and all other costs till that time is made up. And then Medicaid will take over and start to pay for things.

Sorry for not explaining it as clearly before.

[oldjudge]

Bob—If you had a client auctioning off a card like that and he lived in a state with onerous capital gains taxes, would you recommend that he plan ahead and spend 6+ months as a resident of a state with no capital gains before he sold the card? Seems like he could save a ton of money even if he rented a palace for that period.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

Bob—If you had a client auctioning off a card like that and he lived in a state with onerous capital gains taxes, would you recommend that he plan ahead and spend 6+ months as a resident of a state with no capital gains before he sold the card? Seems like he could save a ton of money even if he rented a palace for that period.

Absolutely. Had a client company a few years ago owned by two brothers-in-law and a couple others, who sold a majority interest in it to a New York investment firm that infused more money to do acquisitions, leaving the current owners in charge. The plan was to build the business' EBITDA up even further, and then resell everything to an even bigger buyer in a 5 - 7 year period, at an even bigger multiple (of EBITDA) than they had bought it for.

I also did the personnel taxes for the brother-in-laws, and one of them had a Summer home in Florida, in addition to his regular home here in the Cleveland, Ohio suburbs, where the company was headquartered. We talked about him changing his legal residence from Ohio to Florida, and I gave him a list of things to do about a year or two before they expected the New York firm to pull the trigger on the resale of the business. After the New York investment firm took over, they took the original business from $80M in gross sales yearly to just over $500M a year in about 5 years, and then found a buyer. The one brother-in-law who I helped change his residence to Florida ended up with a LTCG from the subsequent sale of a little over $15M. Ohio has a top individual income tax rate of about 5%. Florida has no income taxes, state or local, whatsoever. So simply having my old client change the mailing address on where his mail and bank statements get sent, getting a driver's license from Florida instead of Ohio, having the company put his Florida address in his checks, having him start filing as a Florida resident on his personal tax returns a year before the sale, and a few other fairly simple things, and we figured he ended up saving approximately $750,000 in state taxes.

LTCG from the sale of a business, or LTCG from the sale of a baseball card, same result and tax savings by changing one's residence to a state with no income taxes. And the brother-in-law still kept and stayed at his Ohio residence as well. Just made sure he stayed there in Ohio less than half the year the year of the sale, which was easy as he traveled and worked outside the office mostly anyway.

Here's a list of the US states, and the current top tax bracket in each one. Those with a 0.00% tax rate have no individual state taxes, and would be the perfect candidates for doing something like you're suggesting. But moving from a high taxing state, like California or Oregon, to a much lesser taxing state, would pose a similar tax savings as well.


Alaska 0.00%
Florida 0.00%
Nevada 0.00%
New Hampshire 0.00%
South Dakota 0.00%
Tennessee 0.00%
Texas 0.00%
Washington 0.00%
Wyoming 0.00%
North Dakota 2.90%
Pennsylvania 3.07%
Indiana 3.23%
Michigan 4.25%
Colorado 4.55%
Ohio 4.80%
Utah 4.95%
Illinois 4.96%
Alabama 5.00%
Kentucky 5.00%
Massachusetts 5.00%
Mississippi 5.00%
Oklahoma 5.00%
North Carolina 5.25%
Missouri 5.40%
Kansas 5.70%
Georgia 5.75%
Maryland 5.75%
Virginia 5.75%
Arkansas 5.90%
New Mexico 5.90%
Rhode Island 5.99%
Louisiana 6.00%
West Virginia 6.50%
Delaware 6.60%
Nebraska 6.84%
Montana 6.90%
Idaho 6.92%
Connecticut 6.99%
South Carolina 7.00%
Maine 7.15%
Wisconsin 7.65%
Arizona 8.00%
Iowa 8.53%
Vermont 8.75%
New York 8.82%
Minnesota 9.85%
Oregon 9.90%
New Jersey 10.75%
Hawaii 11.00%
California 13.30%

[Gary Dunaier]

Here's a couple of looks at the card when it was on display in Heritage Auctions' New York office last week.

[GasHouseGang]

With all of the smash-and-grab robberies they've had lately in LA, I would not fill comfortable with those expensive items out on the floor.

[Snowman]

As a few have mentioned, that "stain" on the top is not actually a stain. It's not dirty or fingerprint oils or something spilled onto the card. That's toning, and it occurs naturally on paper over time due to oxidation. It will also get worse over time.

Also, the way SGC grades means that they felt the card was a 9, but that it had superior eye appeal when compared to other 9s (typically due to centering and color), so they give it the +0.5. Basically, read the 9.5 as a 9 with strong eye appeal. It's not a near 10 in the sense that it was just one small issue holding it back from the 10. It's a 9 condition-wise in their assessment.

As far as comparing this to the other high-end Mantles, this one clearly looks better than 2 of the 3 PSA 10s. The one that Ken Kendrick owns (Diamondbacks owner) is, perhaps ironically, diamond cut. The fact that that card is in any holder above a 7 is pretty funny to me, let alone a 10. Nothing worse than a diamond-cut card for my OCD tastes.

[Snowman]

Personally, I would take MattyC's PSA 4.5 over this 9.5 and two of the PSA 10s. There are probably fewer than 15-20 truly perfectly centered 52 Topps Mantles in any grade that don't have creases (and this 9.5 is not perfectly centered). I know there are only 9 perfectly centered Jackie Robinsons in a grade 4 or higher out of the ~900 or so copies on VCP (yes, I went through them all one-by-one and counted). Some day when I get the time, I'll comb through all the Mantles too and take notes. Centering on key vintage cards is so much more scarce than even most of us realize. Same with 54 Topps Hank Aaron and 51 Bowman Mays & Mantle, and many others. You can probably count the total number of dead-centered copies in existence on your fingers and toes.