26-year-old collector buys 1952 Hank Aaron Indy Clowns postcard for $275,000

[raulus]

Originally Posted by bk400

I think the market cap concept is useful in making precisely the point that I think Jonah was making.

To make his point slightly differently, would someone pay around $500k to buy the entire known market of 1952 Aaron Clowns postcards?

How does this compare with what it would cost to buy the entire known market of 1914 Ruths? Isn't one strikingly low compared to the other? Doesn't that imply that one might be undervalued relative to the other?

Not really, at least to my mind.

As Adam mentioned, demand is the name of the game. Lots of obscure stuff that is incredibly rare, yet the demand isn’t there to push the price higher. Potential buyers definitely look at the price to buy a single card and compare it to buy the price of another card that captures their fancy. There’s no way that they care about what the total market cap is when evaluating whether they like deal #1 or deal #2 better.

The Aaron postcard is definitely a beautiful and great piece. And any of us would love to have it. So congrats to Jonah for picking it up, loving it and enjoying it for a long, long time. But it’s hard to imagine that the market cap for the postcard should in any way approximate the market cap for the rookie.

[jd9cards]

Originally Posted by raulus

Not really, at least to my mind.

As Adam mentioned, demand is the name of the game. Lots of obscure stuff that is incredibly rare, yet the demand isn’t there to push the price higher. Potential buyers definitely look at the price to buy a single card and compare it to buy the price of another card that captures their fancy. There’s no way that they care about what the total market cap is when evaluating whether they like deal #1 or deal #2 better.

The Aaron postcard is definitely a beautiful and great piece. And any of us would love to have it. So congrats to Jonah for picking it up, loving it and enjoying it for a long, long time. But it’s hard to imagine that the market cap for the postcard should in any way approximate the market cap for the rookie.

I would never argue that the market cap of the Clowns Aaron should be anything close to that of the 1954 Topps. The total rough market cap of all 1954 Topps Aaron rookies is $80M+. Even just the PSA & SGC 1s is ~$1.7M.

The real question and thought I enjoy thinking about is should all PSA / SGC 1s be worth more than the 2 postcards?

At the price I paid, you could trade ~136 PSA/SGC 1 1954 Topps Aarons for my Postcard. A trade I think most would make.

Enjoying the conversation about the card. The card is still very unknown to many in the hobby. I love researching and teaching others about great and historical items like this one. A net54 member showed me 2 letters from Syd Pollock who owned the Clowns. The first sent in on May 10th of 1952 discusses making newspaper cuts and photos to promote Aaron. In the second letter, sent on July 4th, Pollock says he sent Hank Aaron some postcards of himself and he also sent Aaron's dad some of these postcards in the mail.

Because of this the exact creation of the postcard can be pin pointed between May 10th - July 4th of 1952!

Provenance is key on items like these and learning this yesterday was a thrill!

I would love to know who owns the letters now. It would be amazing to pair these 2 letters with the postcard, newspaper, and printing plate I currently have. They sold in the same Hunt Auction in Nov 2024. These letters were in 2 separate lots with lots of other letters from Pollock and Ed Scott.