Is Memorabilia on the decline?

[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

Dan- you know the woman who bought Ty Cobb's dentures was absolutely thrilled with the purchase and said she had her heart set on getting them. I recall when I worked in Sotheby's warehouse I would walk past the shelf with the teeth and say to myself "why would anybody want to own those?" Let's just say they fall outside my own parameters of what constitutes memorabilia. And I also want to say I have tremendous respect for the way you collect and what you have learned about baseball history, and I find the pictures of your displays very impressive.

For me it is 19th century material that was issued pre-league (before 1876), such as letters, documents, photographs, books, etc. that illustrate the early history of the game. There are still collectors for this material, some quite avid, but as Scott cited the market can be thin. Take a couple of guys out and the landscape quickly changes.

Steve Cummings amassed one of the largest baseball libraries during the 1980's up until around 2000. When he was collecting and you had a book he needed, you were likely to set a record price with it. When he sold his collection, and a few other key collectors either dropped out or scaled back, that market took a precipitous fall.

On the other hand, if fifty guys decided to stop collecting E-cards, there would be seventy five new ones to take their place. There is no comparision between cards and memorabilia today. I can even see major changes in my own business. When I would put together an auction ten years ago, it would be 90% memorabilia, and I would stick a few cards in the back just to keep my card customers happy. Now they are almost 100% slabbed cards. That's what the market wants today. I know that others like Scott, as well as the major auction houses, still buy and sell items other than cards, but I'm sure they will tell you it's much different than it used to be.