w600s

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Posted By: Craig

There was a large group of W600s auctioned off today on ebay live.
Prices seemed strong; Matty 12k, Young 7k, Wagner 11.5k
Is this typical?
Anyone here bid?

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Posted By: Eric B

I'm no W600 price expert, but these do seem to be on the high end. Does anyone remember that huge lot of W600's that Mastro sold in 2002 I think it was? I don't rember the total lot price but some nice cards were in there. Probably a sound investment in 2002.

Eric

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Posted By: barrysloate

I had bids in on all 24 lots and was shut out. Prices were high but deservedly so. All were from 1902, the first year of issue, there was a particularly large number of Hall of Famers, and I would guess that a few of the poses were new to the market. Also, all were still in their original glassine envelopes and condition seemed to average about EX-MT. It was an extraordinary offering and merited the prices realized.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Barry is right, the prices are deserved.

Those items were incredible!

Does anyone have ANY idea who the original owner/collector of these fabulous pieces was???

------------------------

PS - No, I do NOT consider them to be baseball "cards"...

but they are COOL nonetheless!!!

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Posted By: barrysloate

The auction house told me that they belonged to a family from Rochester; sounds like they were not collectors but just had them in the family. I'm sure the prices realized stunned them and that they had no idea they were so valuable. They are more premiums than baseball cards, that is true; but they are exceptionally beautiful and extremely challenging to collect.

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Posted By: scott brockelman

i believe the prices paid were extremely strong and perhaps not a true indicator of pricing, however as Barry stated they were 1902's and high grade at that.

the Matty at $12k was an absolute record price for a W600, followed by the wagner and young, delehanty would have brought quite a bit more if my phone rep would have been awake, he did not get my bid in as the lot was hammered very quickly, cost them a bit!

i was able to get 9 of the lots and quite pleased even though the prices were very high, even on the commons. also as Barry stated on the poses, i had seen all, except the Freeman card with a 3/4 length body shot, EVERY other W600 is a portrait, he appears to be standing outside, perhaps by a ballpark, definitely the highlite of my purchases.

scott

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Posted By: barrysloate

Scott- Funny you should mention the Freeman, because that's the one where I said I don't think anyone has seen this pose before. And I had no idea, it was just a gut feeling and so unusual. Getting nine of them was quite a haul. Obviously, I wasn't buying to collect them, so I was at a clear disadvantage. And I thought the Delahanty was one that should have gone higher too. I was also impressed with the technology- that's the first ebay live auction I participated in and you can watch the increments on your screen instantaneously. Pretty amazing.

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Posted By: Paul

I just returned from two weeks in Asia without internet access, except for a single day. I used that day to admire these W600s. I bid on most, won none. I was really only serious about the Jennings. I would have liked to upgrade the one I recently obtained and posted about. Congrats to Shoeless Jim on winning such a nice card. If he'd ever like to downgrade his, I hope he sends me an email.

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Posted By: BCD

Please go get that Crawford E-102 psa 8 back! Now that the set is in "play" I really need that puppy!

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Posted By: Preece1

I bought the Matty and the Young in the W600 auction. As Barry pointed out, they were in amazing condition, in the original envelope, and I wasn't sure if I would see an opportunity like this again. I was after the Wagner also, but my wife walked in at the time it came up, looked at what I spent that morning on the Matty and Young, and "we" agreed I would stop at two.

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Posted By: BCD

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=86841&item=5205654831&rd=1

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Posted By: scott brockelman

i guess i only won 8, i thought i won the Jennings but after pauls post i went back and looked, i had a tie bid with shoeless joe at 3K, they hammered the lot and told me i won, but obviously someone overlooked the fact that the internet bid took precendent.


scott

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Posted By: barrysloate

There were definitely aspects of the bidding I didn't understand. For example, on a lot where I left an ebay bid of $1500, when it reached that number it very well may have been assigned to a floor bidder instead of me. If I lost the lot by one increment, I would have been upset. But since I was pretty much blown out of the water, it was more a curiosity. I couldn't figure out how you can simultaneously have ebay left bids, ebay live bids, telephone bidders, and live bidders on the floor and keep track of everything. There must be some system, but it escapes me.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Glad to hear that Ms. Preece wears the pants!!!

I will have to call and let her know the next time you are trying to out bid me!!

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Posted By: scott brockelman

Barry,
it was a bit unorganized, i think they were a little overwhelmed, but handled it pretty good, i was on the phone and could hear both the auction and the lady with the internet bids(the book in most auctions) they had to wait for the internet to catch up but it was nearly real time, much faster than previously, i was happy to win a few, but dissapointed to loose out on 2, 1 of which i thought i won and so did my phone guy,(i may still get an invoice with it included) and 1 of which he never got my bid in.

oh well even bidding live on the phone has it's weaknesses like bidding on Ebay, sometimes you just can't get in in time. or worse the auction house forgets to call you, i had that happen with a large auction house and had even given my phone bids to the owner/friend of mine, he botched it and they didn;t even call me. lost out on some e97 b & w's that went for cheap

despite all of this i still had a good experience and am most excited to see the Freeman cabinet and examine the backdrop of the photo.

scott

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Posted By: scott brockelman

the 1st rule of this entire gig is to not divulge any purchase prices without first loudly extolling recent sales, they love to hear how wisely you have done on your purchases not how much you have spent.

sidenote: my other half knows full well what i spend and does not get upset nor worried, partially due to the above. guess i have it made. however my 16 year old cringes heavily when i tell her of 5 figure purchases that affect her inheritance. she much prefers dead presidents on paper to dead base ball players.

scott

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Posted By: Preece1

I guess I never read the rule book. You have to send me a copy (or I will contact good ol' Leon for a copy).

When someone starts the thread asking if anyone bid, I thought I would answer. It seamed pretty straight forward to me. I didn't mention price (I guess it is pretty obvious though). As far as working through the reason for my purchase price with the network crew, that would make me seem to much like the other guys that try to rationalize what is and isn't a rookie card.

I guess I approach it differently, I just bid what I was comfortable bidding regardless of the price the card went for the last time it was auctioned off.

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Posted By: Preece1

Hal,

I talked to my wife about your comment, and although I need to pull back a little on the buying, she said that I can spend what ever it takes ever time I am bidding against you

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Posted By: Elliot

Patrick, Scott was talking about the rules regarding what you tell your wife, not what you tell us. We think whatever you spend on cards is great, as long as you are not outbidding us. I'm sure "we" think that you should have gone for the Wagner, unlike your wife.

BTW...I find that the words "museum quality" usually help smooth things over.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Every time we talk about wives and how much we spend on cards... it always turns into a thread about "window treatments."

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Posted By: scott brockelman

patrick,

elliott is correct i was not talking about your posting to the board, that is an open forum, it's at the home front where one must maintain radio silence.

scott

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Posted By: Preece1

I misunderstood.

You guys are going to have to give me pointers on this "radio silence" situation. Don't your wives ever go through the checkbook or the savings statements? I think pretty good on my feet, but a $20K-$30K hole in the statements every few months is too hard for me to talk my way out of.

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Posted By: Tom Boblitt

that sold the 130+ W600's in the 2002 Mastronet auction.....this was a nice windfall for this owner, huh? The 2002 lot sold in the 55K range. There were, however, only about 60-70 of them that were in the EX to NRMT range. About 30 were VG to VGEX and the other 30+ were in lower condition.

Some notes.....
I had a Wagner like the one picture. This is only the second one of them I've seen in 10+ years of watching all the W600 auctions very closely. Mine came from a Slater's Americana auction and I paid about $900 for it around 1997-1998 or so. It did, however, have a small chip in the lower right corner. This Wagner is much tougher than the uniformed Wagner. I had two different versions of the uniformed Wagner also. One had 'John Wagner' at the bottom caption and the other 'John Hans Wagner' (or Honus, can't remember.....).

I had not see this Mathewson pose before this auction.....

Someone said they were 'all from 1902' and I don't believe that to be the case. I think they have to specifically say 1902 on them to be from that timeframe and I have to believe the actual date on those is more like 1903.....

There are a couple different graphics used on the 1902's too....I don't specifically remember having both graphics on my 1902's but there is the acorn graphic and the crossed bats graphic. In the past, I'd always believed the crossed bats graphic to be from an interim period after 1902 but before the end of the run when the graphics were in white and no longer brown.

In my collection, I had many of the cabinets that were sold but some of the ones I had were not the 1902 versions, just the crossed bats versions after 1902. From looking at the photos I have of mine, almost all the photos are identical except for the McGraw.

Just recently met (via web) and conversed with the person who won the lot that I sold. Small world really as it only came up as an afterthought in conversation.

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

As for the Saturday SLC card group auction I thought it interesting enough to submit an article on that subject for publication. All of the SLC cards in that auction are from the 1902 and early 1903 period. I cancelled the article on the professional grading errors and put the article on the 19th century baseball card-listing hoax on hold.

Regarding the SLC cards: All the dress clothes Mathewsons I’ve seen were miss-spelled Matthewson. The early uniform Mathewson card was also miss-spelled in the same way. However in later editions of the uniform version the spelling was corrected. The dress clothes card was never issued again.

The crossed bats embossed white ink SLC format was started in 1904 and continued until the end of printing of these cards in the spring of 1912.

John "Buck" Freeman's first SLC card is not only an unusual pose but also one of the very few players not to wear dress clothes for the 1902 Carl Horner photographing sessions. On his second card later in 1903 he wore the typical Boston lace-top uniform in a regular portrait pose. Also there were two other changes on the later card. One was “outfielder” was changed to “right fielder” the other just John Freeman is printed. The "Buck" was eliminated.

In a similar case the first SLC card for Waddell was the 1902 George Edward “Rube” Waddell pitcher for Philadelphia AL. His second card in 1908 as pitcher for St. Louis AL card “Rube” was omitted. This was likely done at the request of Mr. Waddell. According to a teammate Mr. Waddell disliked that nickname and preferred to be called Eddie.

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Posted By: barrysloate

Jerry- Didn't you think this was among the best collections of W600's ever offered? Tom Boblitt's collection was larger, but he actively put it together over a period of time. This was an original group, fresh to the market, still in their glassine envelopes.

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Posted By: Tom Boblitt

for the quality of subjects.........16 of 24 were HOF'ers with some of the tougher ones. Wish my grandpa had that stack in his attic........I could start a new collection then!

Jerry....you need to do a book on W600's........you dole out that knowledge in bite-sized chunks....leaves us wanting more details......

My collection was over about a 7-8 year period. I won 2-3 LARGE lots--one from REA (about 39) and one from Oser (11 or so that were all in LOW condition with some type of spotting--looked like tobacco but hard to tell). There were some nice poses in both of those collections. All in all, I've had about 6-7 Wagners but only the one street clothes version.

On another note, I was notified by email that there is another street clothes owned by one of the board members....as I'm sure there are more. Just seems like you see the uni version about 10X to the street version.

Jerry, since they say 'of the club of 1902', would it be your assertion that they weren't produced until 1903?

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Posted By: Scott M

Auction was a bit unorganized but its also not what they are used to and all things considered thought it went pretty well.

Don't know if anyone else heard it, but after the Cy Young was auctioned off the gentleman announced that the soda that is "on the honor system" was now "on the house"....brought much laughter. You could hear it in the auctioneer's voice that these cards far exceeded their expectations.

Won one....lost many but hope all enjoy their cards.

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

Yes Barry this was the best condition small group of SLC cards consigned to auction that I remember. However the very best was the W600 lot in the Copeland Collection. The reserve of $100K was not met. That minimum bid would be easily met today.

Tom started collecting these cards at a fairly good time but quit too early.
Scott started late but is making up for lost time.

The SLC card series was first offered to their readers at the end of the 1902 baseball season. In ordering these cards the choice of player was made by the reader. No player was more popular during those few early years than Wagner. Mathewson was still new.

If you want to read more here is the link:

http://www.freewebs.com/gls234/w600.htm

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Thanks for the link, Jerry!

Nice read.

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Posted By: Preece1

I just received the two W600s I purchased in the Bob Connelly auction. Bob was going to be in New York City, and was very considerate to bring them out to me versus sending them in the mail. I am amazed at the quality. I knew that they were listed as near mint, but I am still amazed. Did other auction winners have the same opinion???

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Posted By: eric p.

well i just picked up my first w600, no i didn't pay 12k for it nor did i have to pay 1k for it, then again it is a common, i picked it up for the low price of $100.75, i admit i know nothing about w600's but i couldn't pass it up, i absolutely love the card, thanks scott!