Is there a market?

[Jantz]

Originally Posted by Yankeefan51

We have been collecting rare baseball memorabilia for more than three decades.

Rarely does one have the opportunity to view an entire collection. Nor, to the best of our knowledge,
is there a way to search a photo and description of an item unless one goes through the catalogs of all the major auction houses.

Whilst selected collectors randomly post items from their collections on Net54baseball com,
researching individual items, is difficult at best.

We have given this a great deal of thought, and wonder if you believe there would be a business opportunity for the following:

1.Ability to see all items from a selected group of very important collections
2. Cross reference all the Auction catalogs from the past 10 years by item- again limiting to rare, unusual and/or valuable items.
3. Be able to download pictures/descriptions for one's own files.

The business model would be to form a company. Collectors who supplied photos would receive a percentage of
the revenue. the auction houses would receive credit on all their postings. There would be a list of all auction houses supplying items on the site.

Those who wanted to view the site, would pay an annual membership fee and there would be a fee for downloading.

Media who wished to download for use in an article or tv show would pay a royalty fee.

Do you believe that this could be a $5M or more business, if properly structured? Do you believe the auction houses and major collectors would cooperate?

Look forward to your opinion

Bruce Dorskind
America's Toughest Want

I quoted the Bruces entire post in it's unedited form for future referrence.

[onlychild]

The profit margin would be next to nothing once each of the Bruce's are paid off.

[teetwoohsix]

Bruces-my opinion is you save your $$$ for your "want list".It actually sounded like a cool idea until I got to the part about fees for being a member,and fees to download images???I would think the fees for being a member would cover the downloading of images?

So,I'm wondering........would anyone who paid fees be able to say they belong to the "Bruce's Vintage Card Mafia"? (how many people are in this group anyways?)

Good luck on your endeavour.

[Sterling Sports Auctions]

I would think that "we" would have more than enough money if this is viable, why not start it up and give it a try if it peaks your interest? Than give us an update when the project is going.

Lee

[uniship]

I would strongly consider launching this business by taking out a 30 second commercial at next year's Superbowl. Good luck!

[Exhibitman]

I know a number of collectors with astounding collections who will not post on a public board for safety and privacy reasons.

One great--and free--way to see exhaustive collections of great cards is to make friends with and not antagonize the collectors who own them. Then they will show you their cards as part of the iterated social interaction known as "friendship." If people think you are an insufferable blowhard they won't be your "friend" and won't open their collections to you.

The auction houses do indeed maintain archives of past sales. Heritage has a very nice function in its database that costs you nothing besides signing up for the auctions. VCP is a de facto database as well.

It is a shame that the Burdick Collection has not been digitized and made available--I'd pay for a CD of that--the only way to get to see it now is to be involved in a research project and get an appointment.

[oriolesbb6]

I believe it would be a tough sell as others have stated that numerous resources already exist, aka past auctions, archives and sites such as liveauctioneers.com(free) that is key word searchable for any and all items sold at auction for periods of up to 10 years around the world.