How many collections lay dormant?

[barrysloate]

Maybe he had a trunkful of E107. They're black and white.

[DanP]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Maybe he had a trunkful of E107. They're black and white.

Ahhh... When he told me the story I didn't even know what an E107 was. I did show him some of my cards a few years ago, but he couldn't remember what the cards in the trunk looked like since it was over 15 years ago! Believe me I still think about it!

[bcbgcbrcb]

My guess on the black and white cards: American Caramel/M101-4 & 5's

[DanP]

Originally Posted by bcbgcbrcb

My guess on the black and white cards: American Caramel/M101-4 & 5's

Phil, keep in mind there was a trunk full of cards! Not 100's but probably more than 10,000 all just thrown in a trunk (not stacked neatly). There were many different sizes (according to Tom). If only ......

Yes, they could have been M101-4,5's. I think he said he saw a mint Babe Ruth RC in there! Just kidding ...

I'm going to bring it up again tomorrow at lunch, maybe he remembers the house!

Dan

[rp12367]

In the late 80's I was helping my Father clean up my Grandmothers basement and under the stairs in a box long forgotten by my Dad, was his mini hoard of 1958 Topps Baseball. He had somewhere in the neighborhood of 300+ cards, some rubber banded together, a lot just lose in the box with his high school yearbook and a bunch of paper's and stuff, that he had no idea was even there, he just assumed it made it out to the curb decades ago. There were 6 Mantle All-Stars and 2 regular issue Mantles, Williams, Mays, Cepeda etc... Not exactly a collection but stuff like this does exist... By the way, he gave me a Mantle All-Star that I traded for a complete set of 1984 Topps Baseball, I know someone just shoot me....

[Brian Van Horn]

Late arriver on the post (so, what else is new). I guess I qualify as a "dormant" collector because I have never had a card graded. Any card in my collection someone else sent in PSA or SGC.

[ctownboy]

I think the word "dormant" is causing some confusion.

When I think of dormant, I do NOT think of collections without graded cards. I see that as a preference of the collector. I think many collectors are active but have few, if any, graded cards. In short, I don't think a collection with ungraded cards should be considered dormant.

No, when I think of a dormant collection I think of two different things;

1) a collection that a young person put together and who then quit collecting.

For example, last Summer, I saw an ad for a yard sale that listed baseball cards for sale. I went (was five minutes late because I took a wrong turn) but the cards had already sold. The man who owned the cards was in his fifties and he said the cards were probably from around 1965. He said he collected them as a boy, stopped collecting and then just put the shoebox away in the closet.

He was selling the cards (they sold for $25 dollars and he said there was at least one Mantle and one Maris in the box) because he and his Wife were moving and he didn't want to move them again.

2) a collection that a person put together as an adult (they might have started as a child and just kept on going over the years) but stopped because of one reason or another (got married, had children, bought a house, became unemployed, saving money for children's college, saving for retirement, etc).

I think the type of collection we on this board want to find is the kind a child put together many years ago and that was either passed down through the family or left in an old house and forgotten about.

David

[vintagecpa]

I think the T206 Honus Wagner card is a pretty good representation on how many of these cards lay dormant in private collections. About 30 years ago, only about 10-15 of these cards were thought to exist. As the price continued to rise, these cards simply became too valuable for private collectors to keep them hidden away. If you compare the percentage of Wagners that surface over a certain amount of time, you can get a pretty rough estimate as to how understated the population reports could be with other sets. If the price of the Wagner would have stayed at under $10k, I would speculate we would only see about half of the Wagners graded today. Basically, as much as we hate to admit it, many pre-WWII cards simply aren't as scarce as we like to think.

[David W]

I know a pre war collector school teacher, who has collected for years. Nothing is graded, he plans someday getting them graded and consigning them as his heirs have no interest in cards. He is pretty mum about what he has, but he used to moonlight with an auctioneer who auctioned many card collections off. I know he has many Ty Cobb pre war cards. I'd say in 10-20 years they might hit the market.

I know another man who I worked for 20 years ago who was a college prof and owned a computer business on the side. He was a big collector, at one time had at least one complete 33 Goudey set (or so he said) and had sold another one 20 years prior to that for a down payment on a new house. He put ads in local papers in the 70's and 80's and went all over the midwest buying up collections. His stuff may not hit the market as his son is also a big collector, none of it is graded either.

I'm not a big collector by my 100 or so T 206's are not graded either and may never be unless I decide to sell them in 20-30 years.