1953 Topps PSA 10 Mickey Mantle IPO on Collectible App a Game Changer

[Dpeck100]

Originally Posted by japhi

Sure the wags has performed well. The SP 500 was under 700 bucks in 2009. Sits around 3500 today. And yes I get that is a cherry picked example but so is the Wagner.

And the problem with this scheme as an investment is you aren’t coming in at market price - there is likely a significant premium attached to the 2.5mm - and the fee’s are most likely outrageous. When the card sells, fees will again be outrageous.

So as a roll the dice, have fun, I think it’s cool. 10k is a nice vacation in Hawaii so I’m not going to knock anyone that likes to play with expendable cash.

But as a traditional investment these things are a joke for the reasons above.

It is hard for me to take your post seriously when you cherry pick the March low. We don't know when that card sold during 2009 and it came back to end the year over 400 points higher.

I will cherry pick now. In 2004 the SP was was higher than where it ended in 2009. The Wagner went from $109,638 to $1,169,875.

Completely destroying the SP. Bare in mind most people with money don't have all of their money in the SP and what has driven a massive amount of the recent move is 6 stocks. Investor returns have not tracked the SP even remotely.

[Snapolit1]

Would love to know if some of the folks who think this is a swell idea and just happen to have talking points, detailed statistics, and the like readily at hand are actually investors and/or funders.

[JeremyW]

I can assure you that I don't. The idea that baseball cards are an investment for some, sounds like a good thing for the hobby to me.

[Dpeck100]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Would love to know if some of the folks who think this is a swell idea and just happen to have talking points, detailed statistics, and the like readily at hand are actually investors and/or funders.

As I stated above no. I knew nothing about this until a few days ago and downloaded the app. I got an alert this morning that it went live and I logged in and did my purchase.

To answer another question below when I bought the shares it was at 41% sold out. It shows you how much is left. The 41% was of the 1 million offered.

[japhi]

Originally Posted by Dpeck100

It is hard for me to take your post seriously when you cherry pick the March low. We don't know when that card sold during 2009 and it came back to end the year over 400 points higher.

I will cherry pick now. In 2004 the SP was was higher than where it ended in 2009. The Wagner went from $109,638 to $1,169,875.

Completely destroying the SP. Bare in mind most people with money don't have all of their money in the SP and what has driven a massive amount of the recent move is 6 stocks. Investor returns have not tracked the SP even remotely.

Yes I understand all that, even mentioned it was a cherry picked sample.

Tesla was what, 80 bucks a few years ago? 6x in 24 months what can we take from that? Outproduced almost every widely traded sports card. Trades at 1000x earnings. What does that tell us? We are in a crazy asset bubble, context is I’m down on anything that isn’t a value play. I’ll take JPM long term over a 53 Mantle or TSLA.

I’m low risk, long term, etf / bluechip / dividend investor. So I am definitely not the target market here. But I do love the hustle and as a spec play/ gambling I get the appeal.

Question for you since you are big on this as an investment. What do you have the market value of that card being today? Asking sincerely , I have no idea what that card would sell for.

Either way interesting discussion and I don’t root for these things to fail, I hope your 10k becomes 100k, this isn’t a sum zero game so ideally we are both right.

[Dpeck100]

Originally Posted by japhi

Yes I understand all that, even mentioned it was a cherry picked sample.

Tesla was what, 80 bucks a few years ago? 6x in 24 months what can we take from that? Outproduced almost every widely traded sports card. Trades at 1000x earnings. What does that tell us? We are in a crazy asset bubble, context is I’m down on anything that isn’t a value play. I’ll take JPM long term over a 53 Mantle or TSLA.

I’m low risk, long term, etf / bluechip / dividend investor. So I am definitely not the target market here. But I do love the hustle and as a spec play/ gambling I get the appeal.

Question for you since you are big on this as an investment. What do you have the market value of that card being today? Asking sincerely , I have no idea what that card would sell for.

Either way interesting discussion and I don’t root for these things to fail, I hope your 10k becomes 100k, this isn’t a sum zero game so ideally we are both right.

I am a diversified person. I own my car, I own my condo, I have a cash account, I have my retirement accounts which are my largest asset, and I have my card collection that has rocketed to levels honestly I can't believe. In the baseball card world a guy like me is a small fish. In my genre which is primary wrestling I have the most valuable collection of anyone. There really isn't probably another space where a guy my age and with my net worth is at the top. I have had tremendous luck with cards and perhaps that will change and current values are fantasy but I am sticking with my long term vision. I own some of my old baseball cards but nothing of value and for ten years I have been beating the drum that the best cards had no where to go but up. We are now in a phase where I have never felt more strongly about that and time will tell how it plays out. For me I would love to own some cool cards from the major sports but either they are one too much capital commitment or I just have no connection to them and just would want them for investment purposes. This card is clearly one of the best baseball cards that exists. Some will say well it is only that because it is a 10. Well guess what since 1999 those same people have been saying the same thing and 31 years later the disparity just continue to get wider. That is their personal preference but the market which is a collective of all interested parties completely disagrees and they do so with their money. Buying this card at 2.5 million is not going to be a TSLA return. I am the last guy to ask about that stock because it is mind boggling to me. That said it has continued to shock long term market participants in mass but on the other side of the trade is Ron Baron who routinely comes on CNBC and says he thinks it is going to the moon. So far he has been right and most have been wrong. I have gambled away 10k before on an options trade and so there is no scenario where this goes to zero. I honestly just wanted to give it a shot and I actually think you will see a scenario where this sells out and then there won't be much turn over and the small amount of trading will push the shares to a premium. In the stock market this happens all of the time with low float stocks and with one shareholder controlling 60% of the pie and not in the float this is a likely outcome. As I stated I would love for a Jordan to come up where I could take a larger stake and perhaps a 52 Mantle and so forth. I think the fair market value for this card is debatable and I am not really in a good position to even know. I believe cards like this are like art and once they become such a coveted item they can go to levels no one can imagine. It may be a scenario like an IPO in 1999 where they sell at a huge valuation and there is little upside and so maybe this deal isn't a great one but there will be plenty more to come and I will certainly look to put a few more bucks to work. Under no circumstances do I see this as a 10X play. But I do think the goal from so many investors to find alternative assets is huge. In the example where it was 2004 to 2009, the Wagner was up from just over 100k to 400k and the market actually fell nearly 40% and simply rebounded during that timeframe. There will be rolling periods where certain assets classes outperform or underperform but monster baseball cards from what I can see have held up great and attracted great interest from wealthy people and that same holds true for high end art, comics, cars, stamps and just about anything you can think of. This is an apex item and it will always be.

[kailes2872]

Originally Posted by Dpeck100

It is hard for me to take your post seriously when you cherry pick the March low. We don't know when that card sold during 2009 and it came back to end the year over 400 points higher.

I will cherry pick now. In 2004 the SP was was higher than where it ended in 2009. The Wagner went from $109,638 to $1,169,875.

Completely destroying the SP. Bare in mind most people with money don't have all of their money in the SP and what has driven a massive amount of the recent move is 6 stocks. Investor returns have not tracked the SP even remotely.

Lord knows I feel this. It was like there was a party going on and I wasn’t invited... the Russell 2000 has been lagging since 2016 and I’ve been lagging right along with it.

[japhi]

Originally Posted by kailes2872

Lord knows I feel this. It was like there was a party going on and I wasn’t invited... the Russell 2000 has been lagging since 2016 and I’ve been lagging right along with it.

Everyone is invited. Just buy the index.

Buffet vs Hedge Fund was pretty fun to follow:

https://www.investopedia.com/article...-brka-brkb.asp

[glchen]

While I respect the OP as he is a financial advisor, and I think that in general, he has very sounds investment advice, I think the concept here is a bad idea for most folks. I also saw a similar article on SCD here: Link. When I first saw these articles, I was thinking this is one of the factors that is causing such a spike in the market recently for marquee cards. It's like another buyer's group out there, scooping up cards for this purpose.


The immediate red flags that I see are:

(1) 90 day lockup before you can sell your shares

(2) Owner retains 60% shares of the card

(3) Unknown liquidity of shares

(4) As far as I know, the cards are not stored by some objective 3rd party in case the cards need to be sold to pay out shareholders.

These issues will lead to potential for abuse. If the card values goes up, everyone wins. If the card value goes down, only the original owner of the card and the app will win. There are too many questions. Who's the market maker? Can your shares get diluted? Can the lockup be extended? Who sets the price of the shares? Instead of dealing with all of these complexities, just buy the entire card yourself or buy yourself a few shares of Apple stock, where the investment potential is known.


I remember a few years ago when the price of oil was sky high, and I thought that I was being a market genius by buying this ETF called USOIL, which seemingly would track oil prices that way. However, the strange thing was when oil prices went up, the ETF price barely moved. I thought I should have been making a killing, but ended up losing money instead. The excuse some something like there were a lot of complexities in the ETF like fees, the way they bought oil futures, etc that didn't translate into a 1:1 correlation of the price of oil and the ETF price. The point here is, if the investment is a black box where you have no clue the pricing structure, etc, it is best to avoid it before you lose your shirt on that investment.

[conor912]

Originally Posted by glchen

While I respect the OP as he is a financial advisor, and I think that in general, he has very sounds investment advice, I think the concept here is a bad idea for most folks. I also saw a similar article on SCD here: Link. When I first saw these articles, I was thinking this is one of the factors that is causing such a spike in the market recently for marquee cards. It's like another buyer's group out there, scooping up cards for this purpose.


The immediate red flags that I see are:

(1) 90 day lockup before you can sell your shares

(2) Owner retains 60% shares of the card

(3) Unknown liquidity of shares

(4) As far as I know, the cards are not stored by some objective 3rd party in case the cards need to be sold to pay out shareholders.

These issues will lead to potential for abuse. If the card values goes up, everyone wins. If the card value goes down, only the original owner of the card and the app will win. There are too many questions. Who's the market maker? Can your shares get diluted? Can the lockup be extended? Who sets the price of the shares? Instead of dealing with all of these complexities, just buy the entire card yourself or buy yourself a few shares of Apple stock, where the investment potential is known.


I remember a few years ago when the price of oil was sky high, and I thought that I was being a market genius by buying this ETF called USOIL, which seemingly would track oil prices that way. However, the strange thing was when oil prices went up, the ETF price barely moved. I thought I should have been making a killing, but ended up losing money instead. The excuse some something like there were a lot of complexities in the ETF like fees, the way they bought oil futures, etc that didn't translate into a 1:1 correlation of the price of oil and the ETF price. The point here is, if the investment is a black box where you have no clue the pricing structure, etc, it is best to avoid it before you lose your shirt on that investment.

+1

Too many ways to go sideways, but I'm happy to watch some other canary fly down into the coal mine.

[Dpeck100]

Originally Posted by glchen

While I respect the OP as he is a financial advisor, and I think that in general, he has very sounds investment advice, I think the concept here is a bad idea for most folks. I also saw a similar article on SCD here: Link. When I first saw these articles, I was thinking this is one of the factors that is causing such a spike in the market recently for marquee cards. It's like another buyer's group out there, scooping up cards for this purpose.


The immediate red flags that I see are:

(1) 90 day lockup before you can sell your shares

(2) Owner retains 60% shares of the card

(3) Unknown liquidity of shares

(4) As far as I know, the cards are not stored by some objective 3rd party in case the cards need to be sold to pay out shareholders.

These issues will lead to potential for abuse. If the card values goes up, everyone wins. If the card value goes down, only the original owner of the card and the app will win. There are too many questions. Who's the market maker? Can your shares get diluted? Can the lockup be extended? Who sets the price of the shares? Instead of dealing with all of these complexities, just buy the entire card yourself or buy yourself a few shares of Apple stock, where the investment potential is known.


I remember a few years ago when the price of oil was sky high, and I thought that I was being a market genius by buying this ETF called USOIL, which seemingly would track oil prices that way. However, the strange thing was when oil prices went up, the ETF price barely moved. I thought I should have been making a killing, but ended up losing money instead. The excuse some something like there were a lot of complexities in the ETF like fees, the way they bought oil futures, etc that didn't translate into a 1:1 correlation of the price of oil and the ETF price. The point here is, if the investment is a black box where you have no clue the pricing structure, etc, it is best to avoid it before you lose your shirt on that investment.

There is no doubt this is a new concept and time will tell how it plays out. The client who first brought this to my a attention few years back through the art world so far has seen some solid results. What has happened there is as they create new issues it forces the the investment group to go out and find new pieces of art and thus driving up the value of the existing supply. As they can showcase that the value of the art they have already purchased has gone up it attracts new interest. I believe the same will hold true here. One of the primary reasons people want into cards so bad right now is they have done well. When guys like Justin Beiber are "flexing" their Pokemon collections on Instagram it makes others want them too. This in my view is why Gary V has had such an impact on the card market. I only keep up with a few people in the hobby and one used to post here and he has sold cards direcly to NBA players and has others contacting him on IG (Instagram) saying they want in.

I think the comparison to the USO is a poor one because it is not an apples to apples comparison. In this case one can call the Mantle 10 a commodity I suppose but there is only one other direct substitute and no futures market to artificially positively or negatively impact the market. The reason the USO did so poorly is two fold. One as they take in assets they must buy more futures contracts and can have a significant impact on the market as they put those funds to work essentially becoming the market and two those ETF structures have to buy front month oil futures contracts where there is generally a time value premium embedded. The oil futures market is generally in contango which is what destroys an ETF like this ones performance. The only time you have a positive role is when it is in backwardation meaning the current oil spot price is higher than the futures market. For example if oil is currently at $40 and the following month futures contact is $38 you experience no negative role and so the underlying value of the ETF structure doesn't deteriorate. Most of the time the market is in contango where you have an upward sloping futures curve and so as time goes by the premium gets drained out of the front month contract as it comes closer to the spot price and the ETF will lose value and then must start the process all over again. This is why if you look at the VXX a popular trading vehicle to attempt to trade the VIX you will be losing money every month if the VIX stays flat. The front month futures contract has at least a 7% premium so over the course of 12 months it will naturally shed at least 84% of its value unless the VIX rises. Hence why it has had numerous reverse splits. These are very complex vehicles and most when purchasing them don't realize what they are up against.

[ajjohnsonsoxfan]

I love this concept. There are quite a few cards that have increased in value so exponentially that most collectors will never have the opportunity to own. This gives them the ability to participate as investors in those cards. Yes others have said you're not really an "owner" not having the card in your possession, but how many of us have the ability to own outright a Ruth RC, T206 Wagner or a PSA 10 Mantle? The real value though will happen if this takes off and you can easily buy/sell gaining liquidity on your investments.

[Tyruscobb]

Is there any way I can short this card (at this particular price) and company for that matter? Folks need to remember 1929 and 2007. 1929 stock investors didn’t think the market could go anywhere but up. Housing and real estate investors thought the same thing almost 80 years later.

This card market is overheated. As soon as the stock market corrects, the rest will soon follow. If this is a game changer then I’m glad I’m not in the game.

[glchen]

Originally Posted by Dpeck100

There is no doubt this is a new concept and time will tell how it plays out. The client who first brought this to my a attention few years back through the art world so far has seen some solid results. What has happened there is as they create new issues it forces the the investment group to go out and find new pieces of art and thus driving up the value of the existing supply. As they can showcase that the value of the art they have already purchased has gone up it attracts new interest. I believe the same will hold true here. One of the primary reasons people want into cards so bad right now is they have done well. When guys like Justin Beiber are "flexing" their Pokemon collections on Instagram it makes others want them too. This in my view is why Gary V has had such an impact on the card market. I only keep up with a few people in the hobby and one used to post here and he has sold cards direcly to NBA players and has others contacting him on IG (Instagram) saying they want in.

I think the comparison to the USO is a poor one because it is not an apples to apples comparison. In this case one can call the Mantle 10 a commodity I suppose but there is only one other direct substitute and no futures market to artificially positively or negatively impact the market. The reason the USO did so poorly is two fold. One as they take in assets they must buy more futures contracts and can have a significant impact on the market as they put those funds to work essentially becoming the market and two those ETF structures have to buy front month oil futures contracts where there is generally a time value premium embedded. The oil futures market is generally in contango which is what destroys an ETF like this ones performance. The only time you have a positive role is when it is in backwardation meaning the current oil spot price is higher than the futures market. For example if oil is currently at $40 and the following month futures contact is $38 you experience no negative role and so the underlying value of the ETF structure doesn't deteriorate. Most of the time the market is in contango where you have an upward sloping futures curve and so as time goes by the premium gets drained out of the front month contract as it comes closer to the spot price and the ETF will lose value and then must start the process all over again. This is why if you look at the VXX a popular trading vehicle to attempt to trade the VIX you will be losing money every month if the VIX stays flat. The front month futures contract has at least a 7% premium so over the course of 12 months it will naturally shed at least 84% of its value unless the VIX rises. Hence why it has had numerous reverse splits. These are very complex vehicles and most when purchasing them don't realize what they are up against.

Thanks for the input, David. You definitely know ETFs much more than I do. How about the other red flags I brought up? You really don’t see significant risk there even in a down market?

Frankly, I think cards still have more room to run because I think it will eventually replace coin collecting as the top hobby with all of the news happening on ESPN and so forth. However, the greed that led to the 80s/90s bust can always repeat itself so folks should be wary.

I don’t collect cards purely for investment. It’s a hobby that’s fun and not one that I’m trying to beat the stock market on returns. However, I prefer that after I sell my cards, I can at least break even especially after the 15-25% in seller fees on eBay or at an auction house. And if I come away with more money to buy more cards, all the better. However, I really like having the card in hand. If it can’t hold the card anymore, it’s not a hobby anymore. It’s pure investment. So something like this needs to be looked at in purely those terms.

[Dpeck100]

Originally Posted by glchen

Thanks for the input, David. You definitely know ETFs much more than I do. How about the other red flags I brought up? You really don’t see significant risk there even in a down market?

Frankly, I think cards still have more room to run because I think it will eventually replace coin collecting as the top hobby with all of the news happening on ESPN and so forth. However, the greed that led to the 80s/90s bust can always repeat itself so folks should be wary.

I don’t collect cards purely for investment. It’s a hobby that’s fun and not one that I’m trying to beat the stock market on returns. However, I prefer that after I sell my cards, I can at least break even especially after the 15-25% in seller fees on eBay or at an auction house. And if I come away with more money to buy more cards, all the better. However, I really like having the card in hand. If it can’t hold the card anymore, it’s not a hobby anymore. It’s pure investment. So something like this needs to be looked at in purely those terms.

Your bullet points are all reasonable concerns. I think the 90 day lock up period is actually a good thing. One of the problems in the stock market when an IPO or a secondary offering is announced is you get a lot of hot money that wants to get in for a minute and out with some cash. It makes a stable secondary market much more difficult when the buyers are not natural buyers who plan to invest and instead are just flippers. I also think it will give some time for the dust to settle and see what other offerings they bring out and how much demand there are for those. Let me be clear I have no information about the doings of this company. My belief is purely market based and I see this morphing into a concept and if I had to guess they started with a big one like this to try and get this thing really moving. I would assume after looking at their website and the talent pool they have working for them that there will be a media blitz and attempts to go on television and push this idea.

The fact that the owner retains 60% ownership means he still has a lot of skin in the game. It also means the available supply of seats at the table are smaller and so in theory could drive the price up more easily with less demand to get in after the 90 day lock up period. One person raised a good point earlier about the expected bid ask spread. In the stock market a very liquid stock might trade a penny apart and if you use a Fidelity or a broker dealer like that you can actually get executed generally speaking at the mid point so half a penny. We are not talking about a listed stock here so there has to be some expectation of a wider spread. In the stock market you also have market markers working for themselves who carry inventory and so they are buying when others aren't with the intent to provide liquidity and to scalp money from small price changes. I am not sure if the broker dealer that is providing liquidity with this on behalf of the investment firm will attempt to do this. Sometimes there is what is known as a supporting bid where they try and keep the price from falling and I suppose it is possible here. The trading aspect of this is definitely something new and I think it will work itself out over time. If people buying in are using funds they need back in a 90 day window they really shouldn't be placing funds in a deal like this.

The primary issue in my view that matters is what happens to card prices of this magnitude. I keep hearing this is the top of the market and maybe for the time being it is. I think those are bold claims. Asset price predictions can be very humbling. Card prices I would argue are even harder to predict than stock prices because there are no real metrics to go on. When Apple hit $138 it had a trailing PE of 41 times earnings. A valuation level I never dreamed possible for the company. There was no shortage of analysts on TV raising price targets and these are well trained finance professionals trying to rationalize the move and suggest further gains ahead. With cards you can't really say well this is overvalued because of real metrics. It is guess work. In March when the market was falling there was more doom and gloom on this board than any I participate on. Some very ominous predictions. I just sold a card Friday night that has gone up over 1600% since then. They felt their predictions were based on logic. I at the time was one of the loan bulls but I can't say in any capacity I thought this card would rise to this degree. You can be right about the trend and wrong about the price.

In the case of the 1953 Mantle this is clearly one of the best looking baseball cards ever made. It is a true work of art. What is that worth? I don't know. The card in any condition has always been highly sought after and the set itself has a very low number that have graded a PSA 10. You have a combination of factors at play. Star power, attractive card, scarcity of condition, and a very popular set and so the recipe for long term demand is undeniable. The only real question is what should that be worth. If it is the top of the market how far down does it go? I would imagine in the example I gave above in 2009 when a Honus Wagner sold for over 400k there were hobby participants like those who visit this board that would have said that is insane. Unreal. I can't believe someone would pay that for a PSA 1. That has no where to go but down. Maybe the card consolidated for a few years and didn't really move much and then it started to climb again. I think a more realistic scenario is perhaps this is fully valued at the moment but under no circumstances do I see a major correction in top level cards. I for years have used the example of the 1952 Topps Mantle PSA 10. There are obviously only three. You can have all the money in the world and still can't get one. Imagine being a hedge fund manager and in your 63rd floor apartment in New York City and having a party with this prized card in a glass case and everyone at your party sees this baseball card and says OMG tell me about this. This is one of only three of the finest known examples of the most popular baseball card. What is it worth? At 2 million it is cool. At 10 ten million it is awesome. And so on. The higher the price the more interest there is. This is how things work. The insatiable appetite to have what others can't is not going away and so while low dollar cards where supply is plentiful may decline the wealth class will still be interested in a card like this and I believe even more so in the future.

The company is teaming up with a broker dealer and so for them to make a market in the card it has to be held as collateral. I have had limited text contact with Evan and the first question I asked him was do you have to turn the card over. He said yes. If anyone should be concerned about its where abouts its him with 60% ownership. This issue is the least of my concern.

[bounce]

Originally Posted by Dpeck100

What has happened there is as they create new issues it forces the the investment group to go out and find new pieces of art and thus driving up the value of the existing supply. As they can showcase that the value of the art they have already purchased has gone up it attracts new interest. I believe the same will hold true here. One of the primary reasons people want into cards so bad right now is they have done well. When guys like Justin Beiber are "flexing" their Pokemon collections on Instagram it makes others want them too. This in my view is why Gary V has had such an impact on the card market. I only keep up with a few people in the hobby and one used to post here and he has sold cards direcly to NBA players and has others contacting him on IG (Instagram) saying they want in.

Not being flippant, but is this not also potentially the "greater fool theory" at work?

Everything goes up, until it doesn't.

[Dpeck100]

In working with my compliance department this and future offerings will be more complicated than I realized. I have sent an email to Ezra to cancel my future investment in the card.