The Most Expensive Card I Own

For the first time in about 9 months, I went an entire week without purchasing any sports cards or even something sportscard related.  I broke the streak today with a 1986 Topps Mike Scott tattoo for $1.27 shipped, which I thought was a fantastic deal. 

That being said, I generally go through phases.  Phases where I expand my collecting horizons and buy different cards, usually at card shows to improve the old collection.  Then I go through a slow down period where I only buy very few cards, usually just T206s, but the occasional Orval Overall that I expect to never see again.  Actually, I set up an eBay alert so I can see what new Overalls hit the site every morning.  More than a few purchases were due to persistent searching of this type. 

So, few cards have come in and aside from the card above and a missing lineup card, I don't have anything en route to my home.  I do need to scan and upload some new cards onto Photobucket, since there are a few piles uncatalogued, not including cards bought before August of this year.  So, going through the archives, I saw that I have scanned the most expensive card that I own.



There are four Ty Cobbs in the T206 set, making him the second most prevalent player in the set after Hal Chase, who has five different cards.  Cobb, being a star of the day and still a popular player, commands a premium compared to most of the cards in the set.  Going into it, I knew that these cards would likely be the most expensive to acquire and to date, the three most expensive T206s were Ty Cobb (Green Portrait), Ty Cobb (Bat On) and Ty Cobb (Red Portrait), though Walter Johnson's portrait is threatening to move into second place if I show no willingness to wait. 

The green portrait, as seen above is the rarest of the cards.  In fact, aside from the very rare Honus Wagner and Eddie Plank cards, the Ty Cobb Green Portrait is the second hardest hall of famer to acquire after Johnny Evans (Cubs on shirt), which has not nearly as great of a story attached to it. 

So, last August, I was making my regular search of T206s in the morning, seeing what new cards were posted the night before.  While doing so, I see a few groups of very low priced T206s, some in rough condition, some in very rough condition and some looking like poor Fred Tenney below. 



Given the prices, I was a little concerned about whether they were legitimate, but that didn't stop me from ordering a group of seven cards with Joe Tinker, a group of six cards and a Willie Keeler batting, all at outstanding prices.  Looking at what sold the previous night while I foolishly slept, there was a Ty Cobb (Green Portrait) included as well, at an exceptional price.

So, I waited for the cards to arrive and did within three days, as the cards never left the state in transit.  Upon arrival, I carefully removed them from their packaging and was met by some flaking on some of the worst cards like the Tenney above, but they were otherwise legitimate and sound cards. 

Fate smiled a week later when I saw the Ty Cobb for sale on Net54.  The card itself measures short, not through some nefarious trimming to improve condition, but quality control on tobacco premiums was not a job held by the most skilled member of the American workforce.  As such, you find some cards measure short and some are trimmed and some are errors.  The seller disclosed this and I waited, as the price was well more than I wanted to pay for the card.

However, having seen the others, I was interested.  Very interested, even though I was not interested in purchasing a raw Ty Cobb, since the odds of counterfeit were higher.  But the reputation of the previous owner was impeccable and I had other cards from the initial purchase in hand.  After a few hours, the price came down, as the seller intended solely to flip the card for a substantial profit.

Knowing this, I bided my time and set a target.  A few days passed and finally the card came within range for me to make an offer.  A small amount of haggling and I convinced myself, what a fine deal for the card, even if it only grades Authentic.  More importantly, almost all of the damage on the card is on the back.  It has tremendous eye appeal and since Cobb is one of my favorite players in the set, it was an important factor in making my move.  It also helped that yearly bonuses are given in September, never forget that additional money often funds card purchases. 

And my experience with the card since then was nothing but fantastic.  Trae over at T206.org included a set of his T206 back reprints with the Cobb, which was an awfully nice gesture and when I took the card for grading, expecting only an Authentic, I was surprised to see the card was graded SGC20 or Fair, which if you saw the back is a more than fair grade. In fact, here is old Ty locked away from prying hands covered in dangerous oils.



I think it is cards and experiences like this which lead me to keep collecting and have me focused on the finish line, only 34 cards from completion. 

Not Really Truman Capote's Father

I have been quite deficient in keeping this blog updated.  I look over at the stack of cards requiring scanning, some storm-related, some pre-storm, and think, "Maybe I should scan some cards in.  I've bought some interesting items recently and they released Leaf Wrestling Originals.  Who doesn't like Goudey-sized cards containing mediocre artwork of wrestlers you aren't familiar with."  I then realize that is most people and more importantly, I realize I have to hook the scanner back up and quit while behind.  Of course, when I do scan cards, I tend to scan in many at a time, since the backlog tends to be quite large when I get there.  So, today I went through the photo archives and found this beauty.  

To put your minds to rest, Truman Capote's father was also named Arch Persons.  I say also, because while not much is known about Arch Persons outfielder, we are all pretty comfortable in the knowledge he wasn't 11 when playing for Montgomery in 1908.  And if he was, his career would be both more remarkable due to his precocious age and less remarkable for squandering his talent and not making the big leagues if he could play minor league ball when 11.  Also, look at that image, that is not the face of an 11 year old. 

In terms of what we do know about Arch, he played four seasons in the minors where records can be obtained, likely playing both before 1908, during 1910 and possibly after 1912, since I'm not sure where you go after washing out of the Western Canada League.  He did spend some time in Montgomery, which gave him greater fame as part of an iconic baseball card set, time in Little Rock, moving down to San Antonio and Oklahoma City in 1911 and finally, 100 years ago, he spent the year in Bassano, Alberta, Canada, just over the border.

As to his card, the Persons card is considered by some to be the most difficult of the 48 Southern Leaguers to acquire.  As such, I paid more for the above card than I did for any of the other 43 Southern Leaguers in my collection, as I only have a meager four more to obtain.  Considering I needed nearly 20 of these elusive cards as recently as July, I would mark that as progress. 

Realistically, I was left with two main paths towards completion, pushing through the few remaining Hall of Famers or the large lot of Southern Leaguers.  Surprisingly, I've been unable to pull the trigger on a Cy Young (Glove Showing) or a Johnson (Portrait), but continually have found acceptably priced Southern Leaguers to fill in the gaps.  Well, with 39 to go, it is getting slower going in just finding cards I don't own, but I do have my eye on Southern Leaguer 45 tonight. 

Election Day Taft

There is no such thing as a bad time to show a Taft card, but Election Day, especially Presidential Election Day is the best time of all.  I would post more about this, but today is a magical day as the map turns blue and red, one state at a time and my attention is needed watching 5 to 7 channels at the same time. 



For the record, the Taft is a Topps card from the 1970s which I purchased at the East Coast National in August.  It is not quite a Cracker Jack Taft or even the oldest Taft I own, but we will get to that another day, now that I have access to electricity, scanners and internet in my own apartment. 

A Tinker's Chance

The silence around these parts was certainly not golden.  Today is the first time since Monday I've had both power and internet on something more substantial than a mobile phone charged from my car.  So, being directly in the path of Superstorm Sandy's path, I've sadly spent more time looking for gas, electricity and heat than sportscards.  Of course, while awaiting the direct hit which stole away my basic essentials and left me dark, I did the only thing a rational person would do.  Purchase sportscards.

I would show you pictures, but as the storm was racing up the coast, I found a great deal on Tinker (Bat on Shoulder) about four hours before I lost power.  Of course, as the card was in another part of the state, Tinker is still sitting, waiting to be mailed to my address.  But given my lack of power, I can wait a few days to put old Joe Tinker in the box.  I bought some other cards as well, but will wait to have power, internet, the cards in hand and access to a scanner to post those cards for all to see. 

1989 Topps Senior Baseball League Factory Set

In my youth, I was likely the only person who watched the spectacle of Senior League Baseball on SportsChannel. Of course, I was also likely the only person who would sit there and watch the thirty minute show of box scores, which was akin to reading the box scores in the slowest way humanly possible. I reckon this says a great deal more about me than it does SportsChannel, but I digress.

Given my love of watching elderly athletes in bright colored polyester, I always wanted to obtain a set of Senior League cards. Of course, my local cards stores never carried this fine set and I never could pull the trigger on overpaying for the set from an advertisement in the back of Beckett. However, last week, I found one at a very reasonable price and had it sent on its way to my home.

The set itself was made by Topps Ireland, who also made the Topps mini set back in 1988 as well. The cards are on a slightly thinner stock than those found in a regular set. The thinner stock is somewhat disconcerting, as the cards almost feel flimsy. Even stranger, if you were putting together a set with 132 cards in a box, would you place them randomly or instead, might you place them in numerical order. Topps believes you would prefer to sort the entire set to see if something is missing, rather than see the first card be 1 and the last card 132. Since I enjoy sorting cards, this was a major plus, however, any rational person would choose a pre-sorted set.





The cards have some interesting images.  Al Hrabosky, for example, traded his fu manchu for a tough guy beard which would offend Walt Frazier and Keith Hernandez with its greyness.  I also want to like the wooden border, but it was done far better on 1987 Topps but two years earlier.





For a set mostly containing has beens, there are four hall of famers in the set, two managers and two players. The uniforms are appropriately garish for a league based in Florida, filled with over-the-hill players.  My favorite is the Earl Weaver card which screams, what am I doing here and who put my shoes on.



Finally, there is this fine Walt Williams card.  I will tell you that I know nothing about Walt Williams, other than he is a St. Lucie Legend and a very angry man.  Actually, Williams was one of the older players in the league at 45 and was known as No-Neck throughout this career for obvious reasons.  I also suspect his anger stems from being the third athlete in a major sport named Walt Williams on Wikipedia and second baseball player, behind Pop Williams, whose name was also Walter.

In closing, these are some fascinating cards from a time when people thought baseball was a popular enough sport to get fans to attend games with men of advanced age and diminished skill sets playing the game.  Even a generation ago, the interest was minimal outside my own and quite honestly, aside from the garish uniforms, the admission from Rollie Fingers that he was destitute and needed to play ball again and this card set, few will have any reason to discuss the merits of the Pelicans or Legends again. 

Overall, It Was a Good Mail Day

Last week, I was able to finally close on the card at the absolute top of my want list.  I was rejected many times on eBay with reasonable offers on this card and in fact, I was even rejected once on this card, since someone else was interested in it first.  However, last Friday night this card went up for sale and within ten minutes and one scan, it was on its way to my home, arriving in today's mail.



The card is a T3 Turkey Red Orval Overall.  Turkey Red was a tobacco company around 100 years ago and offered the card as a premium.  If you sent in enough coupons, you were able to select one of the cards on offer at the time.  And by card, I mean, premium-sized cabinet card, which is 5 3/4" by 8".  If you want to learn more about the set and see all of the cards, which include 100 baseball and 25 boxing cards, I highly recommend Craig's Turkey Red site, who conveniently enough sold me this card.

The design is one of the many Topps used in the past.  In a number of years, Topps used this design on a standard sized baseball card.  However, unless the pictures were painted by Dick Perez, the cards fail to resonate with me in the same way as the original T3s.  Also, the smaller card doesn't show the same detail in the card's image, though they are admittedly easier to store than the oversized cabinet. 

The card would sadly only grade a poor as there is a small pinhole near the top where the card would've been mounted on a wall 100 years ago.  Fortunately, the hole is in the border and the coloring and image on the picture suffer from minimal defects.  Perhaps it is all the times I was unable to close the deal on one of these cards, but I am quite pleased to call this T3 Orval Overall mine.  

2012 Topps Heritage High Numbers: A Modern Topps Traded

With the blogosphere abuzz with opinions, mostly negative and strongly critical, about the 2012 Topps Heritage High Numbers set, I thought I would wade in and add my opinion now that a checklist for the set is available.  Also, I'm waiting for something in the mail and lacked the steely will to go through my photobucket or make new scans, so soap box posting time it is.

The Basics

Topps is releasing a 100 card add-on set to this year's Heritage set and including one autograph.  The set is a direct deliver from Topps alone, similar to Topps Mini from earlier this year. 

To a collector like myself, I've never found Topps Heritage that interesting.  Mid-1960s designs do little for me and I've always had a hard time accepting that I would pay more money to a company for cards which feel like they are made on a worse stock.  Admittedly, I am not the primary collector Topps is going after, but if the set was priced reasonably, say $20 and not very limited, I might consider purchasing a set, solely to make up for never being able to purchase a Topps Traded set as a child. 

What Are They Trying to Recreate

Topps seems to be trying to recreate two ideas from their past with this release: Scarce High Numbers and a Year-End Traded set contained in a single box.

Going backwards, in the 1980s, Topps released a traded set on a year basis.  The sets seemed to only be available in hobby stores and came in brightly colored boxes.  As there was only one Topps product each year at the time, the updated cards reflected trades and new rookies not previously eligible for a Topps card, using the same design as the flagship set.  As a child, I was quite excited about these sets, but was never able to find one at a reasonable price, such as under $40.  Of course, I lived in a fairly awful place for card shops in my youth and was unaware of shows, so your experience might vary.  Aside from the 1982 set for the Topps Traded Cal Ripken, these sets today are pretty much worthless and I passed on an opportunity about a year ago to pick up all of the sets from 1983 on for about $20 total, which is about the price you would pay for one in a brick and mortar shop. 

And by limiting themselves to 1,000 sets, Topps is artificially creating the scarcity of high numbers for their pre-1974 sets.  As you likely know, Topps used to release their cards by set, as they do now.  Only back in the day, there was no strongly organized hobby store industry and cards were available in grocery and newspaper stores.  As the year went on, some people naturally lost interest in the cards and with each passing set, it seems less cards were sold and therefore less cards were printed. 

In many cases, trying to complete a Topps set in this era can be challenging, due to the "enhanced" prices which dealers charge for these cards, as they are believed to be "scarce".  I suspect, few cards are actually legitimately scarce and instead the demand for rookie cards, more likely to be in a later release after their debut, really created the market for far greater prices on later releases.  By doing this, Topps has recreated the charm of making a set difficult to complete without making an investment with Topps. 

The Economics

What I find strange is that Topps has capped their revenue on the set at $100,000, given that 1,000 sets at $100 only brings in this much money.  And even here, they will likely take less as a decent number of their customers will have $10 coupons from the Golden Giveaway which could be used towards the set.  In fact, those very coupons probably eliminated any chance of the set being reasonably priced.  Still, I suspect that there are more than 5,000 people interested in the set at $25 sans autograph. which would likely create similar sales, with the thought being you don't need to limit production on the sets at a lower price point. 

What I find really surprising is how Topps is going about cutting out the hobby shops and online dealers.  For many, if not most of us, this is how we are able to obtain our yearly Topps cards.  By taking high-profile items, such as this and Topps Mini, they are preventing dealers from getting hot items.  This takes customers out of the store and direct margin profit from these stores.  If you asked me, I think Topps is starting to take steps towards vertical integration.  With vertical integration, Topps would basically stop selling to hobby shops and instead sell directly to the consumer.

If Topps feels that orders are generally soft from hobby shops and more are likely to go under, then this is an optimal strategy.  Without a strong hobby store base, which we all know is rapidly disappearing, then Topps loses their primary distribution network.  This new set is a way to see what a new sports card order would look like, with the companies themselves becoming both a creator and a seller on the terms of a Blowout Cards. 

We the consumer would be still be able to purchase our hobby boxes directly from Topps. Topps would be able to keep costs down in the short term by converting profit previously going to the hobby shop into savings.  If Topps sold us $60 boxes of 2013 Series 1, they would likely get a steep, short-term increase on profit margin.  Of course, without competition, we would likely see prices rise fairly dramatically a few years later as the company needs to keep adding profit at the expense of the consumer, but we would likely see that anyway, as I would expect there to be half as many hobby shops in ten years as there are today without any intervention.

Summary

In closure, I think this set is a short term attempt by Topps to gauge the market for direct delivery, as was Topps Mini.  From the fact that it is a week and they've been unable to move 1,000 units, I suspect this set will be a flop, especially in light of the Chris Getz autographs which could be your "hit" in a $100 product.  However, we as buyers, should get used to these types of products, as they are unlikely to go away in the long term, especially as our supply of hobby shops continues to shrink.