Amidst widespread market volatility, many investors are looking for ways to preserve and, of course, grow their wealth. With recent swift declines in the equity and crypto markets, investors are sharpening their pencils and taking a harder look at what they own and how their investments are allocated.

Here’s some good news: sports collectibles, and collectibles more broadly, have seen this playbook before. Reassuring to many collectors, the collectibles market has demonstrated resilience during periods of economic stress and macro uncertainty, delivering much needed diversification, returns, safe haven status, and some joy along the way.

The PWCC500, an index that tracks the investment performance of 500 of the highest market value PSA graded sports cards, offers some compelling data below:

In his March 2020 column “Taking My Hacks: The Hobby and COVID-19”, my good friend and former PSA CEO Joe Orlando penned:

“After 9/11, the hobby survived. After the financial crisis of 2008, the hobby survived. In fact, one could argue that the hobby thrived during those times, at least in relation to other markets.”

Importantly, the above was written before having the benefit of hindsight of how the hobby exploded in the wake of COVID-19. 

In a recent Barron’s interview, wealth management advisor and sports memorabilia expert Howard Epstein also points out:  “While few investments are recession-proof, the memorabilia assets class holds its value quite well in down economic cycles and tends to be among the first to recover.”

And this isn’t just a case of recency bias, following a surge of interest and performance in the sports collectibles category that has witnessed the PWCC500 outperform the S&P500 by 504% since 2008.*(PWCC)

Let’s take a trip down memory lane to 2010, when financial markets were also in flux.

A 2010 Wall Street Journal article noted that, when times get tough, high net worth individuals increased allocations to tangible assets like collectibles as a means to diversify a traditional portfolio:

“The Capgemini and Merrill Lynch World Wealth Report 2010 found that – with financial markets still in flux – high-net-worth individuals are returning to passion investment, which respondents to the survey indicated that they were approaching as “investorcollectors”, seeking out those items that are perceived to have tangible long-term value.”

Said Rupert Robinson, chief executive of London-based Schroders Private Bank, at the time: “Not only are [blue chip collectibles] tangible investments and an inflation hedge, but they can diversify exposure away from the movements in traditional fixed income and equities.”

Collectable loyalists may be sick of hearing me say that sports collectibles are at the intersection of passion and profits, but it’s true. In fact, in a Wealth Report Attitudes Survey 2018 from Knight Frank, “joy of ownership” slotted in as the No.1 motivation for collectors, outranking capital appreciation, safe financial haven, portfolio diversification and social status.

These unique and intoxicating qualities have led some advisors to suggest that collectibles could make up between 10-20% of one’s portfolio, depending on your personal risk-tolerance and financial goals.  

It is important to note that past performance is no guarantee of future performance. It’s also fair to project an increase in correlation to broader markets for collectibles as liquidity and mainstream participation continue to unfold through fractionalization; however, as we look out into potential choppy waters in the equity markets, we are invigorated by the opportunity to increase education and awareness around the role collectibles can have in your portfolio – just as it has for decades for other “investorcollectors”. 

At Collectable, we are committed to doubling down on education and content to help bring you up to speed, and to build additional structures for you to gain exposure. We are always here to help with any questions or concerns.

But when it’s all said and done, the biggest key to collecting sports memorabilia is amping up the fun factor. Sure, if you do your research and make smart decisions, your collection could become a solid, even spectacular financial investment. But if the process and the full or partial ownership don’t get you all warm and fuzzy—and if you don’t love your cards, your jerseys, your gloves, your hats, your helmets, your autographs, your jock straps, and your urinals—goodness, you are missing out.

Sports Card Grading 101

If you’re starting out collecting sports cards or getting back into the hobby, you’ll inevitably find yourself wandering into the realm of sports card grading.  Understanding grading is crucial if you want to maximize your sports card collecting experience.

But the world of grading sports cards can be confusing.  Many people lose both time and money trying to navigate the professional grading of their cards.

Here’s your definitive guide to grading sports cards. In this guide, you’ll learn:

• What is card grading?
• Why should I grade my cards?
• When should I NOT grade my cards?
• With whom should I grade my cards?

What is card grading?

Card grading is the process of submitting your sports card to a third-party service to verify the quality of your card. It’s similar to a jeweler verifying the value of a diamond necklace or a watch.

The third party services that grade cards will encapsulate your card in a case, or what’s known as a slab. 

Many sports card collectors and investors are willing to pay a premium for a card that’s graded for a number of reasons, including:

• The quality has been verified by a third party.  The buyer knows exactly what they are getting
• They can view the scarcity of the card in a population report put out by the grading company. This shows how many times a given card has been graded, and the distribution of grades its received over time
• They can resell it for a premium over a non-graded card
• The buyer simply enjoys collecting graded cards better

As owners of cards, many collectors are eager to maximize the value of their collection.  Let’s look at an example of how getting a card graded could help us maximize its value.

We’ll take this 1960 Topps Willie Mays card.  Imagine that we bought it on eBay at this winning bid of $152.49.  This could be a good deal!

You’ll notice that in the listing, we don’t know the grade of the card.  Experienced collectors can take a guess from the images, but it’s impossible to know until the card is in your hand.
For the sake of this example, let’s say we thought this card would achieve a grade of 6.  The surface looks pretty good despite a few print defects, it’s centered well, the corners are slightly frayed (but not torn), and the edges are mostly intact

If we go to one available population report, we see that the average sold price for this card in a 6 is $513 (at the time of this writing).

Getting our card graded could add $361 to its value, an increase of  235%!! This is the easily definable value that a third-party grading company provides to our card.
Subtracting the grading fee cost of $30-50, getting our Willie Mays graded seems like a great idea if we want to maximize its value.

When should I NOT grade my cards?

One of the hardest parts about grading cards is knowing if you should grade your card in the first place.  Because of grading fees and the amount of time you might spend preparing your cards for grading and shipping them, getting your cards graded is not always the best idea.

The most important thing for you to do is your own research to find out if your card is worth grading.

There are two main pitfalls to watch out for when thinking about getting your card graded:

1. Your card is not as high quality as you think
2. Your card is not very valuable to begin with

In case number one, you might think that your card is of high quality, but a professional grader might see issues with it that you overlooked.  As we saw above, even a drop in two grades can drastically reduce the value of your card.

For case number two: you could have a beautiful card of your favorite player, but it may have been so overproduced by the manufacturer or graded so many times by other collectors that it’s simply not rare or desired, and therefore not valuable to begin with.

Let’s continue with our Willie Mays example, and dive into what happens in the first pitfall.

Imagine we expected to receive a 6, with an average sale price of $513. But the professional graders at the third party company disagreed with us; instead of receiving a 6, we ended up receiving a 2, with an average sale price of $62. That’s a big difference!

Now we’ve lost about $91 on our purchase of the card.  

We purchased the card for $153, but it’s value is only $62.  ($62 – $153 is negative $91).

This also does not even include grading fees, so we could have as much as $100 out of our pocket.
The math here is simple: if a card receives a lower grade than what you were expecting to receive when you bought it, it’s possible that you will not recoup the value of what you paid for the card.  Especially after you factor in grading fees.

Now let’s take a look at pitfall number two: your card does not have high value potential to begin with.

One of our favorite cards is this 2001 Upper Deck Derek Jeter, going for $3.75 on eBay.

You might think this is an amazing deal for a Hall of Fame player if it’s excellent quality!
If we check out the population report of this card, with a grade of a perfect 10, the average sale price is $14.  The grading company creates an additional $10.25 of value for your card, bumping your card almost 4x in value! ($14 sale price – $3.75 paid for the card).

Unfortunately, after factoring in grading fees and your time preparing the card for grading, you may not see any ROI after going through all of that effort.

Most of the cards you’ll come across fall into this category: they aren’t as desirable to collectors, so the time and money you spent getting them graded will not be recouped.

Again, to reiterate, it’s crucial that you do your own research to find out if your card is worth grading.

Here are some resources we recommend to get you started:

• Cardboard connection has a great guide on how to find the value of your card using eBay.
• PSA or SGC Population Reports to find recent and average sales.

Companies like CardLadder that help you track daily changes in prices

With whom should I grade my cards?

So you’ve done your research and think your card is worth grading.  Now, how do you decide who to go with?

There are 3 major players in the space: PSA, Beckett and SGC.

There are also two newcomers: CSG and HGA.

PSA is by far the biggest and most well known; because of this, most (not all) collectors prefer PSA because across all sports their slabs command the highest prices.

Some key factors to consider when choosing a service to use:

• Turnaround times. This is how fast a company can receive, catalog, grade, and ship back your cards to you. Recently, because of increased demand, some service levels have seen turnaround times of over a year. Of course, not many collectors are happy with this. Many of the companies are now scrambling to figure out how to use technology to grade cards faster (similar to Fast Slab).
• Pricing. Different companies charge different prices per individual card graded. There are usually a few different service levels from which you can choose. The most expensive service comes with the fastest turnaround time. If you choose an economy or bulk option, the price will be the lowest per card, but the turnaround times will be longer.
• Slab design. Some collectors care quite a bit about the design of the encasing (or slabs) that the grading company puts the cards in. Newcomer HGA has made noise because of their unique designs.
• Card Value. It always comes back to value.  Buyers will pay a premium for a certain type of card depending on the company it was graded by.  See the links below for examples and comparisons.

This was just a high level overview because there are so many great resources out there to help you choose. Here are our recommendations to look at when deciding:

• PSA vs. Beckett
• Video comparing Beckett, PSA, and HGA
• PSA vs. Beckett vs. SGC
• SGC vs. PSA: A Study
• PSA, SGC or BGS?

Conclusion

As you can tell, there’s quite a bit of nuance when deciding to grade your cards! Ultimately it boils down to:

• the type of card you’re submitting
• it’s potential value
• what YOU value most

At the end of the day, it’s up to you to do the research necessary when deciding to get your cards graded.  It’ll help you save time and money down the line, and over time you’ll become an expert in the hobby.  The more you read and the more experience you get, the decisions on whether or not to grade and what to grade will become easier.  Soon you’ll find yourself giving tips and advice to your friends and family new to collecting!

An adaption from the original article to be found Here

When Ken Kendrick, the owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks and probably the world’s finest sports card collection, wanted a book produced to highlight his treasure trove there was only one man to call. If you’re not familiar with the work of Tom Zappala, you’re in for a real treat. Tom is the author of five award-winning books on baseball cards and memorabilia such as An All-Star Star’s Cardboard Memories and Legendary Lumber: The Top 100 Player Bats In Baseball, both of which I heaped praise upon in two columns for Forbes.

In addition, he and his wife Ellen, are co-authors of Baseball & Bubble Gum: The 1952 Topps Collection, The Cracker Jack Collection:

Baseball’s Prized Players,  and The 100 Greatest Baseball Autographs.  (All are available on his website, Amazon, and the Baseball Hall of Fame’s book store.)  Meanwhile, Zappala and the super amiable Red Sox Hall of Famer Rico Petrocelli host a weekly baseball collectibles podcast featuring a rotating list of guest co-hosts and hobby experts from around the country who discuss the latest in the sports collectibles world.

You can meet the Zappalas and Petrocelli at this year’s National Sports Collectors Convention in Atlantic City where he will be launching his new book and doing a two-hour podcast onsite. 

I caught up with Zappala to explore his exciting Ken Kendrick project and seek this industry heavy hitter’s  investment advice.

David: What a collection!  Why did you select these 50 cards:

1909 T206 Honus Wagner PSA 8 

1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA 10 

1916 M101-5/M101-4 #151 Babe Ruth PSA 8 (Sporting News)

1916 M101-5/M101-4 #151 Babe Ruth PSA 6 (Famous & Barr)

1909 T206 Eddie Plank PSA 8 

1933 Goudey Napoleon Lajoie PSA 9 

1911 T3 Turkey Red Ty Cobb PSA 8 

1933 Goudey #144 Babe Ruth PSA 9 

1933 Goudey #181 Babe Ruth PSA 9 

1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle PSA 10 

1915 Cracker Jack Joe Jackson PSA 9 

1934 Goudey #37 Lou Gehrig PSA 9 

1934 Goudey #61 Lou Gehrig PSA 9 

1948 Leaf Satchel Paige PSA 8 

1941 Play Ball Joe DiMaggio PSA 9 

1911 T205 Ty Cobb PSA 8 

1954 Wilson Franks Ted Williams PSA 7 

1955 Topps Roberto Clemente PSA 9 

1954 Topps Henry Aaron PSA 10 

1935 National Chicle #34 Bronko Nagurski PSA 9 

1948 Bowman George Mikan PSA 8 

1951 Bowman Willie Mays PSA 9 

1986 Fleer Michael Jordan PSA10 

1909-11 T206 Portrait Cy Young PSA 9

1909-11 T206 Bare Hand Cy Young PSA 9

1909-11 T206 Portrait Walter Johnson PSA 9

1909-11 T206 Bat Off Shoulder Ty Cobb PSA 8

1909-11 T206 Bat On Shoulder Ty Cobb PSA 8

1909-11 T206 Green Portrait Ty Cobb PSA 8

1909-11 T206 Red Portrait Ty Cobb PSA 8

1909-11 T206 “Magie Error” Sherry Magee PSA 8

1915 Cracker Jack #30 Ty Cobb PSA 9

1916 Famous & Barr Co. Jim Thorpe PSA 8

1927 E126 Babe Ruth PSA 8

1934 World Wide Gum Babe Ruth PSA 9

1938 Goudey #274 Joe DiMaggio PSA 9

1938 Goudey #250 Joe DiMaggio PSA 9

1939 Play Ball #92 Ted Williams PSA 9

1941 Play Ball Ted Williams PSA 9

1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson PSA 9

1949 Bowman Roy Campanella PSA 10

1949 Bowman Satchell Paige PSA 9

1952 Topps Willie Mays PSA 10

1953 Topps Willie Mays PSA 10

1954 Bowman Ted Williams PSA 9

1954 Topps Al Kaline PSA10

1955 Topps Sandy Koufax PSA 10

1957 Topps Brooks Robinson PSA 10

1959 Topps Bob Gibson PSA 10

1968 Topps Koosman/Ryan PSA 10

1979 Topps Ozzie Smith PSA 10

Tom:  That came from Ken. We thought that 50 would be an ideal number. But it was his choice. He is a big collector. He has a lot of really special complete sets, too.

David: While we’re at it, just curious why he selected the Ozzie as the most modern as opposed to, say, Ken Griffey, Jr.

Tom: I don’t have an absolute answer. I think Ken wanted the 50 cards to include pre-war right through the  present. He wanted to share the entire history with the collector. That was his choice for the most modern. 

David:  So there are three 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA 10s in existence. Marshall Fogel, the owner of one, told me that he has turned down offers of $25 million for his. Do you know if Ken has received similar offers?

Tom: I am sure has had offers for that and other cards.The card came from the great collection of Tom Candiotti, the former major league knuckleballer who works in the Diamondbacks’ radio booth and was a real big collector. He bought his Mantle around mid-2004. A portion of his cards came from Candiotti. 

David: I understand that, growing up in the 1950s, Ken wasn’t even much of a Mantle fan.

Tom:  Ken was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. He is very passionate about the history of the game Although his cards are ionic, he enjoys the story behind the players of the game. It’s like me being a Yankees fan coming from Boston. You’ve got to respect some of the greatest players.

David: What about the 1909 T206 Honus Wagner PSA 8 (deemed the “Gretzky Wagner”)? Hobby veterans consider that the top card in hobby even though after Ken bought it was later revealed that Bill Mastro, hobby big shot and criminal, trimmed it.

Tom: It is the most iconic card in the history of the hobby. The signature of the entire hobby. Hands down. There are the stories behind this Wagner and so there are so few to begin with. (About 75.)  That particular card has added mystique to the hobby because it has been owned by so many successful people ( like Gretzky). 

I don’t like to get involved in politics, just take a step back and enjoy everything.

David: How long did Ken take to amass this collection and when did he do it?

Tom: In the late ‘90s and early 2000s. He later based it on the first 20 cards in the book by Joe Orlando (former PSA president) in 2008 called Collecting Sports Legends: The Ultimate Hobby Guide. Ken collected a bunch of different sports by choice.  

David: Does he have a favorite card?

Tom: Honestly, He looks at all 50 cards like his children.

David: Do you? 

Tom: My favorite card in the collection would surprise you. It’s not the Mantle or a Ruth. I like the George Mikan rookie card. I think it’s a cool card, one of the two basketball cards (besides the Jordan PSA 10). I am an old NBA lover. We did a lot of research on Mikan. There’s a great backstory. They rewrote the basketball regulations because he was so dominant. I also like Bronko Nagurski because I never did a lot of research on him. The guy was a phenomenal athlete for his time (primarily the 1930s). He played three positions: He was a running back, a tackle, and an end. Plus he was a pro wrestler.

David: Are these two cards good buys?

Tom: Yes, these are good buys. Absolutely Nagurksi and Mikan. I would add Jim Thorpe as three other top other sports cards in our book, not counting the ’86 Jordan. Thorpe was another great athlete. Football doesn’t have the cachet of baseball and basketball, though I really like Jim Brown’s card because it’s iconic. Thorpe was a great baseball player. He was an Olympic gold medalist (for track) and a super star in all three sports. I find that fascinating. He lost his gold medals because he played professionally on the side, but they were later reinstated.

David: Ken’s instincts for which cards to collect are uncanny, given the current boom. He is the Warren Buffet of cards. I realize, though, as a very successful businessman he didn’t do it for the money.

Tom: I agree. Ken is his own man. His real love of the hobby supersedes everything else.

David: Ken’s collection spans the entire history of twentieth century baseball cards. Is that intentional?

Tom: He is a real history buff.  He wanted to cover the entire century because of his love of pre-war such as T206s and T205s. He’s really passionate about the entire century.

David: He has shown off parts of his collection at local museums and his ball park, which is a boon to the hobby.  What pleasure does he derive from being so generous?

Tom: That’s another example. He’s really enthusiastic about sharing his love. It has been on display at the Diamonbacks’ ballpark and at Cooperstown. It’s been a boon to the hobby because of all the press. 

David: Shifting focus from Ken Kendricks, I’d like to ask you some general investment questions. First, What’s the hottest material today?

Tom: Basketball. Modern and ultra modern. It’s red hot. Personally, I don’t collect these. But right now PSA is grading more basketball than anything else. A lot of it has to do with a new group of day traders flipping these cards of Moran and players like that. 

On the other side of the coin, I am finding it encouraging that it is also helping the vintage markets. I am not saying the modern collectors don’t love the hobby. It’s very important to them. They will buy these modern cards. They are using the vintage cards like we would use a blue chip stock like AT&T and IBM to offset the risk of  taking on the modern. The vintage is slow and steady. 

A nice portfolio means buying vintage like we talk about with Ken’s collection: the 33 Goudey Ruth, T206 Cobbs, Ted Williams rookie cards. The vintage cards from the ‘50s. Topps 1950s Mantles. Al Kaline. Roberto Clemente. Jackie Robinsons from the ‘40s and ‘50s. I find it fascinating. As I said, it’s just like a stock portfolio. You take a risk and you buy the anchor stocks.

David:  What are astute people collecting?

Tom: Game used tickets are red hot. Over the last six months, they have really exploded. Game used memorabilia like bats and game-worn baseball, football, and hockey jerseys. And signed baseballs. 

I’m personally switching gears to memorabilia. I like the whole concept of the players DNA being part of the object at the time. There’s nothing like holding a Cobb, Ruth, or Williams bat. 

You know that famous photo from 1939 of the first Hall of Fame Induction Group? (Honus Wagner, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Tris Speaker, Nap Lajoie, George Sisler, and Walter Johnson. Eddie Collins, Babe Ruth, Connie Mack, and Cy Young.)

I’m working on trying to accumulate signed balls of each one of these players. Plus Mathewson and Cobb. Mathewson had died and Cobb was late. I kind of liquidated my T206 collection. There are a handful of tough ones. Lajoie is tough. So is Grover Cleveland Alexander. It’s next to impossible to find a single signed Mathewson. Ruths and Cobbs are out there. I already have four: Connie Mack, Cy Young, Eddie Collins, and Walter Johnson. 

David: Very cool, Tom. So, which players cards, pre and post war, are the biggest right now in your estimation?

Tom: The big three are really strong: Cobb, Ruth, and Gehrig.

Some of the other Wagners besides the T206 like the E-92 1909 Dockman & Sons. The Sporting Life with the blue background. It has the same pose as the T206. (A PSA 6 sold for $25,000 in January.)

The ’51 Bowman Mantle is picking up steam. That is his true rookie. Anything Tom Brady rookie.  In terms of who’s hot and who’s not, the Joe Burrow rookie is hot.

David: What other post war cards?

Tom: The Koufax, Clemente, and Jackie Robinsins rookies. Those are iconic. The Roy Campanella rookie. (1949 Bowman).

David: Really? He never comes up. (Kendrick owns a PSA 10).

Tom:  Campy has always been in the shadow of Yogi Berra and Johnny Bench. Look at the tragedy (of him being paralyzed in 1957 from a car accident). A lot it starts coming together. 

Then there’s the Rose rookie. As time goes on, Rose is becoming more accepted. There’s talk about pushing him into the Hall of Fame. His rookie card is a pretty good investment. 

Mays’ ’51 bowman is white hot. And his ’54. All of his cards from the ‘50s are. His cards from the 60s are not as much. I hate to say it, but that has a lot to do with him nearing his end.

A lot of the Generation X (Americans born between 1965 and 1980) are morphing into the ‘70s. 

David: Which cards exactly from the 60’s and 70’s are catching fire the most?

Tom: George Brett and Robin Yount. Jim Rice.  Johnny Bench from that period continues to pick up. Carl Yastrzemski’s rookie year was 1960 but he played until 1983.

David: You mentioned Campy and Jackie. I’m always surprised that Duke Snider doesn’t get a lot of love. His cards don’t do so well; the reason, probably, was that he was the third best center fielder in New York, behind Mantle and Mays.

Tom: Yeah, Duke Snider doesn’t get a lot of love. Whitey Ford doesn’t, either.

David:  I’ve heard from a prominent Brooklyn Dodger dealer that Gil Hodges is in higher demand than Snider.

Tom:  Hodges may be another short spike from being elected into the Hall of Fame.  The jury is still out. 

David:  What’s moving markets?

Tom:  Definitely, manufactured rarities. One of one rookie patches. I’m not saying it in a derogatory way. It definitely has a bearing on the young, the Millennials (ages 26 to 41). Investing in manufactured rarity develops a real appreciation of the hobby. You do a lot of digging. It’s like buying a hot stock. What about this Apple stock?

How do you spot fraud?

There are a lot of professionals. We just spoke to Kevin Lenane, president of Collectors Universe (which owns PSA) on our show. They’re a company incorporating some tools to really detect that sort of thing with new technology called Genamint.

(According to PSA, “Genamint technology analyzes each trading card in real-time and is able to provide diagnostics, measurements, and detect alterations or other changes made to a card’s surface in an effort to assist human graders. It will also provide unique card identification — or ‘card fingerprinting’—by identifying the exact card in order to track provenance, resubmissions, condition changes and other attributes over time.”)

This will be a big plus and a big help to the market. That’s what it was all about. PSA is hellbent on trying to curb fraud.

David: What are three items you recommend?

Tom: From a speculative standpoint. Right now, it’s a really limited edition PSA 10 Joe Burrow rookie card. That’s not going to break the bank. 

As I said, the ’51 Bowman Mantle is really going to rise in a year or two. It’s his true rookie card. I just bought a PSA 3.

A decent quality Jackie Robinson rookie card is a good investment.

So on the ultra modern side Burrow and Ja Morant (Memphis Grizzlies point guard.)  But this is speculative. Look at what happened to Zion Williamson (New Orleans Pelicans power forward.) He dropped like a rock. 

I prefer slow and steady. Nothing is going to happen to Ty Cobb. He is already dead. Lou Gehrig is not going to eat way out of his league like Zion Williamson has.

David: What is the hobby’s future?

Tom: I’m very bullish. I think kids are really getting into it. They’re 10, 11, 12  years old. Wheatland, the auction house, has a busy store. They tell me that 12-year-olds come in to buy packs and open them right there on the spot. That’s a good sign.

David: Just like when we were kids in the 1960s and 1970s.’

Tom:  Exactly!

There’s one thing that needs to be done. Major League Baseball needs to work harder to make the game more interesting for kids. That’s part of why basketball is so hot. How can we attract kids? Look at the time slots for TV. Kids can’t watch a World Series game that starts at 8:00 on the East Coast. It’s the late start time. And the length of the games. Three hours and three and a half hours. Kids’ attention spans are too short for that.

Baseball should take a step back and figure out how to shorten games. A pitch clock would be a good idea.

In my last column, I interviewed Russ Havens, a longtime ticket collector and maven with the number one ticket website, TicketStubCollection.com.

Because the market is heating up so rapidly, I also reached out to a professional source who is a veteran ticket collector and expert. Simeon Lipman has been dealing in sports and pop culture memorabilia for more than two decades. He has curated events for Christie’s auction house, written extensively, and appears regularly on PBS’s top-rated Antiques Roadshow. He is a regular guest on the podcast Collectable Daily and its YouTube TV channel.

David: Tickets are sizzling. Mickey Mantle’s 1951 debut ticket recently fetched $141,000. Wayne Gretzky’s debut ticket commanded $102,000 (for a PSA 3 MK. The previous sale in April for a PSA 7 was $12,000). Michael Jordan’s NBA debut changed hands for $264,000. An autographed gem mint Tom Brady first-career touchdown ticket sold for $144,000. It was his Foxboro debut and not even his first game. 

Why have vintage and modern tickets skyrocketed recently?

Simeon: It’s partly a result of card fatigue. There has always been this interest in the earliest things of people. Eventually, a collector has all the rookie cards. Before the advent of the grading, there wasn’t much interest. A lot of collectors didn’t understand tickets. 

Once you give them a number grade, they become a commodity. And it’s authenticated. It suddenly changes the dynamics. People have had tickets forever. Now you are seeing the crossover of people who collect graded cards. These things are way rarer. This is a different type of ephemera actually created for the event.

David:  Speaking of rarity, full, unused tickets sell for several times more than stubs because of their rarity.

Simeon: I happen to love stubs more than full tickets. To me the stub, jammed in your pocket from that game in 1951 is kind of soaked in the history. But I can see why the full tickets have taken off because of the grading.

David: So you believe the boom is for real and just the start?

Simeon:  I do believe we’re in a boom.  It’s a matter of supply and demand. People are discovering this new collectible and the new way it is presented. The difference between tickets and vintage cards is that there is a truly a finite supply of tickets especially when we are dealing with debuts. With most debuts fans didn’t know the person that well. People didn’t hold on to the ticket because of that. 

Even with more contemporary instances like LeBron James— nobody was more anticipated. Yet his debut ticket is difficult to find. (PSA has graded 36 full and three stubs. A full sells for about $20,000 on eBay). It was not something that came to collectors’ minds.

David: I see World Series tickets most often on eBay, in auctions, and at shows by far. At a show I saw a dealer having trouble selling a 1955 game 7 Yankees ticket stub for $495, the clincher for the Brooklyn Dodgers only championship. He had it for more than a year.

Simeon: People kept World Series tickets. That’s why they are not as rare. They are common to really common, even Larsen’s perfect game ticket. (242 stubs and 18 full graded by PSA.)

Particularly compared Chamberlain’s 100 point game (PSA has graded 13). You would think people would hang on to that type of thing at that game. It kind of got swept away and thrown out. That happened to lots of tickets. 

It really shocked me to see Maris’1961 61st home run ticket stub on eBay. I said, “this was my ticket!” The price, $2100, was cheap and it was up there for a long time. It was an October game with a small attendance (23,154). I regret not buying it.

David: I like the oddball regular season tickets.Two years ago, I paid $400 in an auction for a ticket from the 1976 Dodgers game in which outfielder Rick Monday saved an American from being burned on the grass by two fans. A month later, another auction house sold the ticket from the adjoining seat for $1,200. I’ll hang on to mine.

Simeon: That’s a great ticket.  One of the coolest of late is Wrestlemaina 3 at the Pontiac Silverdome in 1987. That’s an unbelievable  ticket because there are so many people of a generation who embraced the fight in which Hulk Hogan beat Andre the Giant. The ticket has skyrocketed to five figures.

Darren Rovell (a prominent industry reporter) is a huge ticket guy.  He believes in the Rock’s (Dwayne Johnson) 1996 debut wrestling ticket. This guy’s trajectory is one we haven’t seen in a long while. He wants to go into politics. That could be a $100,000 ticket. You want to focus, maybe even more on contemporary figures.

I really want to find Keith Hernandez’s last game ticket. Most people don’t remember he finished with the Cleveland Indians. Who would have ever kept this stub? It would probably go for $10 to $15. You can delve so deep into tickets!

The ticket from the 1996 Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Sheldon bout is rare. It wasn’t a huge fight. But if you do enough research you’ll find that Tupac Shakur (considered one of the most influential rappers of all time) attended the fight and was killed after he left.  When they encapsulate the slabs they say that on the label. (In 2017, Goldin Auctions sold a Tupac ticket for $24,000.) Mine cost me less than $100.

I got the ticket from the opening of Shea Stadium via a trade. (It’s worth about $500-$750 in good condition).

Another one is the 1977 New York City Blackout ticket at Shea Stadium on July 13, 1977 when the game was stopped in the sixth inning.  This is sort of controversial. People looted electronics stores and got turntables and other things they couldn’t afford. This led to the start of Hip hop. 

David: These never occurred to me. Are there other lesser known sports tickets with growth potential? 

Simeon: Yes. There are others. When Alan Iverson crossed over Michael Jordan. (On March 12, 1997, NBA rookie Allen Iverson froze Michael Jordan in his tracks with one of the most memorable crossovers of all time.) He left Jordan in the dust. If you didn’t know that moment, look for it. You have to do the research. There are things out there.

One of the coolest tickets out there belongs to Darren Rovell: the first game Michael Jordan wore Air Jordan sneakers. (MJ had played in 10 regular-season games for Chicago before this milestone on November 17, 1984).  In the grand scheme of things that changed everything. That ticket would never be publicized. You wouldn’t have looked for it.

This is an emerging market. There are wonderful concert tickets of iconic moments of the Beatles, and Rolling Stones. That’s going to be next. 

I personally have been collecting Broadway debut tickets. There was an opening night Marlon Brando was on the stage in 1944 when he was 19 in his professional debut in I Remember Mama. Lo and behold I found one. I also have a ticket from Dustin Hoffman’s first importance on a Broadway stage in 1961.

David: I have spoken to two ticket experts/purists who don’t believe tickets should be autographed. On the podcast Collectable Daily, you mentioned an Antiques Roadshow incident in which the owner of a Wilt Chamberlain 100 point game (value: $85,000) was at an autograph show, intending Chamberlain to sign with a ballpoint pen. Chamberlain was tired at the end of the show and used a Sharpie, thus obliterating the tiny stub.

Simeon:  If a ticket was signed at the time, I’m all for it. If it’s signed way later, no. My whole thing is aesthetics. These tickets are quite small. These tickets aren’t much bigger. It depends on what you want. If you have it signed, use a ballpoint pen, not a Sharpie. Aesthetically, I would leave well enough alone.

David:  Full.unused tickets command a premium several times in value because they a fraction of them have survived compared to stubs. Do you buy this concept?

Simeon: No. It’s worth it if someone is going to pay that because you are seeing these as the highest graded.  I understand that a lot of people care about the condition. People are looking for PSA 10s. It leads away from the opportunity to love a ticket for what it is. This is a piece of history. A full ticket was never used and never at the game. It’s really what you personally care about.

David: I’ve watched two extremely rare last game Jackie Robinson and Mickey Mantle tickets languish for some time for $10,000 on eBay with Best Offer. In neither case, did Robinson or Mantle announce his retirement, so there would have been less reason to save the ticket. (There are the same number of tickets for both events, 15).  

Simeon:  It depends on acquiring the rookie debut or a milestone, like a 500th homer or a 300th victory.  Once people scratch that one itch, they are going to want the other one. In many cases, those last games are even rarer.  A lot of these guys (like Robinson and Mantle) went out with a whisper. Final game tickets are extremely undervalued, probably not for long.

David:  I am wondering about the Ticketmaster tickets versus the original season ticket.

Simeon:  Those lines are blurring. It’s just the nature of it. You take what you can get. 

David: You mention milestones. Nothing seems much bigger than Mantle’s iconic 500th home run. It’s an iconic image. But there are two on eBay (for about $4,000) and no takers.

Simeon: That price is about right. Mantle is the gold standard. But 500 homers has lost a little bit of its luster. It’s just the nature. So many other guys, and not necessarily Hall of Famers, have reached that milestone.

David: On Memorabilia Watch (Collectable’s TV program on YouTube), you surprised me and the host, Nick Capero, by putting tickets on a par with game used jerseys. 

You said  that, “Tickets are things you can hold in your hand, put in your pocket. or could put it in a safety deposit box. They’re kind of commodities once they have been slabbed, for sure. Cards weren’t at Wayne Gretsky’s debut but this ticket was. You’re not going to get the jersey for that game. I mean it’s more realistic you’re to get one of those though it’s impossible to know where they are going to come from. Nobody is sitting on a pile of Gretzky tickets. I think collectors and investors can appreciate that.”

David: Care to elaborate?

Simeon: Look at the Brady debut ticket. That could be a few hundred thousand. It’s not like somebody is going to find a case of these. Especially guys who were unheralded like Brady. Even afterwards, that kind ticket stub was a fluke. Then he became Tom Brady.

The Playoff Contenders rookie card was numbered. Even though nobody knew him, nobody tossed it because it was a numbered card. With a ticket stub, who cared?

David: You’re very bullish on tickets.

Simeon:  So much money is being poured into the industry it’s got to go somewhere.  Obviously, the market is on fire. It will continue to grow. You’re not going to find more tickets. There is what there is.  I’ve been buying tickets for a long time. They are tangible pieces of history and they were at the event, which adds a whole layer to the appeal.

For the big events, they might be in a museum in the Hall of Fame already. Or in somebody’s collection. Cards will always do well.  But people are finding out there are a lot more out there than they realize. With all the grading and publicity around cards, tickets are very rare in comparison.

David: Do you have simple advice for collectors getting started with tickets?Simeon: If there is a person you like, do the research. Figure it out. Save searches. If things pop up, they will send them to you.

From the day he was born in 1931, Mantle seemed predestined for superstardom. His father, Mutt, had given him his first name to honor Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane, and imbued the young Mick with a love of baseball – setting into motion a life of meteoric highs on the diamond and a legacy that continues to outlive his much too short life. 

1952 not only represented Mantle’s Topps debut, it also represented the year The Commerce Comet really took off. Mantle made his first of 18 consecutive All-Star teams, hit .311 with 23 home runs, and 87 RBIs, finished 3rd in American League MVP balloting and added the second of seven World Series rings to his ever growing cache. 

PSA, the industry’s leading grading agency, said it best: “if there were a Mount Rushmore of cards and it was limited to one spot, this card would get it every time.”

I love vintage ticket stubs.  There may be no other type of vintage sports memorabilia that links you to the past as much as a ticket stub does. Old tickets excite all my senses at Shea Stadium where my dad and I once rooted for the Mets.  I can smell the vendors’ steamed hot dogs they served in paper napkins and the stale beer that came in paper cups. And that pungent, ubiquitous odor of cigar smoke. I can visualize the emerald field beneath the deep blue sky. And I can hear the crowd thunder when Tom Seaver fanned a batter.

Fortunately I saved a few of these precious objects.  I felt as though I owned my Field Level box seat ($4.00 in 1972!),)! even if only for a few hours during a game. No two tickets are alike because each has its own section and seat number. Mine from the early 1970s show a disconsolate Mr. Met holding an umbrella up during a shower as a reminder to fans to keep their stubs as “RAIN CHECKS.”  (Could the historically hapless Mets have chosen a sorrier symbol?)

Games watched on TV come back to life in full color. On Mother’s Day, 1972, I remember jumping up and down, yelling with joy, in the family room after Willie Mays hit a home run in his first game as a Met. My grandmother came from the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about.  I now treasure the stub from that game, which I bought along with a New York Daily News from the next day featuring full-page photos of Willie swatting his blow for $100 a decade ago.

Many are creased or have mustard stains. I call that game used, like a cracked baseball bat loaded with pine tar. Mostly, tickets were discarded, except those from World Series and All Star games which have mostly, but not always, remained static in value because they are so plentiful..

I have taken a special interest in a stub from Mickey Mantle’s first Yankee game in 1951.  About 20 years ago, I bought one for $15 at a Salvation Army rummage sale in Brooklyn. I then flipped it for $2,100 in a Lelands auction, a pretty darn good return on my investment. The ticket rose to $7,500 and remained there for years.

Then shock!  Classic Auctions just fetched $141,000 for one shortly after Lelands sold an example for $101,000. It’s not just Mantle, either.

Here are some other mind-blowing auction results.

• In November Mile High Card Co. sold the ticket from Wayne Gretzky’s debut for $102,000, one of eight PSA has graded.
• In May, Heritage sold Michael Jordan’s first NBA preseason game ticket stub from 1984 for $35,000.
• In December, Huggins & Scott sold a ticket stub from Michael Jordan’s 1984 debut NBA game $264,000 Thursday, the highest price for a sporting event ticket sold at auction.
• Last May, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 point game 1962 changed hands for $44,400 in a Heritage auction. (PSA has graded 13.)
• In November, Heritage sold an autographed gem mint Tom Brady first-career touchdown ticket sell for $144,000. It was his Foxboro debut and not even his first game.
• I recently spoke to Tony Giese, Heritage consignment director, about the blazing hot ticket market for Collectable.
• But I wanted to dig deeper to understand the meteoric rise of this memorabilia niche that is virtually unparalleled in the history of the industry. To my amazement, there is very little written on ticket stubs, though they have been collected for years. Even the encyclopedic PSA lacks a web page giving context, despite giving invaluable population reports of graded examples showing just how scarce they are.  Rich Mueller, the editor of the indispensable Sports Collectors Daily, wrote an excellent story in 2019 on collecting popular World Series ticket stubs from the last 50 years that serves as an excellent primer.

True to form, he followed up on January 15 with a take on the current market. “Even as they’ve become a virtually extinct method of entry into stadiums around the world, the market for collectible vintage sports tickets has never been hotter,” Mueller wrote. “Trading cards picked up steam just prior to the start of the current decade and then exploded during the pandemic. Now, it’s the turn(stile) of the once lowly ducat that’s driving hobbyists to seek out sports ticket stubs for sale on eBay, via major auctions and elsewhere.”

Fortunately, I also found Russ Havens, the creator and manager of TicketStubCollection.com.  

“TicketStubCollection.com dedicates itself to the history of ticket stub artwork and ticket stub collecting,” Havens writes. “The site hosts over 25,000 ticket stub images from the sports and entertainment worlds, and each ticket is tagged enabling visitors to search by year, venue, artist, city, league or team. Upload a jpeg of your favorite ticket stubs and I’ll add it to the collection!”

Havens has posted a riveting presentation chronicling the history of ticket stubs, admissions passes and accompanying artwork dating back to ancient Greece.  He published“The 2016 Illustrated Ticket Stub Price Guide,” a 136-page book that was way ahead of its time.

David: What inspired you to start collecting tickets?

Russ: For over 40 years I’ve thought ticket stubs are the perfect collectible. They boast a timestamp, refer to a potentially historic event, and unlike sports cards, population numbers are maxed out by venue capacity. 

I grew up 35 miles away from Dodger Stadium before the freeway was completed. I’d go four or five times a year. There was the long school bus ride on Little League Night. Or I used to have to go to a local department store to order Dodger tickets through Mutual of Omaha. You would place your order with pencil and paper months ahead of the game, from there they sat  pinned to my bulletin board acting as a playbill (handbill?) of sorts. As much as they serve as a reminder of history, it was the anticipation of the event. They acted like handbills for me.  Later I started realizing I was incredibly nostalgic about being a kid. And you have to realize that the Dodgers’ home games weren’t televised, so being in person was so special.

Tickets are vastly undiscovered as a collectible. They have yet to really catch on.  The scarcity issue is what’s going to drive them.  No one throws them away. Everybody keeps everything now.  You can buy some recent World Series tickets for five bucks.  You can buy a nice Kirk Gibson 1988 World Series home run ticket for less than $875. Then barcoding beget digital tickets, which beget digital, which beget no ticketing at all.  Today it’s all electronic or print at home.

David: Do the big sales surprise you? Here are some explanations for their appeal:  PSA grades them and they’re difficult to grade.  They transcend generations. Again, there’s not a huge population. And they don’t print tickets anymore. 

Russ:  This is crazy big-boy stuff. Covid kicked off a lot of collections. People started getting obsessed again. We were home a lot going through closets and keeping track of what’s posted on eBay. Ticket listings went from 70,000 to 120,00 to 130,000 at a time.  The overall awareness did a lot.

David: Russ, you single out a few Holy Grails. Baseball ticket stubs from Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series, Babe Ruth’s called shot from the 1932 World Series, and ticket stubs from the 1919 Black Sox scandal arguably make up the top three ticket stubs from baseball. What are other suggestions?

Russ: Super Bowl 1, the gold variation. (In 2019, Heritage sold a full PSA NM-MT 8 for $66,000. PSA has graded 35). The blue variation is less desirable.

Giannis Antetokounmpo.  His debut was October 13, 2013, when he was 18. (eBay has a full PSA 5 for $7,950. PSA has graded 57). 

Tom Brady’s NFL debut. I would rather have a season ticket than the Ticketmaster version. I love the graphic design. The commercial art. They’re full color and they’re glossy. ($101,000 through Collectable IPO. Population estimated to be 30.)

The colorful 1974 Ali vs. Foreman Rumble in the Jungle Full is tough. (A full one in poor condition sold for $2,700 in Huggins and Scott in 2018. PSA population: 8). 

The Lou Gehrig Memorial 1941 ticket featuring his photo. (On eBay for $6,999, Make Offer. PSA has graded 127).

Babe Ruth’s 1943 WW2 War Bond Game ticket when he his last home run, against Wallter Johnson. (A PSA 2 is on eBay for $2,995. PSA population: 8).

Hank Aaron passed Babe Ruth with home run 715. I remember watching the game when I was 11 and hearing Vince Scully. I was 11. He was getting harassed. It was one of the most moving moments of my childhood. (Stubs go for $2,000 on eBay. Despite a sellout, there are only 110 stubs and 35 full tickets graded by PSA).

Wayne Gretzky’s 1994 802nd goal passing Gordie Howe as the all-time leader has become a sought-after ticket. (There are 31 stubs and seven full graded by PSA). My friend had season tickets, but didn’t make it to the game. Everyone went to the game, so a stub is $90-$100. But a full is $8,000, assuming the edges are clean.

David: That’s an interesting case of making a mint from missing history!  Speaking of Gretzky, you have a good story about his 1979 debut ticket as a symbol of the sizzling market. 

Russ: I believe this ticket stub transcends condition and style. Obviously one wants a Season Ticket style stub graded an 8, but most would kill for a Ticketmaster style today. (The $101,000 ticket stub at Mile High was a season version graded a PSA 3 with a mark.)

Yes, there’s an amazing story. Richard Hill was a huge collector and hockey fan as a kid growing up in Brantford Ontario.  His grandfather, grandmother and his grand uncle attended Gretzky’s debut game and kept the tickets individually. One was doused in a spilled tea incident. The other, the grandmother’s, was kept in a pencil cup on her desk. Over the years, Richard asked her to better preserve the ticket but she refused. For whatever reason, she wanted that ticket in her pencil cup. I believe she passed on before the grandfather, and the grandfather gifted it to Richard. The third ticket stub? Just plain missing. It’s been years and no one knows where it went. 

A week before the Mile High sale on November 11 he told me he was thinking of asking $2,500 but got an offer of $4,000— still a far cry from the $11,400 in December 2020, I told him. He put it on a Canadian classified sale website called Kijiji with Best Offer. On November 9, the two  highest offers for the Gretzky debut ticket were $14,000 and $15,000 as Mile High’s ticket soared.

“My phone is blowing up, as are my emails and text messages,” Hill wrote Havens. On November 10, the day before Mile High closed, the highest offer was $22,000 (almost a fifth of Mile High’s hammer price) but Hill had a huge lot of significant ticket hockey stubs from the era and was working with auction houses to sell them as a lot. Just an amazing story!

David: Wow! No seller’s regret here, as is so often the case. I’m curious about ticket stubs and full tickets with holes punched.

Russ:  Sometimes those were comp tickets or done instead of ripping a stub, so the ticket is full. It is not universal. There are so many different situations. It varied from venue to venue.

David: Are counterfeits an issue as they are in the rest of the industry.

Russ:  No., they are not that common.

David: Vintage full tickets command a premium, as much as twice or three times stubs because the population is a fraction of the stubs.

Russ: Overall, of course, you want the full one. But since 1986 teams slowly began adding barcodes and within two decades the ticket itself became less meaningful. Why? Because fans and collectors could use digital tickets for entry yet have a perfect full “unused” ticket at home. So having a ticket was no different than having a stub.At least there were printed tickets available. Fast forward 20 years and very few paper tickets are being issued. Some teams have emergency stock for generic tickets, but they’re not used ubiquitously as they once were.

David: I see a lot of full “proof” tickets without seat numbers for sale.

Russ: Proofs are acceptable to a small number of collectors. They pop up often enough on eBay. (For example, a proof Babe Ruth War Bond game ticket recently sold for $150 on eBay, compared to $2,999 for the real deal.)

David: I’ve watched two extremely rare last game Jackie Robinson and Mickey Mantle tickets languish for some time for $10,000 on eBay.

Russ:  Final appearance games are indeed collectable but debuts, 1st goal/home run etc and even numbered milestones are more desirable in my experience.

David: I’ve seen some of the six figure tickets in auctions autographed by the likes of Tom Brady. Should ticket collectors try to do that if it’s possible? Two other ticket experts I spoke to say no.

Russ:  I am a straight purist. I don’t believe in anything other than tickets. Autographs have no interest to me because they are ugly. An autograph didn’t matter to getting into the game. That’s all I care about. A Brady NFL debut ticket (from facing the Lions on September 23, 2000, $100,000 unsigned) is so unique who wouldn’t want that?  I think handwriting actually detracts from the value because it makes the ticket less attractive. It wasn’t designed to have an autograph. Some graphic designer spaced it just right. I’m sure he wasn’t keen to have an autograph. I’m also sure those guys were pissed when they added bar codes.  

David: So, what general advice can you give novice ticket collectors?

Russ: Do your meticulous research. It doesn’t take a creative thinker to figure out milestones like 500 homers or 3,0000 hits. Years ago, I put a Willie Mays 3,000th hit ticket on eBay for $14.50. Somebody wrote,“do you realize what you just did?” It was flipped for $571 on eBay. (In 2019, Mile High sold one for $1,000. Amazingly, PSA has only graded eight.) I’m really glad that I had another one.

Love of the Game Auctions is the industry’s biggest small auction house. As a periodic buyer and consignor since Al Crisafulli launched the company a decade ago, I have enjoyed the special treatment that is customary for all his clients. Crisafulli’s encyclopedic knowledge and way with words enables him to do some of the best write-ups in the hobby. He treats every consignment like it’s his most important. Whether it’s a ’52 Topps Mantle or an obscure Honus Wagner issue you’re seeing for the first time, Crisafulli has an unerring eye for valuable cards and rare memorabilia.

Of course, you find your typical Babe Ruths, Mickey Mantles, and Honus Wagners in a LOTG auction, but there are also much scarcer issues with upside potential. Many are just plain cool. Ironically, when so much of the industry is caught up in the ultra modern card frenzy, Crisafulli is a big advocate of the earliest cards from the 1800s and has record sales to prove it.

Crisafulli has enjoyed his share of historic finds, and if you had assembled a portfolio from his choice pieces over the years, you would be enjoying very handsome returns. Let’s dig in to find out more.

David: How long have you been in the hobby? And as one of the smaller auction houses,  how many employees do you have? And how many auctions per year do you hold?

Al: I’ve been a collector for more than 40 years and have always focused on vintage baseball.  Love of the Game is entering its tenth year in operation, prior to which I owned an advertising and marketing agency that counted among its clients some of the most important auction houses and authentication companies in the hobby.  So I’ve been on the business end of the hobby for about 20 years, with about a decade of high-level corporate marketing experience before that.  We have a small staff of employees and creative professionals that produce three auctions with full-color printed catalogs each year.  We’re also nimble enough to be able to produce smaller, bespoke auctions for special collections or high-end sets.

David: So are these the most desirable cards listed on your auction house’s want list for consignment?

• 1920s-30s Ruth (PSA 5+)
• T206 HOFers (PSA 7+)
• High-End Goudey Ruths
• 1950s-60s Mantle (PSA 8+)
• M101-4 Babe Ruth
• Key 19th Century Rarities
• CJ Matty, Cobb & Jackson
• HOF Intro Class
• PSA 8, 9, 10 HOF Rookies

Al: In a lot of ways, the hottest cards in the hobby right now are ultra-modern rookie cards, special rare insert cards and parallels, Pokemon and rookie cards of elite recent players like Mike Trout, Tom Brady and Michael Jordan.  We certainly can speak that language, it’s just not where we focus.

We often solicit specific cards based on what we feel will perform best in our auction at the time, and not necessarily based on what’s hottest in the hobby. 

The hobby is obviously super hot right now, which is fantastic.  But the hobby has been here for a long time and has a lot of depth.  We’re built to focus less on what’s hot, and more on what’s interesting to our customers and more difficult to find.  There are a lot of auction houses that are great at presenting investment-quality material that’s super hot in the hobby, and while we do offer a lot of that type of material too, we sort of view ourselves kind of as a museum that’s across the street from the giant investment bank. 

David: So, give me a few examples that are museum worthy and could belong in an investment bank?

Sure, last April we handled a gorgeous 1952 Topps Mantle which had been tucked away in a trunk with the patriarch’s childhood belongings for decades untouched by anyone and not even exposed to light. It graded a PSA 5.5 and sold for $$169,000, a very good return for this grade.

But we also sold a beautiful 1910 E105 Mello-Mint Gum (a colorful candy set) Honus Wagner throwing pose, which for $46,000 and was a museum-caliber piece due to its rarity.

To put things in perspective, PSA has graded 17 examples of the ’52 Mantle in PSA 5.5 alone— they’ve graded more than 1,8000 ’52 Mantles in total. They’ve only graded six examples of Wagner in total. Both are great cards. But we think the Wagner is the type of card that works really well in our auction in comparison with some of the other auction houses out there.

David:  One of the things that makes great memorabilia is the great story behind it, not just solid provenance but exciting context. You’ve had some amazing stuff that has stories worth telling.

Al:   Probably our best-known example of this is the Lou Gehrig game-used bat that we sold a few years ago.  The bat was owned by an elderly woman, and for decades, was the “weapon” in her house — the one we all have, the “if somebody ever breaks in, hit them with this bat” bat.  Except hers was a Lou Gehrig gamer.  While we were researching the bat, we were able to photo match the bat.  It’s the only photo-matched Gehrig bat in the hobby, and it sold for $438,000.

But my favorite example of this is from a small advertising display calendar from a 1902 town team in Honesdale, Pennsylvania.  In the team photo, I noticed an African-American player.  When we did some research it turned out that the player’s name was Billy Miller, and he played in a league where he was the only nonwhite person.  All the other teams wanted to get him banned from the league – not because he was Black, but because he was great, so they tried to get him banned because they claimed he wasn’t from Honesdale, a claim he consistently denied.  He eventually left Honesdale and played in the Negro Leagues, and then went to fight in WWI, where he was part of the Harlem Hellfighters – an African-American infantry unit that spent more time in combat than any other American troops.  He lost an arm and a leg there, came back a hero, and when he died, he was buried in his hometown – NOT Honesdale, but Dingmans Ferry, PA!  The calendar only sold for a few hundred dollars, but the story?  To me, that’s a priceless piece of baseball history.

There are a lot of people who are recent entrants into the hobby, and a lot of those people like to seek out items that are rare, one-of-one or serial numbered items.  As they dive deeper into the hobby, some of them learn that there are also items in the hobby that are rare not because they were manufactured that way, but because very few examples have survived.  

David: How hot are Jackie Robinson’s Leaf and Topps cards?

Jackie Robinson is one of those players who has always received respect in the hobby, but nothing close to what he deserves.  One could easily make the argument that Jackie Robinson is the most important figure in the history of American sports, and perhaps one of the most important figures in the history of the country.  How can you undervalue the baseball cards of a person like that?  So they’re hot for sure, but I also don’t see any reason they should cool off.  I’d also add in his Bowman cards and his Bond Bread cards.

David: How hot has the Mantle market been?

Al: Mantle is always the bellwether for postwar baseball cards, and I don’t see that changing.  Mantle cards are always a solid investment.  For folks seeking to move into vintage collecting on a budget, I also think Mantle has a lot of cards that are overlooked and still affordable —not his standard Topps and Bowman issues but some of the regionals, inserts, postcards and such.

For instance, the Topps inserts from the 1960s, as well as the special cards like the 1964 Topps Giants and 1964 Topps Stand-ups are popular, but relatively inexpensive.  Some of the regionals and smaller issues like 1954 Red Heart Dog Food, or 1954 Dan-Dee Potato Chips remain affordable – and cards like his Exhibit cards, Dormand Postcards, Jay Publishing, 1964 Requena Yankees, even 1964 Rawlings Premiums – are downright cheap!

David: What other players fall into this category? 

Al: In baseball, I think the obvious postwar players besides Mantle are Mays, Koufax, Clemente and Aaron.  Obviously you can add players from other sports to that list, like Wilt, Jordan, Gretzky, Kobe, Lebron, Tom Brady, maybe Tiger Woods.  

In terms of a second tier, I’d say Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Reggie Jackson, players like that seem to fall into that category.  In other sports perhaps Dr. J, Larry Bird, Walter Payton, Joe Namath, Kareem.

For me personally, the top tier is the first five baseball Hall of Famers. You could build a collection with nothing but Ruth, Cobb, Wagner, Johnson and Mathewson, and it could be a world-class collection.  With those players, grades are much less important than rarity.

David: Is what you are seeking what astute people are collecting?

Al:  The main point that I want to get across here is that it’s a huge hobby, and there are a lot of different things and ways to collect.  There’s room for everyone, regardless of how astute they might be, at every age, income, and level of knowledge of the sport they collect.  Some of the most knowledgeable collectors I know have had some of the smallest budgets.  Some people collect purely for the investment potential.  Some people collect purely for the passion they have for the history of the sport they collect.  If you look at those two things as extreme ends of a spectrum, most collectors fall somewhere along that spectrum, balancing the investment potential with their love of the game.

But for the purposes of this question, I think there are places where serious investors and advanced collectors converge, and other places where they’re pretty far apart.  For instance, I’m not sure advanced collectors have a lot of interest in some of the speculation in the ultra-modern arena that is frequently seen with serious investors.  

Similarly, I don’t think a lot of serious investors have a ton of interest in common players from obscure prewar card issues.  But there are places that the two types of collectors meet, and those areas tend to be the kinds of material that you see highlighted in our auctions when we can.  Things that we’ve featured in various auctions, like 1925 Exhibit Gehrig Rookies (ranging in price from $18,000 to $210,000), the 1917 E135 Collins-McCarthy Ruth ($111,000 in poor condition) we featured in our last auction, or the N695 1887 Kalamazoo Bats Jim O’Rourke ($90,000 in 2019)  are the types of cards that fall smack in the middle of that spectrum, with appeal to both investors and serious collectors.

How is memorabilia such as tickets and autographs compared to cards?

Cards will always drive the market, price-wise.  

But I think memorabilia items are extremely strong, and have a certain appeal because you can surround yourself with them – they display well.  

There are a lot of different types of memorabilia, and the hobby tends to get cluttered with material that was made to be collected because it might be worth money someday.  I had a consignor who owned a bar that closed —he brought me a truckload of sports memorabilia that decorated the bar — everything was a ‘limited edition’ print, signed by the subject.  One of 500, one of 1,000, one of 25.  In his truck were about a hundred different pieces, most of them ‘limited edition,’ all signed by one the same 20 or 30 players.  

When there are 100 different ‘limited edition’ items, and each of them is signed by the same players, how rare are they?  So for memorabilia, I tend to prefer items that were originally intended for purposes unrelated to collecting, like advertising display pieces, news service photos, scorecards, tickets, that sort of thing.  I love selling that kind of material, and I can never get enough of it.

David: You spoke about tickets. They are booming.  I have my own story. In late 2019, I paid $400 in an auction for a ticket stub from the 1976 game in which Dodgers outfielder Rick Monday saved an American flag from two fans who had run on the field and tried to set it on fire. A month later, you did such a good writeup for this “milestone” ticket that the ticket from the adjoining seat sold for $1,200!

Al That Monday ticket was a good example because it’s one I think everybody knows about, a story that is about more than just baseball.  Having a ticket like that come across my desk —even though it just sold for $1200 or so —that’s a great piece.  Writing about that sort of thing is my favorite part of running an auction – being able to say, “Okay, how can I present this piece in the right historical context?”  It’s more than just dollar signs.

Another fun example of this is the 1976 Chicago White Sox ticket stub we sold in our last auction. ($480). Everybody knows that there was a White Sox team that had shorts as part of their uniforms.  Most people don’t realize they only played three games that way.  The stub we sold in our last auction was for the first game — the first time a major league team actually wore shorts on the field.  What was fun was that the winning bidder was Darren Rovell, who tweeted about it after the auction ended.  Darren is an avid ticket collector and a very prominent hobby journalist.

Recently the market for ticket stubs from meaningful games has been skyrocketing.  (Classic Auctions just sold the ticket from Manttle’s 1951 debut for $141,000. For years it hovered around $3,000. In December a ticket from Michael Jordan’s debut fetched $264,000 in an auction)

As far as display materials, I like items that were meant to advertise products by hanging in retail stores —things like the Tuxedo Tobacco advertising pieces, Reach Sporting Goods signs, or some of the Lucky Strike display signs —those are just beautiful pieces that were produced to sell products.  They’re pretty tough to find today.  

In the case of those pieces, I think they’re tremendously desirable, and often hard to find, particularly in presentable condition.  Important Type 1 photos, and original photography from legendary photographers like Conlon, Thompson, Bain, Horner and the like have been really hot. 

David: What kind of game used memorabilia is doing well? 

Al: Bats and jerseys of vintage Hall of Famers are always desirable.  We recently had a lot of caps, and I was surprised at how much interest there was in them, even common players.

David: What’s moving markets?

Al: What’s happening in this hobby is unprecedented, and it’s really exciting to be a part of.  I think at some level, the pandemic is responsible for a lot of the new demand.  We actually had the first auction after lockdown started, in March of 2020.  There were a lot of people who were concerned that people would start circling their wagons, saving money in case of some nightmare scenario.  Instead, the opposite happened —a lot of people wound up working from home at full salary, but without the costs associated with going to work every day, like commuting, food, work clothes, etc.  On top of that, they were unable to go out — no concerts, movies, restaurants, sporting events, and things they typically spent money on.  

Pandemic-related boredom combined with disposable income led a lot of people to rediscover the hobby.  This created a huge demand —for material, for services, for new types of products.  There’s been a huge increase in new hobby-related businesses that have started since the pandemic began, even types of businesses that didn’t even exist before the pandemic.  It’s been pretty amazing to watch.

Has there been an increase in fraud? How do you spot it?

There’s always been a lot of fraud in the hobby.  It’s a function of there being so much money, particularly when there are a lot of people excited about the opportunity to acquire and own something that is both interesting and valuable, but where it’s possible to spend a ton of money without having a lot of knowledge about the material.  

Just this week, I looked at a collection from someone who spent a fortune on counterfeit cards. If the cards were authentic, it would be a world-class collection. Without getting into too much detail, some of the most iconic cards in the hobby — the kind of cards someone new to the hobby with an unlimited budget would buy —were part of this collection.  But every one of the most “valuable” cards were fake.  There were authentic cards sprinkled into the collection, but all low-grade, lower-dollar cards.  The collector found people who could get him the things he wanted, and he trusted them without taking the time to learn about the material he was buying — which can be fine, as long as you’re buying from reputable people. 

That’s sort of my mantra in this hobby: deal with reputable people.  If a company or dealer or collector doesn’t have a strong reputation, don’t work with them.  There’s almost nothing they can sell you that’s so rare that you can’t find it somewhere else with a little patience.  If nobody bought from people who were known to commit fraud, they’d either go out of business or they’d straighten up.

One of the things that concerns me right now in the hobby is that there are these relatively recent entrants, like Collectable, that are staffed by knowledgeable people who’ve been in the hobby and who are doing interesting things, moving the hobby in interesting directions.  But then it seems like there’s another crop of startup businesses where it’s tough to see who the people are that are behind them.  The foundations seem shaky, and they’re doing things like giving investment advice, or doing grading and authentication.  I worry that a lot of newcomers to the hobby don’t have the ability to discern which are the reputable companies, and which are not.  

David:  At the National, I asked you to highlight three items that are undervalued and have investment potential. 

“Frank Robinson.  The most underrated guy in history. Frank Robinson is Superman. He had a legendary career.  He won the Triple Crown, MVP in both leagues, and hit 586 home runs. He was the first Black manager.  He was also an assistant general manager. He is the most affordable of the great players.  I am a big fan. As the hobby is starting to give players of color— Aaron, Mays, (Jackie) Robinson—their due, they have all skyrocketed, Robinson has not moved.”

“19th century Hall of Famers and rare issues.  Right now 19th century has not gotten caught up in the hobby boom. Once, their prices were really high.  The N173s (Old Judge cabinet cards) Hall of Famers sell for considerably less than 10 years ago. I feel the same about  Kalamazoo Bats (an extremely rare 1886-`87 rare issue). How about the infamous Hoss Radbourne N173 with him giving the finger?  $11,000. That’s lunch money in this hobby.”

“Premium issues that can’t be graded because they are too big.  Two examples are the 1899-1900  M101-1 Sporting News supplements (filled with Hall of Famers such as Cy Young and Nap Lajoie) and 1898-99  National Copper Plate Co. Portraits (Cap Anson and Buck Ewing). Any large newspaper supplements.  (They measure 11×14” and 10×13”, respectively.)

They are big and beautiful. One day, the grading companies are going to connect these with holders. Nat Turner, the new PSA CEO, will be looking for news streams of revenue. There’s oddball sized stuff that you cannot grade now. As you can see with Type 1 photos and oversized cards, customers are demanding oversized holders.”

I still think all those things are undervalued and have potential.  But I think if we’re going to evaluate them in terms of explosive investment potential, maybe my suggestions aren’t as enticing as giving you the name of some major league prospect that’s waiting in the wings and about to become the next Sandy Koufax, or some already-valuable thing that’s going to continue to escalate in price.  But I think those three answers definitely still qualify as things I would recommend collectors investigate, because they are undervalued, either relative to the greatness of the player (in the case of Robinson) or the scarcity of the material.

As for 19th Century material in general, I think there’s nothing in the hobby that’s consistently more rare, more difficult to find, more beautiful, and frankly, more historic.  I hate to use a term like “bullish” when discussing the hobby, but I’ve never been more enthusiastic about 19thCentury items as I am today.  It’s currently a massively overlooked part of the hobby, but even the most common 19th Century Hall of Famer is impossibly rare in comparison with the cards that are hottest in the hobby right now. 

Finally, does the hobby’s future look bright?

This is the greatest hobby in the world.  The hobby’s future is as bright as it’s ever been. As long as there are kids dreaming of hitting home runs or scoring touchdowns, there will be sports cards and memorabilia.  Andas long as there are adults, there will be nostalgia.  As long as those two things exist, there will always be a hobby. I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t tell you what the long-term investment market for baseball cards looks like, but the hobby will always be here.  

Will Rogers famously said that he never met a man he didn’t like. Heritage consignment director Tony Giese personifies Rogers’ sentiments, and everybody in the sports industry likes him, too. “He’s like your kid brother,” says Joe Phillips, Heritage’s game glove authenticator. All you need to know is that he umpires youth baseball for fun.

Between his perpetual smile and friendly advice, Giese finds it easy winning over the wariest consignors. The 45-year-old has worked in the industry since 2005, including the past nine years for Heritage, the long standing auction house.  With shows and travel resuming lately, Giese has hit the road again; traveling from Toronto to Philadelphia. In Pittsburgh, he secured for consignment Honus Wagner’s Hall of Fame watch. On top of that, he wrangled a gem mint Fleer Michael Jordan rookie.

Over the years for Heritage,  Giese has overseen the sale of the Willie McCovey and Al Kaline collections, featuring game-used bats, jerseys, and trophies. He coordinated with a junk collector who ferried home on  his bicycle the archives of Joe Carr, the first NFL commissioner, which had been unceremoniously dumped on a curb.  “Getting to do what you love to do is not even work,” Giese says.

David: What’s the hottest material today?

Tony: I am more of a memorabilia guy. A lot of the money made in cards has now spilled over into memorabilia.  I like it so much because a lot of it was actually used in games.

Two things stand out.

First, game used bats. There’s been a very big spike. Collectors are going to population on PSA’s web page. A lot of the guys want PSA/DNA 9s and 10s (on a scale of one to 10 like cards.) 

Bats have so much personality. They’re what creates the action and hits home runs. There are ball marks from the ball’s stitches. There’s checking on the wood. Players have certain characteristics.  Albert Pujols hits in the same spot every single time. You’ve got pine tar. Think George Brett’s pine tar, of course. Ken Griffey had zig-zagging tape. Ichiro stored his bats in storage cases. Roberto Clemente had his flared knob. 

The market is really starting to go up. I remember Willie Mays going for $8,00 to $10,000. Now it’s $30,000 for a decent one from his New York and San Francisco Giants days.  In our November auction, a Mays bat performed really well. It was 1965-1968 and wasn’t anything that special, A game used 9. The pre-sale estimate was $15,000, It sold for $43,200. Clemente used to be $10,000. In the same auction as the Mays, a game used 9 went for $28,000.  Clemente’s “Momen”  (his nickname) from his early years should be selling for much more. (A 1958 8.5 sold for $20,400 in 2020).  

You’re starting to see guys like Frank Robinson and Hank Aaron move higher, too.  

Cards are easier for investors than bats. Here’s a 9. A bat may be cracked or untracked. There are many variables. Memorabilia is a little harder to store. An investor may want to put money in hot current guys like Zion was. 

The second hot item is Type 1 (first generation) photos. 

They are really starting to make a move. Ten years ago, Type 1s were very common because newspapers were digitizing. When they did that, all the hard copies were made available. Now they’ve dried up and there hasn’t been a ton of material released.

When PSA/DNA started slabbing, it was absolute garbage and didn’t present well. Now they have these beautiful slabs with heavy plastic. 

The prices are astounding. The news photo used to create Jackie Robinson’s 1948 Leaf rookie card had a pre-sale estimate of $80,000 to $100,000 and sold for $360,000 last February. It’s one of only two that have surfaced.  The Barney Stein photo used for Robinson’s 1950 Bowman card was $3,000 for the longest time. Now it’s $8,400.

You’re starting to see a lot of value with basketball photos like Alan Iverson’s. Jordan stuff is going crazy. And you’re starting to see soccer grow, too.

David:  You’ve cited the 1911 Shoeless Joe Jackson signed photo, PSA/DNA 9, as you’re all-time favorite Heritage item. ($179,250 in 2015). Why?

Tony:  It’s a one of one, the only known signed photo from one of the most iconic and most mythic players in history.

David: What about Mickey Mantle photos since his cards are out of sight? I scored a Type 1 1960s batting pose for $100 at last year’s National.

Tony: Good buy. Type 1 Mantle photos go for $400-$500. World Series and those with historical significance go for much more. Robinsons and Clementes are already at a different level. Those from their early careers are best. With Robinson, anything when he played for the Montreal Royals in 1946 is special.  In November we had one go for $31,200. That had been a $4,000 photo.

David: What about the more routine 1950s photos of Robinson turning a double play selling on eBay?

Tony: About $400-$500. My Vince Lombardi photos (150-200) in  my own collection have been costing me a lot more lately. (The legendary Packers football coach.)

David: Speaking of which, tell us about your personal collection. I know, being from where in Wisconsin, you’re a big Packers and Bucks guy. 

Tony:  As a longtime collector of Packers game-worn and Bucks game-worn jerseys and memorabilia, I have an extensive Bucks collection and am actively adding to it.

David: You’re bursting to tell me about a third item: tickets.

Tony: Tickets! Here’s the reason they are so hot. Because PSA grades them. People in the card business are noticing. Most fans threw them away. Or they got put in scrapbooks. Gretzky’s debut ticket was $10,000. Now it’s six figures.  People didn’t realize. Or take Michael Jordan’s professional debut ticket from a pre-season game in Peoria. Our pre-sale auction estimate was $2,000. We sold it for $34,800.  Who would have thought to save that? Tiger Woods tickets are generating historic numbers. 

David:  About 20 years ago I biked to a Salvation Army tag sale in Brooklyn and picked up a nice 1951 Mickey Mantle debut ticket for $15. I flipped in a Lelands auction for $2,100, so I was pretty satisfied. That’s where the price pretty much remained for  years. Last summer, Lelands sold a PSA 3 for $101,000. Oops.

Tony: Classic Auctions just sold one for $141,000.

David:  Ouch!

Tony: Another auction house was recently sorting through a box of about 200 random consigned ticket stubs, including many from early 1951 at Yankee Stadium and the worker found the Mantle debut ticket stub. I just loved the story.

So many of these tickets are so iconic. And there’s not a huge population. Wilt Chamberlain’s 100 point game in 1962 is a good example. (Only four exist.) Last May we sold one for $44,400.

Ruth tickets are good (like his “Called Shot” from the 1932 World Series when he allegedly pointed to the bleachers before hitting a home run.) ).Mantle. Gretzky. Jordan. Top of the line players. They transcend generations. Again, there’s not a huge population. They don’t print tickets anymore. And they’re difficult to grade.

Look for benchmarks like Mantle’s debut or Ernie Banks’ 500th home run. Clemente’s 3,000th hit (his last) is a good one. It was the last game of the season and not well attended (13,117 attendance) and the Steelers were playing in town.  (In 2016 Heritage sold the only known full ticket for  $10,157.) That could go for $100,000. I have been seeing this a lot with tickets. Nothing surprises me.

David: Game worn-jerseys seem like bats. In 2017, Heritage sold a 1954 Mickey Mantle game worn Yankees jersey for $432,000.  In November, a signed Mantle jersey from the same year commanded $615,000. In February, 2020, a 1997-98 Michael Jordan game worn and signed Chicago Bulls jersey, including a team letter and photo match, went for $102,000 in a Heritage auction. Eight months later,  another Jordan jersey changed hands for $480,000. Admittedly, it was earlier, 1986-1987, and photo matched to five games, including a 56 point one.  But that’s still a huge jump in a short time.

Tony: You are seeing the same thing with tickets as with uniforms and I don’t just mean legends, but cult heroes. In November, a 1995 Shannon Sharpe game worn Denver Broncos jersey with a pre-sale estimate of $4,000 sold for $23,000. (The tight end is a Hall of Fame and three-time Super Bowl Champ.) A 1987-89 Bernie Kosar game worn and signed Cleveland Browns Jersey went for $2,800.  In 2020, there was a jersey worn by Cubs first baseman Mark Grace  for $3,500. He was a good player and there are not a lot of uniforms. Jim Edmonds is another example. (The centerfielder’s  2008 Cubs jersey fetched $1,050 in November.) 

Then you have style jerseys. In the November auction, an ordinary 1969 Seattle Pilots spring training jersey without the team’s usual flourishes like the “scrambled eggs” sold for $22,200. (The Pilots only lasted one season.)

There are warm up jackets with funky styles like green collars and pockets and yellow backgrounds. Some of the ABA (the colorful, defunct 1967-1976 NBA rival league) has real style. You put it on mannequins and it brings real attention.

David: Tell me about the terrific story about the guy walking around the National Sports Collectors Convention in a valuable game jersey.

Tony: He was walking by our booth in Atlantic City wearing a Dolphins jersey made of the nice Durene/Cotton blend. It had no name on the back. I ended up peeling it off him and it sold for $4,000.  It was a highly significant  1969-70 Larry Little jersey. (Larry Little was a Hall of Fame offensive guard for the Dolphins dynasty.) The auction write-up says, “The story is too good to pass up. Consignment director Tony Giese quickly spotted it and the rest is history.”

David: What are astute people collecting these days?

Tony: The legends. Mount Rushmore iconic guys. Tom Brady. Your Gretzkys and Jordans. Trout and Jeter. Ruth, always, no matter what. Ruth moves the radar. Gehrig, Cobb, Christy Mathewson.  Walter Johnson. We just sold a 1924 Johnson single signed 1924 World Series game used baseball attributed to championship walk-off hit. ($180,000).

All those guys. They are generational. Dave Bancroft (an early 1900s Hall of Fame member) not as much. Top tier guys will always be remembered. What I tell people is that they have already made their legacy. Some of the newer players still have time to screw up. You have to be careful. Look at Zion Williamson and his body structure. He’s young.  (Last February, Heritage sold his mint 2019 National Treasures for $348,000).

Then there’s Stephen Strausberg who was huge at first but got injured a lot. People are paying big money for Fernando Tatis. If you don’t win, it’s a problem. And it’s so hard to stay good for so long. Pitching is so advanced. They are all throwing 100 mph.

I would invest in Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, and Tom Seaver. They are the standard for pitching. You’re not going to see 250 to 300 game winners, either.

Frank Robinson is so undervalued. He wasn’t the nicest guy, but was such an icon. He was the first African American manager. He gets overlooked. Aaron was overlooked. His stuff is now worth more. We are seeing Mays and him going up.  Eddie Mathews’ game used bats go for a couple of grand.  He hit over 500 homers. As people are buying up Aaron and Mays. I would say second tier guys will rise as well.

The ’52 Topps Mantle has never been going down. A PSA 1 recently sold for $33,000. That’s poor condition! That’s crazy in a good way. You’re starting to see the ’51 Bowman rise. That’s his true rookie, of course.

Jackie. Everything, particularly his autographs and Type 1 photos. The ’48 Leaf rookie is hot.  Him and Clemente. We’re talking on a par with Ruth and Mantle. He was more than sports. In the grand scheme he was Americana. What he did for baseball. There’s Jackie Robinson Day every year. Everyone wears 42. Even a signed cut has gone from $400 to $500 to $1,200. 

David: You mention the’48 Leaf Robinson. That card is on fire.

Tony: The ’48 Leaf Robinson is definitely iconic and is gaining momentum every day. It’s like the’52 Mantle. Even in low grades they do extremely well. It’s that portrait. They are gorgeous cards. The color is beautiful. Those cards have so many pitfalls. The centering. corners, and printing. There are many things that are going to downgrade them. Robinson just continues to go up and is not going down.

David: How is memorabilia such as tickets and autographs doing compared to cards?

Tony: As cards are going up, so is memorabilia. A lot of investors are looking to get into it. They’re not sure about the stock market.  Sports are fun. Memorabilia is something you can show off. In November we had Kobie Bryant game worn and sign Lakers rookie sneakers go for multiple times what we estimated. ($192,000).  It’s been a long time coming.

David: What’s moving markets?

Tony: Tickets!

David: Shocking!

Tony: Really. Right now, it’s been the tickets. We are just getting numbers that we couldn’t have even thought of. The market is insane.  It almost defies logic. 

We just had an autographed gem mint Tom Brady first-career touchdown ticket sell for $144,000. It was his Foxboro debut and not even his first game. It was a full, scanned ticket. They didn’t rip it off. It had a barcode. A signed PSA 9 goes for $51,600.

Over Thanksgiving, I drove from the airport to the Detroit area picking up an unopened boxed collection of wax packs probably worth between $30,000 to $40,000 and ’52 Topps Mantle and ’51 Mantle Bowman. A consignor had two of the Brady tickets. I didn’t even know he had them until I was in his basement.  Those two tickets sure made my drive a lot easier.

David: Two years ago, I paid $400 in an auction for a ticket from the 1976 Dodgers game in which outfielder Rick Monday saved an American flag from being burned on the outfield grass by two fans. A month later, another house sold the ticket from the adjoining seat for $1,200. I’ll hang on to mine.

Tony:  Great ticket. People still talk about that. Get it graded with “flag burning” on the label. That’s a really important game like the Billy Goat game.  (During Game 4 of the 1945 World Series, a tavern owners the Billy Goat Tavern owner’s pet goat was ordered removed from the park. He cast a curse on the team which didn’t win another championship until 2016. A full raw ticket recently sold for the very low price of $350 on eBay BIN.)

David: How do you spot fraud?

Tony:  I’m not PSA/DNA. But with autographs I see so many of them. I can pretty much tell. With uniforms, there’s almost a look and feel. I was in Chicago looking at a Bill Laimbeer jersey. (The Detroit Pistons’ center was a two-time champion in 1989 and 1990.)  He was a cult hero.  It was a jersey worn in the 1980s that had turned a bluish color from being laundered continuously. He wore it for two or three months.  I said to the owner, ‘That is exactly Bill Laimbeer.’

David: It sounds similar to uniform numbers bleeding and fading on bat knobs, baseball gloves, and caps.

Tony: Absolutely.

David: What are three items you recommend?

1) Tiger Woods. He’s not gonna come back. Or going to beat Jack’s record of majors. But he took that sport to a whole different new level. When his son Charlie becomes a big deal it will only boost Tiger. He’s doing well across the board. There’s been a great amount of movement of tickets. Some are obscure, oddball ones. He has a beautiful autograph controlled through Upper Deck. Type 1 photos are doing well as are photo-matched items.

2)  Anything Tom Brady, especially early in his career. How much more can his stuff go up 20 years down the road? We’re not going to see another guy win his Super Bowls and show that kind of dominance. He controls how much of his autograph is out there. Now he is so expensive. It’s very, very wise of him.  You hear a lot about his limited Playoff Contender card. ($3.1 million). If I am investing, I go for his game worn jerseys. They go for $80,000 to $100,000. There are not a lot of Bradys out there, either. (For the record, that’s a lot less than Mantle and Jordan.)  

3) Soccer. The world’s sport. We’re seeing a lot of movement. Last May we sold a PSA 8.5 Pele rookie card for $372,000. In 2020 an 8.5 went for $132,000. (In November, Goldin Auctions said it brokered a $900,000 private sale of a PSA 9, the most ever paid for a soccer card of any kind.)

David: What’s the hobby’s future?

Tony:  The future is really, really bright; far better than it was five years ago. During the pandemic things went crazy.  You’re seeing younger people getting involved. Every time I am at a show, I see kids. You want them to be interested. I have seen kids come up to our booths and say, “there’s Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. Cool!”  Every time I see that it warms my heart.You can tell that the kids know who these legends are. Jordan, too!