Tag: baseball cards

Incredible $12.6 Million for a 1952 Mickey Mantle Baseball Card

by Fred Fuld III

Did you ever think that maybe you should put a little of your investment portfolio into sports cards?

After hearing about the latest Heritage Auctions result, you might want to consider it. However, make sure you go for the rare items.

A 1952 Mickey Mantle baseball card was hammered at an amazing $12.6 million, setting a world record.

This 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle #311 SGC Mint+ 9.5 card was described as “Finest Known Example!”.

In addition, Heritage announced that there will be a documentary made about the card called  “Four Perfect Corners” by Emmy-Award winning director Dan Klein.

Mickey Mantle:

• Second highest career OPS+ among center fielders

• Highest stolen-base percentage in history at the time of his retirement

• Lowest career rate of grounding into double plays

• Highest World Series on-base percentage and World Series slugging percentage

• .984 fielding percentage when playing center field

• Hit 536 career home runs

• Batted .300 or more ten times

• Only player in history to hit 150 home runs from both sides of the plate.

• 16th all-time in home runs per at-bats

• 17th in on-base percentage

• MVP award three times, finished second three times, and finished within nine votes of winning five times.

When investing in collectables, make sure you stick with the scarce and rare items, and the items that you are personally interested in.

Don’t forget to check out the related articles:

The $5 Million Michael Jordan Jersey

$677,196 for Steve Jobs Apple 1 Computer

Princess Diana’s Car to be Auctioned

2363% Return on a Baseball Card: What an Investment!

by Fred Fuld III

If you had a baseball card and it had increased in value by 2363%, would you sell it?

Well the owner of a Honus Wagner baseball card did just that.

He paid $294,338 for it back in 2006, and recently sold it through a private sale for $7.25 million.

This works out to an average annual return of 22%.

This extremely rare slabbed Honus Wagner T-206 baseball card was authenticated by SGC.

The back of the card displays an ad for Sweet Caporal Cigarettes.

Honus Wagner Baseball Card – Credit: Wikipedia

Honus Wagner, born Johannes Peter Wagner, was an American baseball shortstop who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball from 1897 to 1917, almost entirely for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Wagner won his eighth (and final) batting title in 1911, a National League record that remains unbroken to this day, and matched only once, in 1997, by Tony Gwynn. He also led the league in slugging six times and stolen bases five times.

Wagner was nicknamed “the Flying Dutchman” due to his superb speed and German heritage.

In 1936, the Baseball Hall of Fame inducted Wagner as one of the first five members. He received the second-highest vote total, behind Ty Cobb’s 222 and tied with Babe Ruth at 215.

Most baseball historians consider Wagner to be the greatest shortstop ever and one of the greatest players ever. Ty Cobb himself called Wagner “maybe the greatest star ever to take the diamond”.

Wagner was a non-smoker and reportedly didn’t want his card to promote cigarets, so production of the cards was stopped, with less than 60 known to exist.

If you have an interest in baseball and other sports cards, don’t forget to check out the following articles:

Investing in Old Collectable Baseball Cards: How to Get a Share for Free

Last month I bought a Racehorse, an NFT, and a Collectable Baseball Card: Are We In a Bubble?

Investing in Old Collectable Baseball Cards: How to Get a Share for Free

by Fred Fuld III

Did you collect baseball cards or other sports cards when you were a kid? Did you save your collection?

Hopefully you did, and hopefully your collection is in good condition, because you could be sitting on a lot of money.

If your mother threw away your collection after you moved out, not to worry. You can still build your collection again, albeit at a much higher price.

Some investors are even looking at sports cards and other memorabilia as long term investments and short term trading vehicles.

This is done through shares in these cards, just like shares of stock, through a company called Collectable, and the shares are registered with the SEC.

The company offers IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) in shares of rare sports cards. After 90 days, the shares start trading like regular stocks.

Collectible has already had substantial buyout offers on some of its cards. Just one example from a few months ago. Collectable received an offer to buy out the Wilt Chamberlain 1954 High School Full Uniform for $632,000. The uniform was IPOed on Collectable on December 10, 2020, for $316,000. The asset had been trading on Collectable’s secondary market at $442,400.

As another example, back inn April, Collectable received an offer to acquire a 1979 Wayne Gretzky card for $225,000 which had its IPO in December at $67,000. Including Collectable’s equity interests in the offering and broker dealer transaction fees, the offer represented a 213.8% premium over the price investors paid on the IPO.

Collectable is now offering a free share of a collectable sports card or other memorabilia, just for signing up. They give you a free share and me a free share.

If you are interested, click HERE.

Just remember, I never recommend collectables as investments. Don’t forget to check out my article called Last month I bought a Racehorse, an NFT, and a Collectable Baseball Card: Are We In a Bubble?

 

 

Affiliate links on this page

Last month I bought a Racehorse, an NFT, and a Collectable Baseball Card: Are We In a Bubble?

by Fred Fuld III

During the last month, I bought a racehorse, an NFT, and a collectable baseball card. I’m even considering buying modern art. All of these are generating extremely high prices, along with many other collectables, such as old hats.

So do these high prices predict an upcoming burst of a bubble, not just in the collectibles market but all financial assets?

Racehorses

Let’s talk about what I bought. First the racehorse. I actually didn’t buy the whole horse, I bought two one-thousanths of a horse. I guess that’s equal to one hoof. I can make a lot of money if the horse runs well.

NFTs

Second, the NFT, which stands for non-fungible token. I bought one, and I even created a couple of my own, which are listed for sale. When I have more time, I will write about the process. One thing I will mention to watch out for is the “gas tax”. If you don’t know what it is, hold off on doing any buying or selling and do some research.

If you want more background  information on NFTs, you can check out some previous articles here, here, here, and here.

Sports Cards

As for the baseball card, I own a Mickey Mantle, a Willie Mays, a Sandy Koufax, and even a 1914 Babe Ruth.

Of course, I don’t own the entire cards, I just own shares in the card.

As an example, the Babe Ruth card is worth $6 million. The Sandy Koufax is worth $380,000.

Weird Collectables

These are actually “mainstream” collectables, almost like coins, stamps, and autographs. But some people collect some pretty bizarre items.

I know one guy why collected the pill bottles of celebrities. He would buy from autograph hounds who would go through the trash cans of famous people looking for cancelled checks, old letters, receipts, and so forth that may have a signature, and when they would come across a pill bottle which had the celebrity’s name printed on the prescription sticker, they would sell those little containers to the pill bottle collector.

Even more weird, in a collectables magazine, I saw a Wanted ad placed by a guy who wanted to buy “old mens underwear”. Now, I’m not sure whether he wanted the underwear of old men or men’s underwear that was old.

Just because collectibles may have a limited supply or just because they are old doesn’t mean they will always go up. Just look at Beanie Babies and Cabbage Patch Kids.

Collectibles Recommendations

So do any of these collectables make good investments? My long term readers know that I never make investment recommendations. However, I will make collectibles recommendations.

  • Only buy what you like
  • Only buy what you would like to hold for a long time
  • Never buy a collectable with the anticipation of selling at a profit
  • Buy quality, not quantity

Happy collecting!

 

Note: Collectable and Collectible are used interchangeably. Numerous sources can’t agree on which is correct for items that people collect. 

Think Baseball Card Shares are Strange? How About NFT Investing!

by Fred Fuld III

A few weeks ago, I published an article about investing in shares of baseball cards. Amazingly, some of these sports cards have had outrageously successful returns recently.

For example, shares of a Tiger Woods 1996 Sports Illustrated for Kids PSA 10 card was offered on February 28, 2021 on a IPO at $10 per share. On April 7, there was a buyout offer of $13.67 per share, a 36.7% increase in less than two months.

An even better example is the Wilt Chamberlain 1961 Fleer Rookie Card PSA 9 card which received a buyout offer of a 66.5% premium over the $10 IPO price!!!

So what is the next great investment sector? Maybe it is the NFTs. If you are not sure what an NFT is, it stands for non-fungible token. An NFT is is a unit of ownership of a unique, generally digital, item that is recorded on a blockchain. The item is not interchangeable, however the NFT is tradeable.

Here are some examples of what an NFT can represent. It can represent digital art. The artist Beeple created a digital artwork called Everydays: The First 5000 Days. The NFT for the art was auctioned off at $69 million through Christie’s.

The CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, sold an NFT of his first tweet for $2.9 million.

NFT’s can also represent music, items in games, and digital sport cards.

Probably the most unusual NFT is skin. The Croatian tennis star, Oleksandra Oliynykova, is offering an NFT for the lifetime rights to the upper part of her right arm.

Speaking of skin, even Playboy (PLBY) is getting into the NFT arena.

So far, there have been nine NFTs that have sold for over a million dollars. So what do you think? Worth investing in? Have anything you want to tokenize?

 

Disclosure: Author has a long option position in PLBY.

Invest in Shares of Stock of a Hank Aaron Baseball Card

by Fred Fuld III

Yes, you read that headline right. You can actually buy shares in baseball cards, including a Hank Aaron 1954 Topps PSA 8.5 baseball card.

The shares a qualified by the Securities & Exchange Commission, and are sold through a broker-dealer.

It’s not just baseball cards you can invest in, you can purchase shares in a Tiger Wood Titleist tournament used putter, a Wilt Chamberlain game-worn, autographed high school uniform, and a Babbe Ruth & Lou Gehrig signed baseball.

The shares can be traded just like any other stock, 90 days after the IPO (initial public offering).

These offerings are made available through a company called Collectable.

So if you didn’t have the $100,000 or $1,000,000 for a rare card, at least now you can own a piece of it.