Your Money: August
From August 2005
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What Marshall had was Card No. 311, a 1952 Mickey Mantle, the Holy Grail of Topps baseball cards. In the early 1980s, Marshall took the Mantle card into a Wichita, Kan., card shop.
“The guy who owned the place offered me $3,000 for it right then and there. When I told him the story of how I got snookered out of my favorite card, he brought out a Sauer card and sold it to me for 35 cents. But I held onto the Mantle card.”
Today, increased competition, coupled with higher prices and an oversaturation of card and set varieties, has turned a young boy’s hobby into a multimillion dollar, speculative venture. Five major card companies — Topps, Fleer, Donruss, In The Game and Upper Deck — produce millions of cards annually.
Jeff Hoekstra, manager of Krier’s Cards and Comics in Modesto, is the Jerry McGuire of sports-card dealers. He buys rarities not to own, but to sell at a fast profit, a process the real estate industry calls “flipping.”
Speculating Venture
Hoekstra admits the hobby has turned into a more of a speculating venture than one of collecting and investing. “People are gambling — they’re buying boxes of new cards trying to get that rare card to put up on eBay. With the new stuff, it’s like playing the lottery.”
The “new stuff” Hoekstra speaks of ranges from the popular “cut signature” cards to cards signed by the pros and one-of-a-kind sets, such as World Treasures, which featured a single-issue card of Pope John Paul II that created national buzz in May after the pontiff’s death.
Hoekstra, who bought the pope card from a Stockton man who reportedly paid between $1,000 and $4,000, has yet to find a bona fide buyer, despite several offers through an eBay auction that, unfortunately, fell through.
Continued...
“The guy who owned the place offered me $3,000 for it right then and there. When I told him the story of how I got snookered out of my favorite card, he brought out a Sauer card and sold it to me for 35 cents. But I held onto the Mantle card.”
Today, increased competition, coupled with higher prices and an oversaturation of card and set varieties, has turned a young boy’s hobby into a multimillion dollar, speculative venture. Five major card companies — Topps, Fleer, Donruss, In The Game and Upper Deck — produce millions of cards annually.
Jeff Hoekstra, manager of Krier’s Cards and Comics in Modesto, is the Jerry McGuire of sports-card dealers. He buys rarities not to own, but to sell at a fast profit, a process the real estate industry calls “flipping.”
Speculating Venture
Hoekstra admits the hobby has turned into a more of a speculating venture than one of collecting and investing. “People are gambling — they’re buying boxes of new cards trying to get that rare card to put up on eBay. With the new stuff, it’s like playing the lottery.”
The “new stuff” Hoekstra speaks of ranges from the popular “cut signature” cards to cards signed by the pros and one-of-a-kind sets, such as World Treasures, which featured a single-issue card of Pope John Paul II that created national buzz in May after the pontiff’s death.
Hoekstra, who bought the pope card from a Stockton man who reportedly paid between $1,000 and $4,000, has yet to find a bona fide buyer, despite several offers through an eBay auction that, unfortunately, fell through.
Continued...
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