Monday, June 04, 2018 9:32:16 PM
Ombow, I talked to one sports card dealer who had put away something like 200 Elway rookie cards. He said he removed them from the Topps sets when they came out. As a dealer he would sell the rest of the cards in the sets individually and keep a lot of the most promising players. He had dozens of Montana and Rice rookies and had believed Elway would be great, so he kept 200 of those. They really took off after Elway won the 2 Superbowls in a row at the end of his career.
Football cards in general really took off after Montana won his 4th Superbowl. Suddenly everything went ballistic. For baseball cards, Nolan Ryan also triggered a huge increase in interest and his rookie card went crazy.
While I made some good profits with the football rookie cards, in retrospect I sold them too early. They subsequently zoomed up to even crazier levels, but later everything came back down considerably. Not sure what the situation is now, other than the ridiculously high premiums for 3rd party graded cards. They got that idea from the numismatic 3rd party grading of coins, which we called 'slabs'.
I collected a lot of US coins, and also had a big ancient Greek + Roman collection of over 100 coins. Eventually I sold them at auction for a good profit, but they've at least doubled or more since then. The average quality of the coins being sold then was much better than now. Now you really have to pay mega prices for the good stuff.
One of the biggest mistakes I made was not buying an ancient Decadrachm of Syracuse when one was available at auction for under $4000. I was the highest bidder at $3600 but decided to withdraw my bid. Huge mistake..
The value of that coin has gone up in stair step fashion over the years, first to $10 K, then $25 K and now when they come up for auction (which is rare) you usually see them over $100 K. Here's one that went for $340 K (link below), and they mention one that was struck from signed dies (by the artist Euainetos) that went for $437 K (!)
A costly mistake on my part, but at the time, $3600 seemed like a lot of money..
https://coinweek.com/ancient-coins/magnificent-syracuse-decadrachm-tops-heritage-world-ancient-coin-platinum-night-auction/
Football cards in general really took off after Montana won his 4th Superbowl. Suddenly everything went ballistic. For baseball cards, Nolan Ryan also triggered a huge increase in interest and his rookie card went crazy.
While I made some good profits with the football rookie cards, in retrospect I sold them too early. They subsequently zoomed up to even crazier levels, but later everything came back down considerably. Not sure what the situation is now, other than the ridiculously high premiums for 3rd party graded cards. They got that idea from the numismatic 3rd party grading of coins, which we called 'slabs'.
I collected a lot of US coins, and also had a big ancient Greek + Roman collection of over 100 coins. Eventually I sold them at auction for a good profit, but they've at least doubled or more since then. The average quality of the coins being sold then was much better than now. Now you really have to pay mega prices for the good stuff.
One of the biggest mistakes I made was not buying an ancient Decadrachm of Syracuse when one was available at auction for under $4000. I was the highest bidder at $3600 but decided to withdraw my bid. Huge mistake..
The value of that coin has gone up in stair step fashion over the years, first to $10 K, then $25 K and now when they come up for auction (which is rare) you usually see them over $100 K. Here's one that went for $340 K (link below), and they mention one that was struck from signed dies (by the artist Euainetos) that went for $437 K (!)
A costly mistake on my part, but at the time, $3600 seemed like a lot of money..
https://coinweek.com/ancient-coins/magnificent-syracuse-decadrachm-tops-heritage-world-ancient-coin-platinum-night-auction/
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