When you loose big selling at auction

[finestkind]

The 1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth Rookie (SGC 3) – purchased for $7.2M in Dec. 2023 – has now sold for $4.02M at Heritage Auctions.

 

[banjar]

Wow. What a drop off.

For what it's worth, my view is that it's not about scarcity, not previous sales value, or any objective measure. It's all about human psychology, and nothing more.

But that said, damn. What a rare and awesome card.

 

[gt2590]

Read about this.

Is it just cuz prices are down?

Esp on high end stuff?

 

[General_Says_Tso]

When flipping doesn't flip. This person calculated wrong. Timing can play a big part in these sales. It doesn't mean that the card may not be worth what was paid, but the collector for this kind of item was not there for this auction. Some rare items do not have the fame from a collector's standpoint. Then the value derived from a previous sale is tailored to a small group of collectors in this item. I wouldn't say the sky is falling from a high end perspective but rather a poorly timed sale and perhaps lack of marketing hurt this card. Ouch that loss hurts!

 

[2014BESTSERVICE]

This is actually a highly intelligent maneveur. A page right out of the Trump playbook. Can show loss deductions for years to offset any value gains elsewhere in their card portfolio

 

[smapdi]

I mean, for an item like that in a market like this, anything can happen. But it's not like someone was out there grinding value out of shops and shows and saving up for the Ruth and now is destitute, aside from the $4M they made off the auction. That was a capital expense for someone with a huge bank account and the loss is probably just a tax write-off against huge gains in the stock market.

 

[nevermore]

Hope this will bring down the vintage market a bit, would help out ordinary collectors like me. I guess they were banking on the hype of the $12 million logoman. Those guys are after just modern basketball, they must not see the longterm value in vintage baseball.

Here are the two in my collection... one was a gift from a fellow FCB member after the 2012 National in Baltimore. Thank you to @mudflap02. It was given away as a promo for the Ruth Museum. I believe it was advertising the very copy of the card that sold right now. I had to pick up the other to complete the "rainbow" a few years later. (Too lazy to scan mine, they are grabbed from COMC)

 

[finestkind]

I doubt that one card loosing so much value will change the vintage market. The owner auctioned the card and lost money. There will always be another rare card that comes along. The big spenders will always spend big for something rare or perceived as rare. The guys that bought the logoman card are multi-millionaires in the 1st place. They are hoping to turn it around and sell it for someone else with a lot more money.