The list price for the finest Cobb card remaining from the find is $1 million. (Photo by PSA)
Just when it seemed that the story of one of the greatest baseball card finds ever, “The Lucky 7,” couldn’t become any more amazing, the plot has taken another surprising twist. A family in the Southeast discovered seven 1909-1911 Ty Cobb cards with super-scarce Ty Cobb tobacco brand on the back in a crumpled old paper bag in their great grandfather’s run-down house and almost tossed it as trash. Only 22 examples of this rarity featuring “The Georgia Peach” are known.
The broker of the sale, Rick Snyder, the owner of MINT State in Myrtle Beach, S.C. continues to defy expectations. Rather than consigning the cards to one of half-dozen or so high-end auction houses, he has put the last three of the cards up for sale on the most visible selling platform imaginable:
”The best evidence for dating the Ty Cobb brand is a series of ads that ran four consecutive Sundays... [+]
eBay offers plenty of advantages, starting with 162 million active users. “I don’t know of any other auction house or seller that can lay claim to the number of users and potential buyers,” Snyder says. He also cites precedent for big-ticket memorabilia on eBay. In 2014 the first comic book ever to feature Superman, Action Comics No. 1, graded in near-perfect condition, sold for more than $3.2 million on eBay.
What the cards bring is anyone’s educated guess. The highest price a baseball card ever commanded on eBay is $1.265 million for the world's best Honus Wagner tobacco card from the same set as the Cobb in 2000 through a partnership between it and Robert Edward Auctions. The exact same card last sold for $2.8 million in 2007, and is now on exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum until April 24th. Yes, prestigious American museums treat baseball cards as fine art.
Once again, PSA, the independent card-grading company, has revised its price guide upwards to reflect the sale of the finest card from the find, the 4.5 (very good-excellent +), from $950,000 to $1 million+. As I reported in my last post, it likely fetched somewhere between $1 million and $2 million. With the public posting of prices, it’s possible to “extrapolate using ratios of lower grade to higher grade cards,” as Snyder advised. I thus feel even safer about that figure.
I decided to consult two heavy-hitter eBay sports buyers and sellers who have 8,540 transactions and 35 years between them and have never steered me wrong (100% positive “Feedback,” Mint State also has 100% for about the same number of transactions). “This is way out of the norm for both price and rarity,” said Joe Phillips, who also advises Heritage Auctions. “There are hardly any ground rules on this one.”
As a rule of thumb, Phillips says that three quarters of the time he doesn’t have to lower his price if there are a healthy number of potential buyers “Watching” an item. Snyder has about 1400 watchers for the three cards, the most I’ve ever seen in my 17 years of searching for sports cards and memorabilia on eBay. Phillips leans toward 70% of the asking price, depending on what he paid and how high he posted the Buy It Now. “On the Best Offers I am always surprised when someone really low balls,” he said. “Whadaya thinkin’?!”
Sndyer told me that he has an undisclosed floor a buyer must meet and that the high number of watchers is a result of the avalanche of publicity the Lucky 7 has generated.
It all may come down to a game of chicken between buyer and seller. Steve Gadziala of Champion Sports Cards and Collectibles, a prominent dealer of high-end cards on eBay and at East-coast shows, has also worked on both ends. “Most of our successful purchases have been 80 to 85% of the Magic Number or sometimes more,” he said. “There are so many factors that go into a seller making the decision to sell an item, from how badly they wish to move the item to how long they have had it. The longer the items sit, the more likely the price will go down as the initial excitement fades."
The Wagner card is the hobby's Hope Diamond from the same set as the T206 Wagner. It last sold for... [+]
But, if anything, the excitement seems to have only intensified, much to my surprise and that of central players in the industry. “I do not think you are looking for deals at that price,” said John Goodman of Goodman Vintage Sports Cards, who specializes in tobacco cards from the same T206 set as the Cobb, at a giant New York show before the initial sales. “They have not put it on the market to sell.”
A big part of the mystique is that these rare Cobbs keep surfacing in clusters like piles of gifts beneath a Christmas tree. Goodman told me that about 10 years ago one man near Atlanta found a Ty Cobb tin with his brand of tobacco which contained six of the cards. In 1997 an average Joe was sorting through the effects and papers of his great-grandfather from Georgia. They included a cast iron bank in the shape of a baseball player holding a bat, a pocket watch, and 11 Confederate $500 bills. Inside a thin, hardbound book of political speeches, published in 1907, were five of the Cobb cards. “[An uncle] pasted and preserved them between the pages of this volume,” wrote the owner and eventual consigner in a letter to Robert Edward Auctions. “Miraculously, these cars were glued in place with only a paste mixture of flour and water, so they simply flaked out as I turned the pages.
The first Superman comic book sold on eBay for $3.2 million in 2014. (Photo by eBay)
Just like the Lucky 7 Find, these cards came perilously close to being lost forever. Wrote the consignor, “My father and I acquired several boxes of the old books years ago, all water damaged, and almost stopped off at the dump with them on the way home.”
In 2009, the catalog writer for Goodwin and Co. went into overdrive about a rare Cobb card in fair condition, 1.5, a full grade lower than the worst Lucky 7. “More significantly and similar to the Wagner, there is an unequivocal hype affiliated with this card that has transcended the hobby to a stratospheric level,” he gushed. “We promise you this, other than the T206 Wagner, NO card could possibly be more consecrated than this spectacular museum worthy masterpiece that would immediately augment ANY collection to ‘World Class’ status.”
It would be hard to top that, but the latest find does. Says Snyder of MINT State, “the family is very, very happy so far.”
