Worst buy of all time??

[Jags Fan Dan]

What other items, other than the McGwire ball, lost millions of dollars, or more money that the Sanchez jersey? OJ Simpson jersey maybe? Something from Tiger Woods?

What about something from some of the "future stars" baseball prospects that start hot disappear? I don't wish failure on anybody, but like some Bryce Harper stuff has gone pretty high in the past, if he never comes around that stuff would pretty much tank.

[Skizzick]

If we're talking percentage loss, then let's look no further than some rookie that received a ridiculous amount of hype.

-Remember when the Stephen Strasburg Boman Chrome Superfractor sold for $25,000? It's probably worth about 10% of that now. Even if the guy has a Hall of Fame career, it won't fetch anywhere close to half of that in the future. And still, it's an insane amount for a modern rookie card that isn't even graded.

-The 2001 Michael Vick SP Authentic Patch/Autograph rookie card sold for almost $5000 at his peak. Now you can grab one for around $250. Probably not worth even that now.

[godwulf]

Someone paid $25K for a modern card? I don't care if it's graded, certified and blessed by the Pope, that's ridiculous. I will never understand people getting so excited about cards because they're "1/1". It's a manufactured, i.e. artificial, collectible. Is having something, however cheaply-made and ephemeral, that no one else has really worth that much money to any sane person?

[godwulf]

I don't remember the end result on this, but what about the Luis Gonzalez bubblegum wad, game-chewed?

Dave Miedema

The auction for that item almost fell apart over some concerns about its authenticity - especially after it came out that the owner/collector of it, Jason Gabbert, was convicted of impersonating Aaron Sele, for some reason, in 1993 - but Luis put a second, "authenticated" piece of gum in an empty water bottle and gave it to a local radio station, which promised to send it to the winner of the auction...presumably because the proceeds of the auction were to benefit the gum owner's high school. The winning bid was $10,000.

Not long after this, Topps did a Bazooka Joe comic featuring Gonzo and his gum, and auctioned the original, poster-sized artwork, signed by Gonzo, for charity. I was the winning bidder, but my sister paid for it - a little over $1,200, I think. Gabbert emailed me immediately after the auction ended, wanting to know who I was. The piece was later featured in an SI article about "odd collectibles".

[Mark17]

Someone paid $25K for a modern card? I don't care if it's graded, certified and blessed by the Pope, that's ridiculous. I will never understand people getting so excited about cards because they're "1/1". It's a manufactured, i.e. artificial, collectible. Is having something, however cheaply-made and ephemeral, that no one else has really worth that much money to any sane person?

Couldn't agree more. Creating a piece of cardboard tomorrow and telling people it's worth thousands of dollars because only one is being created, is silly. People who buy such newly printed cardboard as an "investment" are [Mark17 now uses restraint in his choice of words] not making good decisions.

[Enyouartist]

I don't think so, as it garnered him a lot of publicity, which he was able to leverage into McFarlane Toys.

That is exactly why it was a GREAT BUY! He got an MLB license to sell McFarlane Toys after that, which he then branched out to all the other sports. Genius.

[godwulf]

McFarlane's action figures are such a radical departure from anything that existed at a comparable price before; look at one of the old "Standing Lineup" figures and then at one of McFarlane's little masterpieces; it's like the difference between a stick figure doodle and a fine art portrait. Quality like that speaks for itself.

Plus, McFarlane didn't need the publicity that buying the McGwire ball got him - he was already well known in comic and other pop culture circles, which comprise a ready-made market for his non-sport, comic, t.v. and film character figures.

[Roady]

I agree with godwulf. McFarlane just got caught up in the moment and wasted his money.

[Skizzick]

Someone paid $25K for a modern card? I don't care if it's graded, certified and blessed by the Pope, that's ridiculous. I will never understand people getting so excited about cards because they're "1/1". It's a manufactured, i.e. artificial, collectible. Is having something, however cheaply-made and ephemeral, that no one else has really worth that much money to any sane person?

You really have to make a distinction here, though it should be obvious. A modern card, i.e. the Strasburg rookie is a ridiculous thing to pay $25k for. But people aren't buying it for the value, they're buying it for the hype, thinking it'll be worth $50k someday, when it's really worth $1k the following month.

Then you have the modern memorabilia/autograph cards that do have some inherent value in them, but they are still insanely overvalued. I mean, look at this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2009-10-UD-E...item4d21ab2951
For that price, you can probably get a full game used jersey of each of them!

Babe Ruth cut signatures regularly sell for 10K plus, when they're taken from a letter or check that would probably go for $3k-5k. The sports card business, aside from the horrors they commit cutting up historical pieces to put them into cards, creates this insane market printing $10,000 bills by slapping a 1/1 on the back.

[godwulf]

I'm assuming that the only reason anyone makes those auto/memorabilia cards in the first place is so that they can sell a pack of ten or so cards for $5-$8 to a guy who's looking for one, correct? Somebody like me who just wants the cards will buy the whole factory set for fifty, rather than open endless packs looking to make a set. When I was a kid - here I go dating myself again - wax packs (do they still call them that?) existed because they cost a dime, which was about all most kids had to spend on baseball cards at any given time; I'm not even sure that they sold complete card sets back in the '60s, and if they did I'm sure I couldn't have afforded one. Who would buy the packs these days without the possibility of a "valuable" card inside? Despite my encouragement, none of my four boys ever showed the slightest interest in collecting cards, and if one of them had a few bucks he'd have been much more likely to buy a dvd or comic books with it. So a pack of cards today is a sort of lottery ticket, you might say, and it's almost exclusively the grownups who are buying them.