Wishlist for the hobby

[Birdbats]

"can you please tell me the last time mastro or lelands featured a substantial offering of common player collections (directly from the players)?"

The big houses don't need to feature "commons" in their auctions because they sell them to collectors offline. If they buy a lot of 100 bats from Joe Average Ballplayer, maybe five big-ticket bats make the auctions; the rest get sold to niche collectors. Trust me, guys like Bill Mastro know dozens if not hundreds of collectors. They don't waste their time putting commons in auctions -- they have buyers for those.

"how many of those has bushing managed to visit? i'd be flabbergasted if it was over 15%. how many of those 2700 has geppi's gotten to offer their collections?"

I'm sure they've only scratched the surface of all the retired players out there, but they've certainly had lots of luck through the years making deals with the retirees who are willing to sell and not just pass stuff down to their kids and grandchildren. Geppi's made a big push to get items -- retired ballplayers solicited other retired players. Maybe the reason they didn't get many collections is because many old ballplayers are more interested in keeping their items in the family.

[grandpahoo]

i'd be very interested to hear what others wish would exist in this hobby. anything really..including that bat rack shaped like scarlett johanssen.

If I had one of those, it definitely be "game-used." Also, one thing I would love to have is a central repository of information regarding where to find certain items (e.g., a list of websites for all NFL teams who offer game-used equipment). I'm in the process of trying to put something together now, but I'm lazy and would prefer that someone else do the work and send me a copy.

[grandpahoo]

to this extent then, i'd like to see a service that contacts retired common players and semi-stars, solicits their interests in selling, and puts them in contact with collectors.

The far more likely scenario is that the company providing that service would contact the players, solicit their interest in selling, buy all of the stuff as cheaply as possible, and then jack up the prices when offering it to collectors.

[grandpahoo]

i was referring to a more "neutral" service that would offer collections regardless of their monetary value or prestige; a service that would repeatedly solicit thousands of retired players and offer any and all baseball-related items they're willing to sell, without having someone else cherrypick the most profitable items.

You might be sorry one day that you shared this hypothetical business plan in a public forum. Assuming someone had enough cash to get this type of business up and running, it could be really, really profitable.