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Re: Favre Vikings jersey up for bid
"...they must profit handsomely on these initial sales in order to cover the carrying costs of the less desirable inventory which remains—much of which will be discounted and sold at significantly less than their initial listed prices...Some may not always agree with the dealers’ pricing strategies, however, these businesses have invested a significant amount of capital in order to be able to obtain this inventory to begin with."
to buyers, the amount needed by sellers is irrelevant. ultimately, items sell for what the public is willing to pay and that price has nothing to do with the amount that sellers need. of course, every seller that overpays tries to avoid taking the loss by overcharging others (and thus passing their "loss" on to the buyer.) at the end of the day, all you need is one buyer so i guess this strategy sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't.
the part that has me a little confused is why teams even bother with distributors. the teams and/or league could sell these things on their own and take the entire pie instead of sharing it with a middleman. the leagues/teams already have famous brand names, greater resources, more robust marketing departments and access to far larger markets than any distributor like JOSports could ever hope to secure. all of them have already been selling merchandise directly to the public for years. taking a shirt off a players back and selling it to the public is not rocket science. heck, the NFL is already selling jerseys on their own website. so obviously a distributor needs to offer something unique like an authentication/tracking system that would be too time-consuming for the team to deal with.
"..determining the value of unquestioned authenticity. All collectors would certainly be willing to pay some amount of a pricing premium for the peace of mind of knowing that the item is truly authentic. How much this is worth can vary from collector to collector and from item to item. With the rampant amount of fraud and deception that has plagued our hobby for years, one would think that such guarantees would be a Godsend. What one is willing to pay for such assurances, however, is yet to be determined."
speaking only for current NFL football jerseys, i'm not sure how much value such assurances will have in the future if photomatching becomes increasingly easier and more widespread. if you purchase a jersey from a team and can easily match that shirt, then what do you need a litany of holograms and tracking IDs and tags etc? essentially, those things are provenance and provenance is irrelevant if the item is photomatched.
unless they provide a unique and important service, i just don't see much of a purpose for middlemen in general. when teams slowly realized that there was money in this hobby, it's understandable that they didn't know how exactly to move on it and thus felt they would benefit from distributors who claimed to have niche expertise. once the teams realize how it all works, i imagine they'll do it themselves. sort of like collectors who eventually realize they have no need for authenticators. why share the pie if its easy not to?
rudy.
"...they must profit handsomely on these initial sales in order to cover the carrying costs of the less desirable inventory which remains—much of which will be discounted and sold at significantly less than their initial listed prices...Some may not always agree with the dealers’ pricing strategies, however, these businesses have invested a significant amount of capital in order to be able to obtain this inventory to begin with."
to buyers, the amount needed by sellers is irrelevant. ultimately, items sell for what the public is willing to pay and that price has nothing to do with the amount that sellers need. of course, every seller that overpays tries to avoid taking the loss by overcharging others (and thus passing their "loss" on to the buyer.) at the end of the day, all you need is one buyer so i guess this strategy sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't.
the part that has me a little confused is why teams even bother with distributors. the teams and/or league could sell these things on their own and take the entire pie instead of sharing it with a middleman. the leagues/teams already have famous brand names, greater resources, more robust marketing departments and access to far larger markets than any distributor like JOSports could ever hope to secure. all of them have already been selling merchandise directly to the public for years. taking a shirt off a players back and selling it to the public is not rocket science. heck, the NFL is already selling jerseys on their own website. so obviously a distributor needs to offer something unique like an authentication/tracking system that would be too time-consuming for the team to deal with.
"..determining the value of unquestioned authenticity. All collectors would certainly be willing to pay some amount of a pricing premium for the peace of mind of knowing that the item is truly authentic. How much this is worth can vary from collector to collector and from item to item. With the rampant amount of fraud and deception that has plagued our hobby for years, one would think that such guarantees would be a Godsend. What one is willing to pay for such assurances, however, is yet to be determined."
speaking only for current NFL football jerseys, i'm not sure how much value such assurances will have in the future if photomatching becomes increasingly easier and more widespread. if you purchase a jersey from a team and can easily match that shirt, then what do you need a litany of holograms and tracking IDs and tags etc? essentially, those things are provenance and provenance is irrelevant if the item is photomatched.
unless they provide a unique and important service, i just don't see much of a purpose for middlemen in general. when teams slowly realized that there was money in this hobby, it's understandable that they didn't know how exactly to move on it and thus felt they would benefit from distributors who claimed to have niche expertise. once the teams realize how it all works, i imagine they'll do it themselves. sort of like collectors who eventually realize they have no need for authenticators. why share the pie if its easy not to?
rudy.
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