Auction Update #3

Consignments are coming in!  Up to 212 lots for our January 2019 auction.  Can still use more “R” and “T” sets, singles, graded singles and advertising pieces.  Keep checking back for progress 

N168 Goodwin Canvas Backs Horse – Iroquois

Here’s a beautiful card from a super tough set consigned to our first auction .  The N168 Goodwin Canvas Backs set is a very difficult set with only seven known titles.  They’re all famous horses of the day.  The set contains a sepia portrait of the horse on the front with advertising on the back.  Cards are slightly oversized compared to the ‘normal’ tobacco card size but not by much.  This card will be in our January inaugural auction.

 

Auction Update #2

Okay…..last update was 116 and this one is 158.  Have added 42 more items into the auction with more to come!  Have consignments from a couple more people that I haven’t had time to go through yet.  Those should be added in the next couple weeks and take us to the 200 range.  If you have anything to consign, let me know–especially anything in the early and later candy and gum–E or R realm.  Would love to get a good batch of tougher wax packs or wrappers as well.  Remember ZERO (Zero? Are you kidding me?  That’s crazy!) commission on anything consigned during 2019.

If you haven’t registered for the auction yet, go to www.vintagenonsports.com and click on ‘auction’.  Registering will ensure you get on and stay on our mailing list.  Thanks for all the support so far!

Auction Update #1


Thanks for the positive vibes on the upcoming auction endeavor!  I’ve got 116 lots loaded into the system already with many more coming.  Have had a ton of contacts from people with interest in consigning and there’s a lot of room left.

So far, the auction is weighted heavily towards 19th century tobacco…..card sets, lots, albums, cabinets and other items.  I’d love to have more pre- and post-war gum and candy cards, 20th century tobacco and other items.

Will have some more notes soon about other items in the auction!  Check back here often!

New Vintage Nonsports Only Auction

I am starting a Vintage Nonsports Only auction to target a late January / early February 2019 timeframe for the first auction.  The auction will be on the simpleauctionsite platform that many other auction houses currently use.  I’m hoping to have somewhere in the 500-600 lots in the first auction.  To my knowledge, this will be the only Vintage Nonsports Only auction site out there.

In the next 2-4 weeks, the site will be live for registering.  In the meantime, you can contact me if you have anything you’d like to include in the auction.  Items that are always popular include:

  • Complete “N”, “T”, “E” and “R” sets
  • Wrappers
  • Unopened packs
  • PSA/SGC graded single cards and sets
  • Advertising pieces – Cabinets, Posters, etc
  • Tough Typecards

I’ve gotten a number of items consigned already from 3-4 different consignors with many more expected.  Items already in hand for the first auction include the following:

  • Featured items
    • N224 Kinney Military Near Complete set of 589 cards
    • R73 Indian Gum (1933) complete numerical set of 216 cards
    • R69 Horrors of War complete set of 288 cards
    • X-Ray Round-Up complete set of 200 cards, album and unopened pack
  • Numerous “R” near and complete sets
    • True Spy Stories complete set
    • Superman low series 1-48 complete set
    • Lone Ranger near set with highs
    • R773 Indian Gum (1947) complete set
    • War News Bulletin NRMT complete set
    • Civil War News near complete set
    • Topps Wings complete set
  • Numerous “T” and “E” near and complete sets
    • E47 Jockey Colors complete set
    • T85-2 Strollers tobacco near set (92/100)
  • Numerous “N” near and complete sets including
    • N1 Allen & Ginter American Editors Complete
    • N3 Allen & Ginter Arms Complete
    • N15 Allen & Ginter Generals Complete
    • N28 Allen & Ginter Champions – Series 1 complete with all (10) baseball
    • N76 Duke Famous Americans complete
    • N78 Duke Generals booklets near set
    • N79 Duke History of Poor Boys booklets complete
    • N83 Duke River and Ocean Steamers complete
    • N85 Duke Postage Stamps complete
    • N88 Duke Terrors of America complete
    • N124 Duke Presidential Possibilities complete
    • N127 Duke Sea Captains complete
    • N189 Kimball Savage and Semi-Barberous near set (40/50)
    • N554 Finzer Inventors complete
  • Advertising pieces
    • Allen Ginter advertising cabinet photos
    • Kinney Military Die Cut Pieces
    • Goodwin / Old Judge Die Cut Pieces
  • Over 20 Allen & Ginter, Duke, Kinney and Kimball albums—
    some with original mailers
  • Good groups of cards sold as singles and/or lots
    • N99 Battle Scenes
    • N184 Kimball Sports
    • N284 Buchner Jockeys
    • Topps Look ‘N See with Ruth
  • TONS more

I’m offering ZERO commission on consignments through 2019.  The buyer’s commission will be 19% for PayPal/Credit and a 3% discount for cashier’s check/money orders.  As always, you can reach me via email at autograp@gmail.com.  I’ve created a twitter account for the auction at http://www.twitter.com/nonsportauction.  I will tweet photos of new arrivals there and will update it soon with photos of some of the above sets so you can see what’s on the way.

The auction will be reached off of http://www.vintagenonsports.com/ by clicking on the ‘auction’ link.

Stay tuned and check out this thread for updates as they become available……………….

Thanks for your support on this board since 2006 and hoping to offer quality items to quality people into the future………!

Tom

 

2018 National Update

The 2018 version of the National Sports Collectors Convention (NSCC) was held in Cleveland from Wednesday, August 1st through Sunday, August 5th.  Setup for the show is on Monday and Tuesday prior to these dates.  This was lucky number 7 as far as Nationals in Cleveland.  Previous Cleveland Nationals were held in 1997, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2014 and this year’s show.  The past few years has seen consolidation of the National into the Chicago/Cleveland markets to be more centralized to the participants.  And, largely because it makes more money for the promoters in those cities.

The 2019 National will be in Chicago followed by 2020 in Atlantic City and no future dates beyond that have been announced although rumors persist that Chicago may become a 3 year home for the National beginning in 2021.  The East and West coast sites seem to be being squeezed out of any possible rotations.

This year’s National proved to me that the hobby is pretty strong.  Although the show is the NSCC, there are some Non-Sports dealers in attendance and some sports dealers who bring nonsports as well.  While there were some in attendance again this year, the number seems to be dwindling recently.  There were probably less than 4-5 dealers who had any real density in nonsports cards and another dozen or so that had a good amount of nonsports.  Much of these dealers tended to have 1950’s-1970’s Topps type of nonsports with few T cards and even fewer N cards.

To me, it seemed like one of the hottest things at the show were unopened wax packs, boxes and cases.  Steve Sabow had a phenomenal case full of nonsports packs and another with even more eye-opening sports packs.

BBCE, the undisputed heavyweight of unopened material and arbiter of the majority of grading packs and boxes and certifying unopened boxes had some incredible boxes and cases with even more incredible prices.  While they were mostly sports boxes and cases, the numbers were just staggering for wax that would have been significantly less even 3-4 years ago.

$110K?  WOW.  Just. WOW.

BBCE always has beautiful graded packs, cellos and boxes.

That 1979/1980 OPC Hockey box was just shy of the $58,900 I paid for my first house.  Let’s see……36 packs or a 1200 square foot house?

The price of mid-1970’s baseball wax packs, boxes and cases is just totally out of control!

Grading was again center stage in Cleveland.  PSA, Beckett and SGC were the primary companies yet again and PSA’s operation dwarfs all the others as usual.  Prices for grading have gone up significantly at the shows over the last 2-3 years and it seems to have done nothing with demand.  The lines at PSA are consistently into the hours to get through while Beckett and SGC  are significantly less.  PSA’s customer service and turnaround times are abysmal and they still continue to be the market leader.  If you can get a batch of cards in through the PSA boondoggle in 3-4 months, you are ahead of most.  SGC has recently completely revamped their website and grading standards to align more closely to the other two in terms of the 1-10 grading scale with half point increments.  The previous world of SGC40, 50, 60, etc is now gone.  Lots of opinions on the new SGC flip have been negative but I’m okay with the revision.  It’s gone from a green flip to a black one with the largest grading number of any of the companies out there.  We will see how it plays out long-term.

Talking with dealers, it seemed like Thursday was a banner day and the overall week was very successful.  There was a lot of money in the room and it seemed to be exchanged pretty frequently.

One of my favorite items in the show was the early 20th century folk art piece that contained a huge amount of Canadian nonsport and sport issues meticulously sewn together to make the beautiful piece illustrated below:

The piece contained baseball, hockey and lacrosse players from early Canadian sports sets and even contained the C55 Georges Vezina hockey card which has always been the most sought after hockey card.

The piece was 15 cards high by 23 cards wide for a total of 345 cards.  A price tag of $1000 was high but probably really fair on it given it’s importance and just the overall craftsmanship of the piece.  Not sure what it ultimately sold for but it went on the first or second day.

I collect both sports and nonsports but this year I’d say I spent about 80% on sportscards.  I just couldn’t find enough N cards to really inch that total up more.  I should have looked more closely at Rhett Yeakley’s assortment of T and N cards but couldn’t get my phone to connect to pull up my Allen Ginter checklist when I was at his booth.  The wifi/cell reception in the IX center is absolutely ridiculous.  You’d think by 2018, these venues would understand the need for connectivity and would boost their services but many arenas and convention centers just do not.

As usual, the food in Cleveland continues to be subpar.  The IX center is an island on one corner of the airport and there’s nothing anywhere really near it.  So you are relegated to either bringing your food or eating the stuff they call food.  In Chicago and Baltimore, you can walk out of the convention centers and get great food in walking distance, so that’s so much better.

I got to see Marty Krim, his always lovely wife Debby, Bill Cornell, Richard Masson, Rhett Yeakley, Tom Ryan, Eric Beachley, Gary May from the U.K., Daniel Hollandbeck, Bill Miller, Lee Behrens, Steve Lucas, Bryan Dwyer and Mark Finn among other folks from the board.  Was able to have a beer with Daniel and Mark one day and Eric the other.  Really the only consistently good thing about the food and beverages in Cleveland.   Saw advertisers from Goldin, REA and Sterling Sports Auctions.  Always good seeing board members and long-time friends at the show.  It’s always one of the highlights.

Looking forward to the 2019 National in Chicago.  Hope to see more board members there next year!  Below is an album with photos from the National.  Some were just pilfered from other’s posts and some I took.  I know some were Todd Riley’s that are on the forum.  There are a number of other National accounts that are very detailed and more specific to nonsports as well.  Check them out!

Typecard Update #3

Well, member_15875 just closed out another group of “N” typecards on ebay with some continued good results.  I think it speaks well of the 19th Century tobacco market right now and a really good tactic of listing a number of tough issues right alongside a number of more common, but clean issues.  The common issues seemed to get some tagalong price increases.

Most of the cards in the nine below couldn’t really be considered ‘scarce’ typecards but would be considered tougher ‘regular’ type issues I guess.  The Duke, Buchner, Kinney, American Eagle and S.F. Hess are arguably the most common of  the (9) cards.  N103 Duke Burlesque Scenes have been getting a lot of love (no pun intended) lately it seems.  When I sold a half dozen or more off last summer/fall, I got in the $60-$100 range.  This seller has been getting those numbers consistently but also into the $130-$150 range.  And his N221 Kinney Jocular Ocular went for $56.  That’s a fair price it seems when the N221 has the tab on it which often seems to have been cut or torn off.  The N282 Buchner Butterfly ($127) and N288 Buchner Police ($219) were in the market of where they generally trade to a little higher for the Police card.  The N324 SF Hess card brought strong money for a really clean copy at $202 and the other three cards (N532 Hard a Port $80, N564 Gravely $77 and N577 George Young Sports card $192) were at or above recent copy sales.

One consistent thing with most of the cards in member_15875’s collection has been good, clean condition on most all the cards.  Few with creases, few with back issues and just generally a good look to all of them.  They have been well-scanned on a flatbed scanner with dark background and both front and back pictures.  It seems as though he’s listed 30-50 at a time.  Typically,  about half of them are ‘common’ type cards for set builders and the rest are cards from sets that aren’t run-of-the-mill.

It’s good to see these prices and see someone bring some of these fantastic cards out of the woodwork.  Word on the street is that the “N’s” are done and he’s moving on to the “T’s”.  Stay tuned for typecard update #4………