BIDDING WAR on Ebay - Ty Cobb Tin
 

one hour in and its out of control - Ali Frazier like!!!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/TY-COBB-TOBA...item45fd73739b

WOW!! That's incredible. I wish I owned it... :eek:

This should be fun.

Rawn

Very interesting.That seems like alot bid with 1 hour down and 239 to go??I saw one sell for 5500 recently on t.v.Is it really worth that much?

They are incredibly rare and the last to sell did sell for around $40k. IMO, however, it's more like a $20k piece. I'm surprised it hasn't met reserve yet.

Quite a leap of faith for a seller with no feedback in 10 years, but assuming these pictures are unique (and I think they are), then it is very possible this could be legit.

I'd want a little more authenticity before laying 40 large on this auction though.

and also
 

Also, the one that sold in a Live Legendary auction, that went for around 40k and was a record high price for one (as far as I am aware), was probably the finest known. I have to agree that an average one should be in the 15k-20k range......but who knows??

Read the fine print at the bottom....Insured shipping will be extra.

Rawn

Looking at the bidding history, am I the only one here who thinks that this seems VERY fishy? I doubt this is a legit sale up to this point and they are fishing for one legit buyer over 40K, but hey, what do I know! :)

Rhys

That could well be... I suspected the same, but it could also be potential suitors fishing for the reserve (which I agree is set too high). Seems awfully early in the game for that , though...

agree
 

Not sure this one is passing the smell test.

Rawn- yeap, at 40k, and a reserve that is higher than that, he can't afford to pay for shipping/insurance. Deal breaker for me. :)

Leon - you are correct... that $40k Legendary one is the only Ty Cobb tin to ever sell (at least publicly) in that price range. I believe one in REA (maybe) sold for around $20k... Others have sold in the $10k-$15k range.

The Sellers Location...
 

Anyone notice the location of the seller? I find it interesting that it is the same location as the company who manufactured Ty Cobb Tobacco (F. R. Penn Tobacco Co. in Reidsville, NC (Factory #33) was located. Not sure what to make of that?

Shawn

Warehouse Find?

Soon there will be more of these on the market, then Kruk Cards has pallets of "Collegiate Collection" cards?

:D

Actually makes sense to me. This was likely very limited or just a "test market" item. I would imagine most would turn up around the original place of manufacturer. it would be my odd, IMO, if this turned up on the west coast, for example.

Hey Jon,

I agree, it does make sense... Just thought it was interesting. I do not think we have been aware of the sellers location before?

Side Note: I did read (somewhere) that F.R. Penn had an office in Atlanta, Ga. back in the day.

Surprised the seller turned down a 40K bid. What was he hoping for?

He may have been promised some pie-in-the-sky number by one of the auction houses he spoke with which is giving him unrealistic expectations.

Maybe, but any auction house guaranteeing that seller 40k, or more, for that Tin, is setting them and the seller up for failure, imo.

A seller can make up any location they want...so the item may...or may not actually be from there?

My guess is the seller plans to sell it an auction somewhere in the future and wants to increase market value....should have done it more discretely and not at an outrageous price though...

What always irks me about these is the seller says in his description "after extensive research I have decided to sell it." Really? Extensive research? Is reading about it on the Internet for a half hour extensive research? Even if he did do extensive research in order to sell it, why should I care?

Not including this one (which I render no opinion on given the small size of the photos), I am aware of only two examples that do not have serious condition issues. One is the one Legendary sold, the other as I recall was sold some years earlier and went for about 50k. If in fact this one is in really good condition, then it should sell for a substantial premium over what the other lesser-conditioned ones sold for.

The TV show "Auction Kings" sold one at auction earlier this year. They also
said there was only 7 or 8 in existence. As I recall it only went for $6-7000.
That's assuming their auctions are real and not fabricated for TV.

dh

This makes #13 on the list of Cobb tins I've tracked. I used to have images of all but 3, but a hard drive crash a few years ago wiped out a few older images. Right now I have images of 5 different (not including the auction kings one, the legendary one, or this one). Of those images, 3 are in very nice condition.

I don't want to poo poo on this, but why are those pictures so small? Is everyone sure this is authentic? Stories like this one of the guy sound so "fairytale" like, makes me wonder. he said he sent pics to major auctions. Well, a picture, especially those sized, does NOT guarantee things to be real, right?

Anyone else wondering this?

absolutely
 

The small scans were a yellow flag for me, immediately. I don't know about the tin being real or not (positively) but the auction on ebay, itself, smells to holy heaven. I have some serious concerns about the "auction".

I agree there are a bunch of red flags here...the small scans, the weird extra payment for insured shipping, the story of course...but the 14 day return policy doesn't really fit?!?!

I think the item is probably real...seller is just very...very green!:D

His feedback of 7 doesn't garner a whole lot of confidence. Would you bid 40K with somebody who had so thin a track record?

If I was seriously interested, I'd ask him to email a pic of the tin with today's newspaper.

I wouldn't be bidding 40K on anything...so it is irrelevant...for me!

Personally, I think it looks like somebody who may have talked to several auction houses (he didn't say which ones, so there's no telling whether the estimates he was given were "good" or not), and decided to sell it himself because he didn't want to pay a percentage to the auction house. He's staked out a high-end price so that, in his mind, there's no risk for him. He's not taking into account all the detractors that have been listed that have nothing to do with the item itself and everything to do with how he presents it and himself. People just don't realize how much effort goes into presenting their items in a favorable manner, and how much of an effect that has on the final price. He hasn't used his eBay account in 10 years, the pics look to have been taken with an old camera phone, and the shipping charges may seem petty but go along with a mindset of milking it for all its worth.

My guess is, assuming the final bid doesn't reach his reserve, we'll be seeing this tin again at whatever auction house he talked to that has the lowest seller's commission (hopefully with better photos) :)

You know I thought this ended- I didn't realize it still has 8 days to go. And it already has 63 bids, with one bidder alone having bid 44 times. I guess he wants it.

Or doesn't really want to sell it!

It looks like he canceled a lot of bids and now there are only 10 bids.

Three different buyers placed large bids and then retracted them saying they "entered the wrong amount," one of which is the current high bidder. Wonder if the zero-feedback bidder figured out what the reserve and/or high bid was with that "accidental" bid of $99,999.00?

Shedding Some Light
 

Just thought I would shed some light on this.

I believe the tin is legitimate as I was provided higher resolution images and it is a really nice example. I had extensive discussions with the seller. I disagree that the market value of this is $15 to $20k. Although I agree that the fact we got close to $40k for one was an anomaly; I believe the current market value of one in this condition is $20 to $30k. I was suprised to see it listed on eBay and wont speak to the legitimacy of the bids.

Interesting since we sold one in February there have been (3) new examples. The one on Auction Kings which was in poor condition, this example and a new example we will feature in our November sale which is pretty nice.

All the best,
Doug

Nice way to slip in an advertisement letting everyone know that Legendary will have one of these tins in their next auction.
Wonder how that will influence the bidding on ebay?
Was that the intent here?

Not My Intent.
 

....No commercial. We announced the find a few weeks ago and I doubt anyone on this Board is on this one at $40k!

If I was doing a commercial I would have talked about our 2,500+ lot catalog coming out in a month which includes our best cross section yet of high end cards and memorabilia.
That would be an example of a commercial.

LOL :p

you never know how high it can go. it only takes two people with insane amounts of money that really want it. the 9.5 babe ruth signed baseball that went for 150,000 last time recently changed hands privately for 300,000. so no high price shocks me anymore. I think some of these high prices are stupid for what people are getting, but not shocking knowing the exponential nature of high value items versus the very high end collector who thinks nothing about dropping 100,000 for an item they really want.

Otherwise they just have to buy their 5th Lamborghini with the money. Got to spend it on something.

Doug,

Could you explain what you mean when you say the one you sold for close to 40k was "an anomaly"?

Anomaly
 

....by anomaly I meant I don't believe that when a piece sells one time for a big price that you can depend on this being the new price.

Example the exact same Cobb tin we sold for $35,850 sold in REA in 2005 for $10,550. After this the guy offering the piece on EBay (which is a superior example) asked what I thought his was worth...my estimate was $25 to $30k. I just didn't believe because one sold once for $35k that it established a new price. Especially when one less guy needs one now!

Oh one other thing....
 

.....the one that sold the Summer of 2007 for a similar amount was a far superior example. It was marketed and sold as the finest example extant and it was!

Doug,

Thanks for the response. I need clarification on something. Are you referring to the Ty Cobb Tin Mastro Auctions sold at their live auction at the 2007 National? The realized price on that (included the bp) was $33,600? The condition of that tin is a lot better than the one REA sold as lot 68 in their 2005 auction, something that can be easily seen if one is to go on the auction archives in the Legendary and REA websites and compare the images. Are you saying those two tins are in fact one and the same?

Clarification...
 

...no I am saying the one that sold in 2007 for $33,600 is in my opinion the finest example known.

The one that sold in REA in 2005 for just over $10k is the one Legendary just sold in February for $35k.

Hope that makes sense.

if the one sold in feb. was a lesser example and sold for nearly the same price as the better example that sold a few years ago, that tells me that these tins are quickly selling for more even though their condition is less.

that points to prices rising quickly. there is never a static number of collectors interested in a certain type of collecting. new members come aboard all the time, otherwise once these tin collectors die there would never be any new guys who collect tins? It depends on who wants one now and might not want to wait until the next example comes about, and who knows how much it will go for then.

we saw honus wagner cards continue to climb the stratosphere, babe ruth 9.5 graded signed ball just double in price from 150,000 to 300,000 in a short time, 1927 yankees signed photo (pipgras estate) smash through the ceiling, along with a christy mathewson signed ball go for 150 grand, the grade 10 wayne gretzky rookie went for 96000 this year, up almost 20 percent over what it went for just a short time ago. I don't see prices going down. if someone found a box of 100 of these in their closet maybe prices would be surpressed for a long time, but 2 new examples on the market wouldn't do any more damage than 2 or 4 new examples of wagner if they came to light. they still wouldnt come available for auction at a sufficient enough frequency to placate the collectors who want to place bids.

it wouldnt surprise me if this tin smashed the previous record.

Item now has a picture with current newspaper under it. It appears to be the real thing.

50K...reserve has been met...it looks like this tin will sell! IT definitely seems this poor economy...and impending double dip recession has produced some amazing new highs in prices realized for bb cards and collectibles...
AMAZING!

Yes, what a beautiful piece in that photo. Incredible shape. Im predicting 55K plus will be final number

Ah, but the bid appears to have been retracted. Looks like someone went fishing to see what the reserve was.