Posted By:
davidcyclebackYou want to be buying within your area of experience and knowledge, but you also want to have
an open mind when buying bulk lots. If your mentality is "I love T206s, so I only want to buy a
bulk lot of T206s" or "I want to resell only A's lots as they're favorite team" you likely will overpay. Notice that my
mentioned group lot included a variety of memorabilia, including stuff I would never buy to add to my personal collection.
Though, despite wanting to cast a wider than personal taste net, you probably don't want to buy a $10K Civil
War collection if you are ignorant about Civil War memorabilia. Even if it's all authentic, you may find
out you overpaid. If you want to buy a $500 Civil War collection that might be different story, especially
if you wish to see how that kind of stuff resells and you think it would be neat to look at the stuff.
I once bought a giant 1930s-60s football news service photo collection that cost me several thousand. Beyond
reselling, boy did I learn about vintage college and pro football reading those captions and looking at those
pictures one by one. I learned about old players I knew little about, like Marshall Goldberg, Emil
Sitko, Steve Owen. It was an education. The best photo in the collection, and one I didn't know I'd receive,
was an original 1930s Harold Edgerton strobascopic (ultra-high speed) photo of former Ohio State All-American
Wes Fesler kicking a football. Edgerton was an M.I.T. professor who produced those famous high speed photos, like
of milk dripping, bullet going through a card (below) and atomic blasts (below). He had invented a high speed
camera that took the first ever unblurred images of a turbine engine running and a hummingbird's
wings flapping. Before his invention, no human in history had ever seen unblurred a hummingbird's wings in flight.
The Wesler photo was only vintage 1930s example of his photography I've seen to this day, and just
happened to be tucked in with wire photos of Gayle Sayers and Vince Lomardi.
