Insane signings prices at the Sun Times show
 

I just can't justify some of the signing prices listed out on the site, $200 for Strasburg!!!

http://www.mountedmemoriesshows.com/...&criteria=1294

Is this standard for this show, or are they high to more experienced collectors.

Only $59 for a Tim McCarver! :eek:

PSA/DNA will be offering a flat rate of $75.00 to authenitcate one item signed by all of the 1980 Hockey Players.
Please note all aoutgraphs need to be on one item, after you have your item authenticated in the autograph area you can take your item to the
PSA booth and get a letter of authenticity. This ticket is only available through Mounted Memories either pre-order or at the ticket
counter at the show.

this is RIDICULOUS. you need to want this if you sign at show?

And why won't Jim Craig signed a photo w Vlad Tretiak in it? the prices are asinine. If people go there and buy even a few signatures, there'll be nothing left for the dealers, at least public money:rolleyes:

Silly, baseballs are $20 on ebay with PSA. Do I want to pay an extra $40 to watch him sign it... I think not

It seems more and more the in-person signings are priced for "the experience" or if you need the person on a group item. It seems that for almost any regular on the show circuit, the secondary market pricing is much less on standard items such as signed balls or photos.

I get that, but the prices are still way too high, your pretty much paying this premium because there is far more overhead in an athlete signing at these shows. How much of that $59 does Tim McCarver get? $20? Flat fee?

Scott, I certainly understand the point and in a perfect world who could argue it?

But, if you were going to drop $500 or so on a group signed item, wouldn't you want to protect its resale value to some degree? Certainly you don't need PSA for your enjoyment and validation, but when the day comes to sell it, chances are you'll take a bath on it if you try to sell yourself with no independent authentication. Love it or hate it, that's the reality of the market.

I think about the thousands and thousands I dropped on show signings back in the 90s. I KNOW all the stuff is good. But if I want to turn it, I'll get pennies on the dollar based on MY word alone. I wish there was some way I could have protected the investment back then for as little as $7 a signature.

I know a guy who took photos of himself holding the signed item in front of the player, before and after. But that still doesnt do it for some people, but before holos, thats the best you can do.

Just checked out the pricing...

What is most disturbing to me is that there is now a hefty fee for "photo op" for almost all guests. Does this mean you have to pay to take a photo with your own camera or is "photo op" strictly if they take a photo for you? Will guests pose for free if you are taking a pic or is that now forbidden? It used to be a photo was part of the deal and included in the price of the autograph ticket.

:eek:

Amazing how Strasburg charges more than a first ballot HOF'er, Chipper, and pretty much everyone else

Strasburg charges so much because they're going to have to shut him down after about 160 signatures.

;)

oh no he di-int!

booooooooooooooooooyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Very simple solution for this kind of stuff......don't participate......No demand.....prices drop.

Well were aren't going to say his number for sure yet, just have to play it by ear and speak with management about how they feel on the situation

At that price, I'll take 2 dozen! :D

I'd pay Tim McCarver $59 to sit out the next few innings. In my view, that's a heck of a deal.

Rickey....
 

At least Rickey Henderson is still only charging the price of 1 autograph ticket to sign game used items. He was charging a 2 ticket price up until 2 years ago. What a deal at $300 to sign a bat, instead of $600. Rickey realized that Rickey was asking way too much, I guess.

$300 for Shaq!!!
I can see Bruce Springsteen three times for that much money and get 11 hours of great music. Of course that has no resale value, but how much resale value does a Shaq autograph have after you paid $300 for it?
Who the hell there cares about the future of the hobby? The kids, the lower budget collector. That price list is insane.

JimStinson
 

Proves.................for sure "THERE IS AN ASS FOR EVERY SEAT"

I go to the Suntimes show every year in November and March and it never fails the autograph lines are always long and prices are out of sight. I just can't believe people pay those prices. Strasburg is the flavor of the month so I know those lines will be long no matter what the cost. Most of the time you can get anyone of those guys online for cheaper if your looking for a basic item like a ball or bat but if you need it on a special item you have to pay if you want it. If everyone refused to pay the high prices then maybe it would get lowered. That has been the talk for years but it will never happen. If Micheal Jordan came to Chicago for a show and prices were 1000.00 for an 8x10 there would be a line out the door. Just the way it is.

Insane prices... but I kind of want to get someone to take my Chipper "Last Homestand" program to get signed, as I was at his next to last home game.

JimStinson
 

Paul McCartney paid $48.6 million for THIS !!!!! So maybe the signatures at the show are a bargain

JimStinson
 

Compared to a well known politician who paid by the hour. I think its cheaper to lease

thats a bunch of baloney, we sell lots of boxing on our word and get the same as if we had a psa or jsa cert, and the cert cost money out of our pocket so we would make less. i bought an early muhammad ali cut for a good deal and ended up losing money because i dropped 120 to get a james spence LOL that killed my profit margin when i could have sold the thing for the same price and kept the 120 in my pocket. dont believe the baloney that you need a psa or jsa cert to get the big bucks. the real collectors can tell its real and will pay for quality, they dont need a psa or jsa crutch.

This is a post about crazy prices for autographs, not a thread on how much TPAs suck in some peoples eyes.

he's just saying that you dont *need* to have something authenticated to ensure good resale.

you can save the money you would have spent on authentication.

So you do make money buying and selling autographs?

In this post, you state, " i am not an authenticator, a dealer, and i haven't made ten cents in the hobby..."
http://www.net54baseball.com/showpos...9&postcount=61

And in this post, you state, "I am very experienced in boxing autographs, that makes me a pro in that sense of the word. I haven't made it my profession that i make a living or part of a living off of..."
http://www.net54baseball.com/showpos...5&postcount=89

Which is it?

Your factual inconsistencies aside, the fact remains that the average collector looking to sell will generally obtain higher prices for his material if it is authenticated by one of the accepted third party authenticators. Certainly there are exceptions such as Richard Simon, Jim Stinson and some others, but for an otherwise unknown collector selling his wares, the general rule applies. If you are unwilling to accept this reality and prefer to live in a world as you WISH it was, so be it.

Am I new, but I have no clue who this is

Elliot Spitzer's Waterloo

Jim,you always have the best pictures!!

We seem to be talking baseball here. You have convinced me that boxing is a different beast, one that TPAs are worthless on, but that is because I don't give a crap about boxing and haven't done any reading about beyond this board.

In baseball, those TPAs make a resale difference. I've seen it. I don't like it, but I've seen it.

Back to the original topic, I agree these prices are absolutely nuts, especially for guys that really haven't accomplished much yet in the grand scheme of things. The value of prospect autographs/cards makes no sense to me. I mean, how many HOF pitchers are charging $200 for an auto? Even if Strasburg does great the rest of the way, he will have signed enough autographs to likely be in the $80-$90 range at the best and it wouldn't even have HOF inscription.

I guess I can't quite see the draw to seeing a guy sign it for you either. Granted there are a few guys that are a treat to be around. Johnny Bench was in a good mood when he was up here in MN for a show and Harmon Killebrew always made you feel like you were his grandson but most guys make the whole process very transactional. Pete Rose for example appeared to be pretty hung over and crotchety, even to a kid in front of me (that paid for an autograph). The point is, there are only a few guys I think I would be pretty tempted to go get in person (paying the inflated price) to see them and my guess is I would walk away disappointed and with a lighter wallet.

I am at the point where there has to be a very good reason to bother with an in-person signing. Like an item I have been working on for a long time. That is the only way I can even conceive of it. And those grip and grin "encounters" seem so contrived and seamy that I want no part of it.

JimStinson
 

Just my "take" on this based on passed experience. I hope I am wrong about this but the whole contemporary autograph scene seems to be heading in the same direction as a phenomena I witnessed when I was actively doing baseball card shows in the 1980's.

I never had much to do with baseball cards except when I was a kid, but I'd set up at shows with my display cases full of vintage autographs. Most of the time I was the only autograph dealer in the room and would always get alot of "Oh's and Wow's" from people viewing what I had to sell but very little in the way of actual sales. I felt like a museum curator.

In the meantime the card dealers on either side of me , had STACKS AND STACKS of unopened boxes of baseball cards , their biggest complaint was that "They couldn't get enough product" and my biggest complaint was being afraid one of those 20 foot high stacks was going to fall on me and kill me.
I watched throughout the course of a 3 day show , customers actually loading up HANDTRUCKS full of unopened boxes of cards and wheeling them out to their cars while talking about the cards being an "INVESTMENT" in their kids college fund or retirement, or stuff like that.

I became friends with some of the card dealers and innocently asked "What are they buying so many boxes of cards for ?" I got alot of different answers but basically the condensed common theme was this.......If you had bought boxes of Topps or Bowman cards in the 1950's and then never opened them and sat on them for 30 years they would be WORTH A FORTUNE ! So the theory was to buy up all the 1980's cards you could find and just stack them in the basement and wait 30 years and they too would be worth a fortune. WRONG !!!!

At the end of the show the card dealers would ask me how I did and I'd check my wallet and tally my autograph sales and would usually end up with about $150.00 , They would laugh almost to tears. I'd ask them the same question and the numbers were staggering the guy to the right of me took in $7,000 and the guy to the left maybe $8,000 and I would shake my head and wonder why I wasn;t a baseball card dealer.

Well, most of us know what happened to all those baseball cards pristine sitting in their unopened boxes 30 years later.
Slowly I've begun to see many of the same parallels happening with autographs , I shutter when I hear the word "investment" , I'm asked all of the time "What will this autograph be worth 10 years from now ? 20 years from now ?" and my answer is usually always the same "How the heck do I know....smile, maybe if you are lucky you might be able to trade your whole collection for a cup of coffee and a loaf of bread".

But I'm afraid many of todays collectors (and dealers) somewhere along the line got stuck in the same mind set as those same card "investors" mentioned above. Buy it, slab it, stash it away for future "investment". Because its SURE to be worth more someday. Money is nice , to be sure , And collecting autographs is great fun , for a fact. But if your collecting today is motivated by "whats it gonna be worth tomorrow" well .....just think about those unopened boxes of baseball cards from the 1980's and 1990's that were mass produced to supply an artificial demand. Or that athlete sitting at a table somewhere signing 1,000 autographs a day every single weekend and maybe the two comparisons have something in common.
__________________________________
Buying and Selling Vintage autographs for over three decades
jim@stinsonsports.com

Great comment Jim and I agree with you completely, but here is my take on what you said. Those boxes of cards sitting there having no value is 100% because of the market at the time. You are right, people bought those cards by the hand truck because of the 50s and 60s and the somewhat perceived value of those cards based on scarcity. So people bought cards, and that increased demand. Card companies saw those hand trucks of cards as potential dump trucks of cash, so they kept printing cards, hence flooding the market with cards and lowering the perceived value of them. We still see this today, and that is why card companies have added inserts to "raise the stakes" so to speak because they sell so many boxes.

Autographs are different in that aspect because there isn't "mass production" of them (we are talking thousands of cards a minute), the worst you get are guys like Rollie Fingers who sign 15 times a year, lowering the value of his signature because of the sheer volume in the market. But for most players, they sign once or twice a year and their "value" of their signature stays the same, until they die, and based on volume, typically rises again, or at least levels out.

Its my 2 cents but I see a difference between the 2. The issue I have is that the figures to sign at these shows is grotesquely higher than the value of that person's signature, even including overhead for everything because the agency that represents the player wants a little more on the top.

FWIW, Willie Mays does his own thing, no agency, rarely appears at huge shows, and charges $100 for his autograph, straight profit for him with some kick back to the venue he is signing at. No chance in hell I pay $200 for Strasburg or $80 for David F'in Freese...

Hi Jim
I can’t help but wonder if my use of the word investment in a previous post is what you may be alluding to in yours. :)

First, I agree with you 100%.

I don’t see my hobby as an “investment” … that’s what stocks and mutual funds are for in my opinion.

That said, given the high prices these days, it seems wise to me to protect the price paid in some way. Speaking for myself, the hobby is not an investment, but I do hope that they have some resale value down the road when the time comes to pass them along. We are no longer talking about $12 autographs.

If I was inclined to pay $175+ for an in-person Stephen Strasberg signature (I’m NOT!), it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to get a PSA or JSA sticker for $7… so if I want to sell it in 5 years, I can get a few bucks back out of it. The reality is that without it – or without a known reputation like yours – the average Joe Collector will get pennies on the dollar.

Certainly some experienced and educated collectors know the difference and don’t rely on TPAs to make purchase decisions. But, what seller thinks it’s a good idea to restrict his potential audience only to one part of the collecting community? If the TPA provides reassurance to the casual collector, then you are greatly expanding the number of potential customers, or in an auction scenario, bidders.

I'm not so sure I agree with this. I suspect autographs are being produced in mass quantities (and I'm not even counting the endless forgeries that water down the market).

Jeter may only do one or two private signings a year, but he is cranking them out for the Steiner warehouse year round. Between private signings, direct deals with dealers, etc., etc., supply will far outweigh demand for the majority of today's players (and retired ones on the circuit).

In my opinion, if the person was alive and signing in 1990 or after, there more supply than you can imagine. Of course there are rare exceptions, but not many.

I agree with your statement, I was just comparing it to baseball cards in the 80s, where the stuff was everywhere..

Totally agree on signatures from people signing 1990 forward there is crazy supply for.

I guess my underlying thought is, unless Strasburg goes on to be better than Nolan Ryan (and even if he does), you will never recoup the $175 you spend on his auto, even with the COA. And I bet if he does end up better than Nolan Ryan, his auto on the circuit in the future will only go up. Would not be surprised that in 10 years, every star on the circuit will ask $150+ for their autos.

Also...if you pay the extra fee for a TPA ....you have to assume that authentication will actually add value later down the road and not become a worthless piece of paper......as in GAI .... which once was a top rated company too.

I had a friend who did just that - he had a separate closet in his house stacked to the ceiling with wax boxes of 1987 Topps. It was the sickest thing I ever saw.

I've mailed in a few items over the years to have signed. I'll only send an item that I feel I can get my money back out of, somewhere down the line.

As long as you're comfortable with your own authenticating skill, you really can't beat eBay. That's where most of my autos come from. I've picked up dozens of cards/flats for $25-40 that would cost approx. $130 to get signed via mail in.

I have a friend I work with who is an old time celebrities autograph collector (mostly non-sport, but some sport), and he just enjoys going to conventions, signings and celebrity parties. That's entertainment for him. If there's a local celebrity book signing or gala, he'll attend. He has a photo album of him with all sorts of celebrities, from Dizzy Dean to Linda Lovelace. He's probably been collecting for 40 years and hasn't sold a thing-- so the resale value isn't a pressing issue.

So there's a normal collector who's in it for more than just the autograph.

A humorous thing is he has an executive position with a small but respected neighborhood non-profit playhouse (I volunteer there, which is how I know him). His job position is totally and completely unrelated to his autograph collecting, but I told him it would sound good to bidders if/when he went to sell his collection. He's never met anyone famous through his job, but 'from the estate of a playhouse executive' would sound like great provenance for celebrity autographs to many bidders.

JimStinson
 

BINGO ! and let me add to that by saying if it is worth $300.00 to anyone to meet Shaq and get his autograph (Or any other celebrity) Go for it, Nothing wrong with that at all. As long as you collect what you like and have a good time doing it

At this point, I'd settle for $500 since Piazza rarely signs. It's driven me nuts. The last time the guy refused my money saying he needed to get his jersey's signed for his store.

JimStinson
 

$500.00 for a Piazza ? Don't they have a Dominos or Papa John's nearby ?

prices
 

I think it has more to due with the value of the current guys time and less about how much the autograph is worth. These guys get paid millions of dollars a year and there time is what is valuable. They want to sign but to sit down for 2 hours and sign autographs when they could be getting a appearance fee for speaking commercials whatever just not worth it at a price that would make the autographs lower. Older guys who did not make millions but may have comparable stats see these inflated prices and believe they deserve higher prices as well. Often these are misguided and the market adjusts itself.

Hahaha, I live in Miami. Even if my neighbors knew how to make a pizza from those training videos they will never make it right.

You need to purchase the $59 photo op for the complete McCarver autograph experience.:eek:

"FWIW, Willie Mays does his own thing, no agency, rarely appears at huge shows, and charges $100 for his autograph, straight profit for him with some kick back to the venue he is signing at. No chance in hell I pay $200 for Strasburg or $80 for David F'in Freese..."

Isaac,

I don't believe that Willie Mays has signed for $100 in quite a while. Plus, because of him losing his vision and health issues, his sig has become pretty sketchy at best.

I'd have to agree with you on the price of the two guys that you mentioned. If you pay those prices you will absolutely own them forever, IMHO.