Same SGC 7 Mantle Sold 4 times in 15 months
 

I realize this is not PreWar (although close). But it is “state of the market” driven(ish). Please move if not appropriate in this section.

There is a very pretty SGC 7, 1952 Topps Mantle in the current Heritage auction. I was interested in comping the card, so I went onto VCP to see results of prior sales (pictured below). There are 5 reasonably current comps, but 4 of them are the same card. The card pictured below has (allegedly) been sold 4 times in 15 months, 3 times by PWCC (including a $550k BIN from the vault) and once in Goldin; the Memory Lane sale is a different (very nice but off center) Mantle. As you can see from the prices, the card is way down (almost 50%) from the initial $550k BIN. Plus, three sales by PWCC and then one by Goldin. What are your thoughts on this card?

I think the first PWCC BIN is a fake. I think the second PWCC sale is real. I bet the buyer is a pure investor/flipper because (1) they buy from PWCC, and (2) they resold the card less than 6 months later. I will go further and speculate that the buyer borrowed against cards in PWCC’s vault (or elsewhere) and was forced to sell because the value of the collateralized cards went down and interest rates were starting to go up; the Fed started increasing rates around the third sale. I expect a similar situation with the third buyer, for the sale reasons. Although I note that it was sold the 4th time in Goldin, not PWCC. That is either bc the 3rd buyer sent it to Goldin’s vault and/or they are a investor/flipper and not a collector, bc they buy from PWCC and sell through Goldin, which I think is different from the collector/investor who would buy and sell from REA and Memory Lane. Now the 4th buyer owns the very pretty card at about 50% of what it “sold” for 15 months prior and at $35k less than where the one in Heritage is at with a week left. Hopefully the card has more than a cup of coffee with this 4th buyer and it becomes a major part of someone’s collection.

Ryan, I agree with pretty much everything you wrote. And I think it's not only not a great look for the hobby, but suggests a troubling trend in high end cards.

Ryan it’s played musical chairs from auction house to action house...no good collector I’ve known who loves the cards sell it this many times in such a short period...I agree first sale def bs...whomever is left holding the bag maybe the same initial owner... it probably never really sold for cash.

I believe a lot of these sales in auction houses may have been Kabuki Theater Over the past 3 years...

I’m glad you did this post.

How do the AHs benefit from fake sales, Johnny?

Great post!

Good work and reporting.

Makes you wonder if someone bought the card as an investment got out of it before it was too late.

Who's going to get caught holding the bag or not have a chair when the music stops.

That Alan Parsons Project song title seems to fit. "The Turn of a Friendly Card"

"...the game never ends when your whole world depends on the turn of a friendly card"

Could you still enjoy the card if you paid $500K for it and knew it wasn't worth more than half that now? It's a beautiful card, but a sad commentary on the state of the "hobby".

What's next, rookie Fleer Jordans?

IF it's the consignor buying it back they may have to pay the vig. Otherwise, looks good on the resume, and price umbrella effect.

Lots of ways….increased revenue from new consignments coming in due to higher prices realized…high prices on the high grades caused a spike in the undercards….1-4’s in vintage 7’s and 8’s in modern say the 93 SP Jeter or 86 Fleer Jordan….could it be the investors drove up the price of the higher grade key cards to gain major accurate revenue from the undercards…I 100% believe the real money was possibly made on the undercards…I often wondered if one or multiple major auction houses allowed their investors/certain consignors the ability to win their cards back by paying only on the final sales bidder premium, not the actual hammer.

All of what you said is certainly plausible. But there are numerous other scenarios that are just as plausible, if not perhaps more likely.

As someone who deals with data for a living, it is often helpful to pretend that certain data points that came from a period of time where something extraordinary happened just didn't actually happen. At least when making projections about the future is the goal. As an example, if I were tasked with building a model to predict the hammer prices of future 52 Mantles at auction, I would overwrite all sales data from at least the first half of 2021, and use values that were projected through that time period instead, as something definitely happened that caused the market to spike artificially and then quickly return back to earth. I've had to do this numerous times when building models in the medical industry with respect to COVID data.

As you can see from the CL50 Index plot below (Card Ladder's 50 most "important" cards in the hobby index), there was a massive spike right around that time. The peak of this plot is on March 7, 2021. That Mantle SGC 7 sale of $550k was on March 11, 2021. So it easily could have been a valid sale where some poor sucker just lost his pants.

Cliff Notes: I would ignore that $550k data point. It may or may not have happened, but the fact that it is an outlier does not indicate that it is necessarily a fake sale. It is more helpful to disregard sales from this narrow window of time if trying to draw conclusions about long-term trends in the market.

Unless, of course, your goal is to try to figure out what happened during those few months, which I would argue is a completely different conversation (or perhaps this is precisely the conversation you're trying to have here... in which case, I'm all ears lol)

..

Here’s another good case study card the 59 Clemente PSA 9 Slusser Collection Sold in Heritage 1/27/23 for $56,400.....now less then 10 month past the card is Currently is in Leland’s....take a look at what other 9’s recently sold for over the past two years? Nowhere close to 56k and they’re arguably much better looking then the Slusser 9 which is badly centered for a PSA 9...this card would never grade a 9 today. Leland’s will bring in my opinion will bring the real true value number.

Lots of hot potato going around in this hobby it seems. Spend half a million bucks on a piece of cardboard if you want, but don't be surprised if it's worth way less than that in a short while.

Or, buy 500K worth of cards in 2017 and sell them for 1.5M in 2022.

I like your health of the hobby posts Ryan, very informative.
I'd be curious to see the numbers on a 14CJ Cobb leading up to the ones coming to market in LOTG, Heritage, and I think REA.

What truly sucks here is if there are false reports for final sale prices. Yes, call me naive.

It's certainly unethical to report false sales prices, but is it illegal?

Is there a difference between reporting false sales prices vs false auction prices? Or is it basically the same. To me, there's a difference.

Why not? Went on for months, even years, with Patrick Mahomes cards, NBA RPA’s, etc.

Throw together a ton of money, a high percentage of scumbags with no ethics, and essentially no deterrence. This is what you get. Welcome to the "hobby."

Maybe we need to establish some deterrence. How about starting to put together a case against those known to be involved and look to start putting people away similar to shill bidding that went on at AH’s over the years. I bet the next go around, these unscrupulous individuals will think twice or even three times before acting to artificially inflate market prices.

In my opinion consignors are still "protecting" their cards just as they always have and always will.

Regarding the Mantle, I am confident the 3rd sale (the second PWCC auction) was a real sale/transaction. Why do I say that? Because the card next popped up in Goldin, an unaffiliated competitor of PWCC. The fact that it was bought from PWCC and consigned to Goldin indicates it was the type of collector who is attracted to those venues - likely new-to-the hobby money who is chasing the trends. But I think that’s a real sale.

I highly doubt the first PWCC BIN vault sale was real. Why? First, why did it pop up in a PWCC auction mere months later?, (2) We know PWCC started defaulting on loans, bc of loans made, and had to sell collateral - this was a big time card and the more it really sells for the more they get (obviously), and (3) PWCC did A LOT of sketchy and unethical things on the way up; they would not turn ethical on the way down as the sky was falling.

I think the first “sale” was a fake intended to establish a comp. We know this happens and a struggling PWCC…. Well, enough said.

The second sale may also be a fake. I like that it’s an auction, so people bid on it. But if the hammer price was not high enough, PWCC certainly could have won its own card; there is no downside since they owe nobody money, they own the AH so no BP, and pay no taxes or shipping. Also, it shows up next in another PWCC auction (3rd sale) a few months later. Sure, it could be a bona fide consignment, but it just stinks like fish. Instead, I think it’s more likely that by the 3rd sale, perhaps things at PWCC are worse and they really had to let the card go at whatever price to pay creditors.

So, I am saying- the first sale is fake, the second sale was pwcc buying its own card to protect from what was considered a bad price - so another fake sale (sort of). The third sale is real. The fourth sale is real, but not sure why the dude sold it - either the seller was in real bad shape too or he though he stole it from pwcc (based on the prior two comps) and thought he would do real well selling it Goldin.

Hit the nail on the head from my fellow silicon valley tech bro lol. Throw out the outliers and you always have the true price

I don't follow PWCC, Goldin or other businesses that appear to have credibility challenges.

Are any of these companies on the verge of going bankrupt or having serious cash flow issues that could result in the companies going out of business?

This reads as a somewhat creative take to me. Accusing PWCC of being the owners themselves and creating their own fake sale to manipulate the market is a claim I would never entertain without evidence. It's just too far fetched. Especially when the data points already perfectly align with the plot I posted above of where the market was at that time. The sale date was literally right at the exact peak of that plot. Conspiracy theories are not needed to explain the outlier in this situation. The market itself perfectly explains the sale amount in this case.

Ryan’s logic all makes sense. The only thing I would question is whether or not PWCC was the actual owner of the card. I think more likely that it was owned by a BIG consignor and PWCC conspired with them to get the best price possible for it. So again, no BP, tax, shipping, etc. All they had to do was look the other way and the consignor keeps the card each time, including the initial sale, which could have easily been bid up by a hobby “friend” in order to establish a baseline price.

I understand that prices were crazy at that time but I attribute that to other big cards such as the ‘86 Fleer Jordan PSA 10 getting the same kind of treatment, not just collectors/investors spending wildly. Once the foundation was laid with enough BIG cards being manipulated, then I think the FOMO factor started to kick in and things just took off from there.

Ryan, excellent work here. This is the perfect example of why I always check vcp and due research into the history of cards before a purchase.

I am curious if we see other cards with a history like this. come out for sale in the next 12 months. Or will these “collectors” simply sit on it until conditions are better.

It’s been the Wild West for years.

I know that if a bidder doesn’t play in auction, that sale price is still listed.

I don’t believe so, there seem to be more consignors than ever.

What I am shocked at is that pwcc hasn’t rebranded yet. I would have thought they would have changed names or something sine the sale.

The first sale is suspect, but ahs run the show now. Don’t dare question it :(

Love these types of threads and the variety of thought process.

Also shows insights into using VCP and various auctions houses

It is a beautiful card and it is a shame it is not in someone’s collection

Looks trimmed.

A reminder. It is expressly LEGAL for a consignor to bid on their own items as long as the possibility is disclosed and the consignor pays for the item (of course paying for the item you consigned means just covering whatever commissions and BP the auction house was to receive)

That being said our terms and conditions expressly forbid consignors from bidding on their items. Of course it's very hard to catch someone who is even moderately clever, but we have booted one consignor that I remember.

Travis. This is one place that you and I disagree - the old guard pwcc. You seem to always defend them. They did a lot of sketchy stuff and it’s documented. We also know that the old pwcc was in financial trouble from their loan program. In my experience, if someone is sketchy in good times, they will be sketchy in bad times (often more so). We also know it’s common practice to post high, fake sales on cards one is looking to unload to establish a comp. Put that all together and I am more cynical

A few things to note: (1) PWCC was sold and is under new ownership. All of these Mantle sales happened before PWCC was sold. I have no reason to believe that new PWCC has done anything wrong, sketchy, improper. My guesses are related only to old PWCC. (2) I have no idea what really happened here. These are all guesses and I may be 100% incorrect. (3) When using VCP or any other resource, I almost always ignore BIN comps. Plus, you will see they are almost always higher than comps through auction. (4) All of these sales could be real, meaning money between 3rd parties changed hands. However, the temporal proximity, combined with PWCC’s involvement in 3 of them while PWCC’s economic condition started to turn, makes me highly dubious. (5) the Mantle in question is gorgeous and is a great example of an a great card. Compared to the same-graded Mantle in Heritage, which is similarly amazing looking, the Goldin sale looks like a good get for whoever bought it.

One final note about PWCC- they revolutionized a helped popularize the industry and they deserve big credit for that. They also grew the platform from a small eBay seller to a premier outfit and one of the largest auction houses. That is not easy and they deserve credit for that. Notwithstanding some very questionable actions, PWCC did some pretty impressive and important things

Not on PWCC. They only list sales that get paid for.

I agree regarding PWCC having done some sketchy things in the past. And yes, it appears as though they were experiencing financial pressure prior to being acquired by Fanatics and laying off 30% of their workforce.

Where we disagree is whether or not these facts make it likely that the $500k Mantle sale was faked and owned by PWCC as opposed to a customer. Remember, this sale occurred at the absolute peak of the market. PWCC was rolling in the dough at that time. The financial turmoil didn't begin until after the market had crashed and interest rates began to rise causing consigners to default in their loans. It wasn't until May 2023 when PWCC made the layoffs and were acquired by Fanatics. They were not feeling any financial pressures at all in March 2021.

How do you know?

Same SGC 7 Mantle Sold 4 times in 15 months
 

Yeah, valid question. Here’s a card that I was following a few weeks ago that “sold” and is represented as such currently in their history. Now it is live again on their weekly. Does seem like it almost went certainly unpaid for, unless someone just loves the thrill of the flip gamble.

ETA: Maybe they clean these things up eventually.


https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...ba88cfa0d1.jpg

I've been in the hobby since the early 80s and market manipulation is something I just consider part of the hobby.

I know there's many here that have been part of the hobby for prior decades, but "market makers" making/manipulating the market has been nothing but a fact of life for me my entire time in the hobby.

The artificial pumping of cards, the purposely withholding cards from the market to create artificial rarity (70s/80s minor league sets come to mind), and straight up price fixing by the majors (and using monthly Beckett guides to codify the fix) are things that have always been normal in my world.

I imagine many hobbies are like this, but my entire hobby experience has been a noticeable mix of great people and terrible people, some of those people playing both sides of great/terrible depending on the moment.

I still like my pictures of baseball dudes, though.

I'm still trying to understand why anybody would want to keep their cards in a "vault" unless they plan to resell it (and probably quickly). If you're a hobbyist/collector, why would you not want to have your cardboard in your hands?

What happens if the business that maintains possession of the card(s) loses the card? I realize that would be the last thing a business wants because then everyone would be scrambling to get their stuff out of the vault. Have there been many high profile cases of a vault company losing a card?

It seems this type of business model would be great for a flipper. But there also seems to be a lot of potential for monkey business.

How many vault businesses are there? The way I see it, if fleabay (I believe they have a vault service) drops out of the vault business, then it means there's a legitimate sustainability issue for the business model because they are a publicly traded company with potential for a lot of blow back if any monkey business is found out for them.

When I see fleabay get out of the vault business, then that will tell me the business model is probably flawed and that the other businesses are potentially/possibly/probably involved in some shady practices. For now I'm of the opinion that this vault venture is like anything else, you get the wrong element in it and you have recipe for fraud and abuse.

Almost everyone I know that uses vault services are either flippers, engaging in tax avoidance, or they're bidding low on a bunch of stuff they don't really want and vaulting them to flip later...not as many on the 3rd point as the first 2.

Nope, nothing nefarious. Nobody is passing the hot potato or trying to prop up sales of higher end cards

Betsy told me directly that sales only get posted once they get paid for. I also have a few friends who work there, and we've had these discussions multiple times. When a crazy sale happens, I try to get the inside scoop on whether or not it gets paid for. Whenever one doesn't get paid for it doesn't show up on their sold listings search results. Also, as I consigner, I can confirm this to be the case. I've had two cards not get paid for there since they launched their platform (and dozens that were paid for). As soon as a card gets paid for, I can see a change in my accounting page and then I can find it in their sales history page. But for the cards that went unpaid, they never showed up on the sales history page (I know because I kept checking because I was relying on those proceeds to fund another big purchase).

Is it possible that someone high up at PWCC could manipulate the system and fake a sale through a manual override? Sure, it's possible. If someone has direct access to the database, they could create an entry. But that's not how their system is set up by default. And I don't see any reason to assume that this is happening without evidence. And seeing a sale that seems high in retrospect, but which actually aligns perfectly with where the broader market was at the time, is not evidence.

Refusing to leap to assumptions that are unsupported by evidence is very out of vogue these days.

Something that happens quite regularly in this hobby is people looking for arbitrage opportunities. Vintage cards in BVG holders are often sold to someone hoping to cross it over to PSA or SGC and then flip it for a profit. I see this regularly on social media platforms, guys (often modern collectors) trying to move over to vintage land and attempting to bring their "flip game" with them. Most end collectors avoid cards in BVG slabs. At least in general. Surely there are some exceptions. But when I see a vintage BVG card being bought and resold shortly after, it does not raise any red flags to me, as that is easily explained by someone hoping to cross it over to PSA and PSA subsequently rejecting it. After which, they just try to cut their losses and resell it.

Of course Betsy is going to tell you that. You trust Betsy? Of course people who work there are not going to admit to fake sales. You should revise your post to, PWCC told me they don't do that.

Well here is another one by our PWCC….

1953 Topps Willie Mays SGC 8 sale reported by vcp $186,000 4/13

Now Same Card 2 weeks ago less than 6 months apart same card sells in PWCC for $99,000 so you tell me ??? Did the card drop $87,000 in less then six months or Was the first sale Puff and Fluff .

How long before you see this back up for sale this time it could be punted to another major or what the hell they may try it again…

Thoughts ��

man those are some narrow borders on that Mays...

I just don't see that. To me the picture looks a little big.:p:D

Yeah, the market really has dropped that much on some cards. I can’t say that those results are not believable.

Looking at other examples I'm probably just being paranoid, but that was my first impression.

Not that religion matters, but one of my friends who works there is a Mormon. I'm not religious, but in my experience, most Mormons care deeply about their integrity. And I would put his integrity over anyone else's I've met in this hobby. And he's had numerous opportunities to be able to prove himself otherwise, yet never took one.

Also, perhaps you missed the part of my post where I said I also witnessed this fact firsthand from my own sales history. When my cards went unpaid for, they did not show up in the sales history section of the website. Cards do not post there until paid for. I can attest that this is true firsthand.

It could be trimmed, but I wouldn't say necessarily. The Mays in particular has extremely narrow borders to begin with in comparison to the rest of the set.

Mays borders are fine, the card is beautiful, to me it’s a strong Nrmt-Mint properly graded 8. It’s the second sale that was not reported that was the thrust of my post.