If you mean did Al Rosen rob the original owner, I guess I would have to give a qualified "no". I'm sure he made money on the find, but not an outrageous amount, and he was taking a risk with his money. He had to quickly turn the cards he had acquired, and that meant paying for advertising in the trade publications, on top of the price he paid to acquire them. His main risk was that by dropping all of these cards on the market at once he would water down the prices he could expect to receive. Which I guess is initially what happened with the Mantle. So he was blowing out 1952 Topps Mantles. That is an unbelievable consequence to realize at this point in history. If he could have held them long term, and sell them off slowly, he would have made much more money. But his business model was always to buy and then sell quickly. One article I read said he borrowed money to make the purchase. If that's true then that would mean he needed to sell the cards in order to pay off his lenders.
|