MASTRO AUCTION

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Posted By: Jay Miller 

Wow! Let me repeat WOW! I have never seen a more impressive grouping, with the possible exception of the Copeland Auction, of vintage material. The bidding public apparently agrees. I was following it on line and it took exactly 40 minutes for the auction to top $1 million in bids. Pretty impressive! This auction still has several weeks to go and I can't wait for the next catalog to come out with the remainder of the Rich Egan collection. For the newbies on the board--get yourself a copy of this catalog and put it in your reference collection.

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Posted By: david

jay
care to speculate on how high the pcl oj's will go. five figures at least?

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Posted By: Jay Miller

Not a clue. The only Old Judge California League cards sold at auction that I know of were three that were sold by Lew Lipset in a private auction several years ago. They were lower grade, like the ones in the Mastro auction, and the group went for something like $30,000. However, one data point hardly makes a curve.

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Posted By: david

my best estimate would be between 15-20 for each one, even in lower grade. this of course would be the price outside of the insane bidding that sometimes happens in these auctions. it would be nice to know what other treasures on in the collection.

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Posted By: Julie

Is that most of us will not be able to afford the things we
want. Oh well, at least we know where to consign our best stuff! Look at that (gorgeous) N172 Delahanty with writing on the back--already!

$1400 for an ex Glasscock and and ex Andrews (that's $1400 TOGETHER, not individually!)from the N162 set from Terry Knouse. Not TOO shabby! THANK YOU TIK&TIK!

(will post scans--of course, how do you stop me?) when they arrive)

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

I just hope that the 1915 Babe Ruth PSA 7 card goes for $50,000+ ... since I have one the same grade that has MUCH BETTER CENTERING.

A PSA 8 went for $110,000 in the last auction ... so hopefully everyone will want to overpay for this one and drive the value of mine up!

Then again ... since I will never sell mine ... what does it matter?

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Posted By: Tom Boblitt

Mastronet's decision, as stated by someone else earlier, to list 350+ 'E' cards in a single lot. With the current craze on E cards, I can't help but think they are leaving some of both their and Egan's money on the table. If they were split into smaller, set or player related lots, I would certainly think that they would bring more money although they will bring some serious coin anyway. Unless.........they are lotting based on what they know that their collector base is looking for. That would be catering to the high dollar dudes (that never happens--right?).

I think we will all be equally stunned when we see the December catalog as I was told there's a similar lineup (albeit slightly different) from the Egan collection for that auction.

On a tangent subject......how many more of these EGAN-esque collections (other than Jay....) are out there to be sold? I think the current market is bringing some of these old-time collectors out given the huge dollars some of these rarities are bringing. Anyone with any ideas on that?

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Posted By: andy becker

...as tom. how many collections like egan's are out there that have not yet been liquidated with the dramatic increase in price over the last 25 years?

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Posted By: Marc S.

You could make arguments for many of the lots you put together.

Basically - at the end of the day, if it costs Mastro $1,000 per page in production, overhead and other sundry costs, for them to split up a lot, they need to realize an extra $3,000 or more in bids in the sum of the broken up lots than the big lots.

I'm sure they also have other considerations as in size of auction (too big can be messy) and perhaps special deals. For example, if Egan is paying 0% commission (e.g. no seller's fees) on such a large consignment, Mastro has to realize $7,000 or so in extra bids to make up the fees - not to mention the simple fact that if a small seller's fee is negotiated (even zero), at that point, Mastro will be looking to minimize costs to realize greater returns.

I'm sure there is a lot of negotiations with bigger consigners like this - and there is probably some give and take in both directions. Luckily - with some of these big lots, dealers will often see the profit potential in the breakup and do just that.

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Posted By: Jay Miller

The auction has been open for less than three days and it has already topped $4 Million. Could we be seeing a new auction record?

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Posted By: david

why does mastro set their opening bids so low? in most auctions the opening bid is usually somewhere below 2-3x what the expected final price is, but mastro sets them so low that i think in most cases the early bidding is done by people with no intention of winning the auction.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

David, I was wondering the same thing ... and I think there are several reasons (psychologically) for doing it.

One, obviously it peaks someone's interest in an auction when they are the "leader" for a particular item at a great price ... even if the lead is short-lived. They become emotionally attached to the item during that time period ... and then fight for the right to own it later.

Second, the way these auctions work is that the ONLY people who can BID on an item after the auction expires are the people who have ALREADY bid on it. Therefore, it benefits Mastro to have 22 people bid on an item rather than just 4 ... because that means that there will be MORE people at the end who can fight for the right to own every item.

Third, and related to #2, allowing people to bid very LOW amounts allows people to place a LOT of LOW BIDS on a lot of items. Thus ... if they LOSE OUT on one item at the very end of the auction ... they are STILL ALIVE on every other item on which they bid. This benefits Mastro MUCH MORE than having someone with all their eggs in one basket.

In other words ... if I have $50,000 to spend and I have to bid it ALL on the Honus Wagner T206 card JUST TO START the bidding ... then I would NOT be able to place any other bids until I have LOST this auction for sure. Well...if I was the "leader" for Honus until after the deadline and THEN got outbid ... I would have $50,000 to spend and NO WAY to bid on anything else!!

SO ... my strategy is to bid $100,000 on ALL of the high dollar items and then force everyone else to spend ALL of their money on these items so that I can get all of the little things I want! (just kidding, of course!)

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Posted By: Jon Canfield

In line with what Hal said, about 2 years ago, I bid on a brand new Ferrari Modena. It had 35 minutes left in the auction and the top bid was $32,000 with NO RESERVE. I OWNED that car for about 19 minutes. It ended up selling for around $200,000. Saddest day of my life - I was already informing the women on my dorm floor I was about to own a Ferrari!

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Jon went from "MAGNUM P.I." to "MAGNUM M.L." in a flash!