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Spiders, Mickey Mantle, Prince’s Guitar, and the Tools of the Collectibles War

Heritage Auctions takes on Christie's. Again.
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Photo via Heritage Auctions
Photo via Heritage Auctions

My baseball card collection was focused, primarily for aesthetic reasons, around bird-related teams. The Baltimore Orioles. The Toronto Blue Jays. My hometown didn’t have a Major League team, so I had no loyalties. Back then, if the Toledo Mud Hens had been a farm team for, say, the Detroit Tigers, with their New York Times Old English-style logo, it may have been a different story. But the Minnesota Twins? Please.

My grandfather and father kept all of their cards organized by team and year in hundreds of old flip-top cigarette boxes that were carefully stacked on basement shelves. I’m sure there were tobacco-scented treasures hidden among them from the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s. I’m sure my bubble gum-scented, rubber-banded 1980s shoebox collection did not. So several years ago, cleaning out a closet in my tiny bungalow, I finally decided it was time to pass the cards along to a single male friend with a cavernous, empty new house to add to his treasured collection. He, at least, was impressed by the color-coded rubber bands.

Collections are mostly about love. Or nostalgia. Or obsession. But sometimes they can actually be about money. Dallas happens to be home to Heritage Auctions, the leading auction house in a number of collectibles categories, including sports memorabilia, rare coins, and comic books. In fact, five of the top ten highest-selling sports collectibles in 2016 all came from Heritage, including a 1909–1911 Honus Wagner card, a 1963 Topps Pete Rose, a 1916 Sporting News Babe Ruth, and a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle. The credit for the record-breaking Honus Wagner card went to Goldin Auctions in New Jersey, which sold a card for $3.2 million in October, earning the seller more than $1 million in a brief three years. Around 60 Wagner cards exist; they are prized, like most valuable collectibles, not so much because of demand for the individual but because of a limited supply due to a quirk of history. In Wagner’s case, it was allegedly the fact that he opposed smoking, or never gave permission for the use of his image, either or both of which caused the sponsoring tobacco company to stop producing his card. Mickey Mantle has a crazier story: in 1960, Topps Co. needed to clear out some warehouse space, so they dumped three garbage trucks worth of cards in the Atlantic Ocean. And presto, Mantle Mania 60 years later.

Top 10 Highest-Selling Sports Collectibles of 2016:

1. The Laws of Base Ball: $3,263,246, SCP Auctions
2. 1909-11 Honus Wagner: $3,120,000, Goldin Auctions
3. 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle: $1,135,250, Heritage Auctions
4. 1909-11 Honus Wagner: $776,750, Heritage Auctions
5. 1963 Topps Pete Rose: $717,000, Heritage Auctions
6. 1916 Blank Back Sporting News Babe Ruth: $717,000, Heritage Auctions
7. 1909 American Caramel Joe Jackson: $667,189, SCP Auctions
8. 1968 Topps Nolan Ryan, PSA Gem Mint 10: $612,359, Heritage Auctions
9. Muhammad Ali autographed fight gloves from “The Fight of the Century,” the 1971 Bout vs. Joe Frazier: $594,000, Goldin Auctions
10. 1917-21 “Shoeless” Joe Jackson bat: $583,500, Christie’s

Beanie Babies may have long gone bust, but many other collectibles are booming. Which means new players are trying to get into the collectibles game and existing ones are branching out. Heritage Auctions realized that there was a growing market in luxury collectibles and hired Matthew Rubinger, a twenty-something millennial who started dealing in luxury handbags for his mother and her friends when he was 16, to launch a new luxury accessories business group shortly after the wunderkind graduated from Vanderbilt in 2010. During Rubinger’s first year, Heritage sold $4 million worth of used handbags.

It wasn’t long before Christie’s took note, hiring away Rubinger, and most of his luxury accessories staff, in 2014. Heritage filed suit in June of that year, claiming more than $40 million in damages for the alleged corporate raid. Rubinger seems happy with the switch. He says his highlight of 2016 was the sale at Christie’s in Hong Kong of an Hermes Himalaya Birkin bag, featuring Nilo crocodile and 245 diamonds, for $300,000.

The collectibles war between the titans continues to heat up. This time the battlefront is technology, not staff. Last month, Heritage filed a new lawsuit alleging that Christie’s was using “spiders” to “scrape” Heritage’s archives for images and content, which they were re-posting wholesale on their new Collectrium service to make it look more robust and drive new collectibles collectors into Christie’s auction web. Fake accounts were used to access information, including one “Jason Bourne of Kathmandu.” As of the time of the filing, Heritage claimed 2.7 of Collectrium’s 11+ million listings actually belong to Heritage, including a one-of-a-kind listing for Prince’s custom Yellow Cloud guitar.

Will Jason Bourne of Kathmandu emerge with Prince’s guitar? Will Heritage have the next high-grossing handbag, leaving Christie’s with sloppy Chanel seconds? We’ll have to wait for the collectibles dust to settle to find out. Meanwhile, Heritage auctions will next offer a mint condition Topps 1958 Mickey Mantle card for auction in March. Get your paddle ready. Or just check your shoeboxes.

 

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