Sports Illustrated Blog #70 – Current Hobby Trends – What’s Going On?

Welcome to my Sports Illustrated/TIME magazine blog – Your collector’s guide to the latest hobby updates and insight into what’s trending now.

Anytime even a minuscule piece of hobby movement is detected, the hobby tries to gage the what, the why, and the short and long term effects/meaning of the change.  Not much different than the stock market.

 But there’s always an information communication lag in the hobby market so there is always time for the very astute to make a buy or sell ahead market change.  And they do – this is where fortunes are made or lost.

But my readers fear not – following the lemmings is one path – we choose another.  The information you read in these blogs is ahead of the market and is based on actual firsthand participation and the most up to date ACTUAL trends as investors dictate.  Short of a crystal ball, this is as good as it gets. 

The first thing we take note of – CGC magazine delivery times.  They’ve moved out from 2 months to 5 -6 months.  Since I began grading SI’s 5-6 years ago, CGC’s lead times have remained relatively stable.  This latest change is not incremental – it’s significant.  Significant changes mean something.  In this case, I believe it means our mag hobby is growing and the only grader out there is having trouble keeping up.  Our popularity is growing and when demand exceeds availability, good things happen to those in possession.

For months I have been predicting a market jump.  I believe everything we are doing in the graded magazine hobby is primed for significant movement.  Jordan memorabilia – on the leading edge of the collectible hobby, in my opinion, is a most obvious indicator.  Six months ago, you would have been delighted to sell your 86 Fleer PSA 10 for $25000.  Two weeks ago, same would have been true at $100,000.  The latest Jordan public auction has now hit $785,000.  There is significant meaning here.  Other peripheral memorabilia will follow.  Because I write about SI’s, that is where my interest lies and I am predicting the graded magazine market will follow this trend, if not EXCEED it.

One more thing to note.  High grade, vintage, newsstand SI’s are not an unlimited commodity.  They are not like Jordan 86 Fleer 10’s where the population is in the 100’s.  In many cases, the most in demand covers are a population of one.   That is the type of opportunity that builds fortunes.

I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of TIME and SI magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting.

Great collecting to you and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/TIME!

For a complete review of previous blogs, please visit 

www.sportsillustrated98.com

Sports Illustrated Blog #69 – Finally SI Swimsuits ranked – Popularity and Hardest to Find.

Welcome to my Sports Illustrated/TIME magazine blog – Your collector’s guide to the latest hobby updates and insight into what’s trending now.

Swimsuits – Oh Yeah!!!  Finally – let’s address one of SI’s greatest successes but also one of their biggest mysteries.  Here’s an opportunity. 

Early swimsuits in newsstand collector grade are extreme hard to find.  Don’t believe me??? – check out ebay and auction completed sales.  There aren’t any – or very few and only one here and one there.  That’s not because there is no interest – it’s because there is minimal supply.

I’m going to set the record straight.  Swimsuits generate as much interest within the hobby as any other subset throughout the entire spectrum.  For the purist that is looking for a 1956 Mantle CGC 9.6, the swimsuit collection doesn’t cut it, but if you are a member of the SI masses, swimsuits are very much in demand.  Who doesn’t want to be the guy that has one of the highest graded swimsuit collection in the world?   The covers are iconic – they chronical the changing swimsuit art through the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s like nothing else out there.  It’s not about the sexuality as much as the time and place.  They are hard to find in pristine shape as you might expect – they were read from cover to cover.  So when the masses finally get it – value on these issues will pull a Jordan.  Watch and see.

I thought it might be of interest/value to rank the swimsuits in order of popularity and scarcity to help your buying decisions.  I make these rankings based on my personal sales, my customer activity, and demand within the hobby.  The secrets exposed here are found nowhere else on the internet, esp. with this credibility.

Top ten toughest to find swimsuits in collectable grade

1.  1966
2. 1968
3. 1970
4. 1965
5. 1971
6. 1972
7. 1964
8. 1969
9. 1967
10. 1973

Top Ten Most Popular

1. 1964
2. 1975
3. 1966
4. 1965
5. 1970
6. 1983
7. 1978
8. 1979
9. 1980
10. 1981

You may have noticed that I haven’t included the 1954, 1955, and 1957 swimsuits in my listings.  That is because I don’t consider them to be part of the yearly sequence that began the historic run in 1964.  Although popular within the hobby, they are another subset onto themselves – and in demand.

Below are a few of the swimsuit issues that have become so familiar within the hobby – most are the highest grade on record.  If you are interested in owning any of these or all of these for a complete collection, feel free to contact me [email protected]  and we can discuss.

I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of TIME and SI magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting.

Great collecting to you and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/TIME!

For a complete review of previous blogs, please visit 

www.sportsillustrated98.com

Welcome to my Sports Illustrated/TIME magazine blog – Your collector’s guide to the latest hobby updates and insight into what’s trending now.

It is extremely rare in our hobby that the highest graded, most popular cover/athletes come to market.

The reason for this is that these issues are owned by investors and they aren’t selling.  And when investors aren’t selling – it means something.  It means they believe values will be greater in the future.

In that this is an opinion blog, I’m going to weigh in – no question – values are on the increase.  Issue by issue, multiple percentage increases or 4 figure increases have become hobby acceptable.

All you have to do for confirmation is follow the auctions highlighted in my previous blogs.

I am 10% collector and 90% seller.  Keeping true to my DNA, I have decided to publically auction a number of my most collectible pieces, beginning with the CGC 9.4 56 Mantle and the CGC 9.2 68 Rose.

The CGC 9.4 Mantle is One Higher POP 6.  This is the first time a magazine like this has come to market in over 3 years.  That should tell you something about how investors feel about its value potential.  The fact that there is only one graded higher over all these years and entries, and that grade came many years prior to the new era in grading, should tell you that this grade may never be beat.

The CGC 9.2 Pete Rose is Two Higher, POP 1.  In many ways, I view this cover to be more difficult and perhaps as valuable long term as the CGC 9.4 Mantle for the following reasons.  First of all, this Rose is a Dark Era Print (view previous blogs for the significance of this designation) making it significantly more difficult to find in collectable grade.  Printing issues from this era also significantly reduced the high grade populations of the most popular, highly coveted covers, ie, – Aaron, Clemente, Orr, etc.  As a result, these condition issues have lessened the opportunity of finding a 68 Rose in CGC 9.4 or higher and, in my opinion, rendering that possibility highly unlikely.

I also want to say that I believe there are currently a number of first tier Sports Illustrated covers that are highly undervalued at this time.  In the next few years as hobbyists settle in to a more stable pricing structure across the hobby, it will become increasingly obvious that the most highly coveted, high grade issues are considerably undervalued, and at this point, the market will correct.  Investors know this.  The top end items will be take a massive step forward in their auction values.  I maintain that we are, right now, at a $50,000 price tag for the top issues even though privately closed sales from 2-3 years ago ranged from $10,000 to $15,000.  That number will easily break six figures after the first major collection hits the market.

This is not some invention of mine just to inflate sell prices.  It is the pattern of every organized collectible known to man and is the evolution concept that investors use to perpetuate the highest profits.  They buy at current perceived market value (which is certainly fair), having previously experienced the top end pricing phenomenon many times over.  That’s why they own the top stuff.  They take the risk (if you can call this a risk???) and reap the highest rewards.  Over time, this phenomenon will happen many times over within the same collectible.  Do you think the 52 Topps Mantle got to $3,000,000 with one price jump? 

As I have thousands of readers following my blog, I want to be clear about the opinions on this site.  The opinions here are mine.  They are just that – opinions.  But I have been openly offering my opinions on this site for 4 years and I have had hundreds of readers write to encourage my incites and not even one reader take exception with my format – so I continue.  If there is a reader out there that feels mislead, please write me and we can discuss.

In the end, population and grade position on that population, reigns king on the value scale.  Again, my opinion – covers of this magnitude will not auction publically again for years.

I have included pictures below as an invitation for any of my readers to contact me if you are interested in owning these covers before I submit them for auction.

I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of TIME and SI magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting.

Great collecting to you and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/TIME!

For a complete review of previous blogs, please visit 

www.sportsillustrated98.com

https://sportsillustrated98.com/Sports Illustrated Blog #66 – Vintage 40’s 50’s and 60’s SPORT and BASEBALL Publications – The “Next Big Thing”  Welcome to my Sports Illustrated/TIME magazine blog – Your collector’s guide to the latest hobby updates and insight into what’s trending now.  The Next Big Thing – It’s what we’ve been chasing since Mom threw away our baseball cards.  Our hobby is in a constant state of change – growing, expanding and creating opportunities.  Paperboard/Magazine collecting seems to follow the yin and the yang or the zero sum game.  For every winner, there’s a loser, and for every loser there’s a winner. The allure is to be the guy that hangs out in the winner’s circle more than the average.  My goal is to help you be one of those guys.  Collectors can be laser focused on “their” interests and miss the evolution of the hobby and opportunities.  Case in point, if you were a card collector in the 80’s, you know baseball cards were king.  Every now and then you might find a hard core guy that liked hockey, basketball or even football.  Over time, collectors moved into other major sports vastly increasing the demand and quickly driving values upward.  Opportunities followed for those that were paying attention early. New card manufacturers emerged to follow the same path.  Topps was king and their values were too – two/three times the competition – but the hobby still wasn’t satisfied.  The “next big thing” became – quality, population, and competition.  With the 80’s came Donruss, Fleer and Upper Deck and card values were determined more by population and quality than by manufacturer.  Hobbyists that recognized these evolutionary changes and were open enough to the “next big thing” market around them, were able to capitalize on this movement by being early to adopt. The point I’m making is opportunities arise more from change than from conviction.  For example, I am a diehard SI fan and collector.  In the past four years I have written 65 informational blogs in an effort to promote what I believe to be the best sports publication ever produced.   But just like Burger King and Wendy’s, there is a market for #2. Sports Illustrated was late featuring covers of Mantle, Williams, DiMaggio, Robinson, Musial, Mays, Chamberlain, Koufax, Unitas, and many more.  Who’s going to fill that void?  SPORT, BASEBALL,  Baseball Digest, TIME, etc. etc.  Other pubs were a bit ahead of the game as you will see below.  Future collectors will create a demand for the first Mantle, Aaron, Chamberlain, Unitas and so on and on and on….  Watch and see. Below you will find Mantle’s first ever cover from 1951 and many other one of a kind, none higher, POP 1 CGC grades. These issues offer a chronology of sport like nothing else.  Take a look at what kind of pub I’m talking about.

These are the covers other Pubs are chasing.                                1956 Triple Crown                      1962 First Major Pub for Clemente None Higher  First ever pub for Mantle – None Higher POP 1              1953 – None Higher POP 1 1953 – 3 years ahead of SI                                       1959 Unitas – previous to SI 1951 – 4 years ahead of SI None Higher POP 1           1947 – 8 years ahead of SI None Higher POP 1 1955 – Only major pub of Skowron                               1964 Clay – None Higher POP 1 1963 – None Higher POP 1                            1951 – Cy Young – None Higher POP 1 1957 Mantle Berra – None Higher POP 1                1965 Koufax None Higher POP 1 1957 Mantle – None Higher POP 1                       1957 Mantle – None Higher POP 1 1953 Spahn – None Higher POP 1                     1957 awesome esthetics – None Higher POP 1 1966 Koufax – None Higher POP 1                            1953 – Roy Campenella None Higher POP 1 1958 – Nellie Fox – None Higher POP 1    1964 – Mays DiMaggio None Higher POP 1 1957 First ever pub for Chamberlain – None Higher POP 1   1959 Unitas – None higher POP 1 This is just a sampling of the early entries now available.  It is my prediction that these covers and others like them will “Be The Next Big Thing.”  Feel free to contact me if you have an interest in procuring or have questions on any of the above.  Thank you. I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of TIME and SI magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting. Great collecting to you and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/TIME!   For a complete review of previous blogs, please visit  www.sportsillustrated98.com

Welcome to my Sports Illustrated/TIME magazine blog – Your collector’s guide to the latest hobby updates and insight into what’s trending now.

As our hobby evolves, new buying patterns of the largest and most avid collectors are beginning to emerge.  You will read about it here so you may take advantage of knowing where the deep pockets are trending. 

Initially graded collections were all about the most famous athletes in the highest grade.   The athlete on the cover and, of course, the year, were the most important value considerations.  The value would increase as the grade would increase but what happens when there are no more (or relatively few) 1956 SI Mickey Mantle, 1963 SI Cassius Clay or 1977 SI Larry Bird covers surfacing at any grade?  What do we buy?  Where do we look for the next value plateau?

The answer was high grade, second tier, first cover issues – Jeter, Brett, Schmidt, Henderson, Elway, Marino, Montana, and hundreds more.  These covers included our favorite players, our home team heroes, but most importantly, they were available.  This trend allowed the hobby just the right amount of availability to satisfy demand but not too much or too little to suppress interest.  

As demand increased so did value.  In the past year, a high grade of any one of these second tier first covers has conservatively doubled and often tripled in value.  (Value = recent sell prices.)

But also over the past year, even these second tier covers have become harder and harder to find and collectors are moving again into another value plateau.  This value plateau is driven by GRADE over cover athlete.  Buyers, and I know this first hand, have begun buying graded magazines that they know will be the highest grade into ad infinitum.  The thought process is – the highest grade of any issue has value – especially first covers and subsequent covers of popular athletes and major sports.  Jordan is a great example but all of the famous, popular athletes have followed this trend.

This new GRADE buying trend has really allowed the hobby to expand by appealing to a more diverse audience.  It has made more issues of interest, available, more often and on a sustained basis.  

The key to our hobby – Issues for everybody.

That is today’s update – high grades are hot.  Use this knowledge to your advantage.

I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of TIME and SI magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting.

Great collecting to you and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/TIME!

For a complete review of previous blogs, please visit 

www.sportsillustrated98.com

Welcome to my Sports Illustrated/TIME magazine blog – Your collector’s guide to the latest hobby updates and insight into what’s trending now.

Interested in my opinion as to currently undervalued, graded SI’s?  You’ve turned to the right blog.  We talk a lot about the best of the best, the Crème de la Crème, and the 9.8’s.  Sure, we all want the best – the 9.6’s and 9.8’s (because CGC doesn’t include 9.9’s and 10’s in their magazine grading scale) – but there are many collectors and only very few of those grades are being doled out.

The good news is, the push to own the highest grade has opened a gap between first and second tier pricing.  As a consequence, there are many “diamonds in the rough” that are available in the mid-grades (many in the none higher, POP 1 grade) whose pricing values have not kept pace with their Tier 1 graded brethren – yet.  I believe the steady influx of new buyers into the hobby will create more of a demand for Tier 2 mags and, in turn, increase their values. 

So here is our hobby’s next opportunity – Mid-grade covers meeting the following criteria.  These undervalued issues typically are

1. A first cover or the subsequent covers of the biggest stars. 
2. A POP 1 or 2 with none higher
3. A recognizable name with HOF or significant event credentials
4. Esthetically pleasing
5. Scarce in higher grade (for ex – there is a universal characteristic that keeps the best condition mags from surviving long term)

Here are a few covers that, in my opinion, make the opportunity list.

1. SI #2 – Exclusive Mantle Baseball Card
2. Hank Aaron 1970 – 2^nd cover
3. All Clay covers between 1963 thru 1968
4. Bobby Clarke – 1974
5. Steve Carlton – 1973
6. Bob Cousy – 1956
7. Whitey Ford – 1956
8. Bob Greise – 1973
9. Catfish Hunter – 1972 and 1974
10. Al Kaline – 1956
11. Any Mantle between 1956 and 1967
12. Mays – 1959 and 1962
13. Lower grades of Montana – 1982
14. Nowitzski – 2002
15. Oliva – 1965
16. Carew – 1974
17. Rosen – Baseball Cards – 1955
18. Duke Snider – 1956
19. Warren Spahn – 1956
20. Jim Taylor – 1962
21. John Wooden SOY – 1972
22. Eric Dickerson – 1983
23. Sadaharu Oh – 1977
24. Thurman Munson – 1977
25. Doug Flutie – 1983
26. Don Mattingly – 1985
27. Gary Carter – 1980
28. Franco Harris – 1976
29. Lynn Swan – 1976
30. Walter Payton – 1976 – 1985

I could easily add another 25-50 to the above list and if you’d like to write me with your suggestions, I’d love to hear from you.

I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of TIME and SI magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting.

Great collecting to you and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/TIME!

For a complete review of previous blogs, please visit 

www.sportsillustrated98.com

Welcome to my Sports Illustrated/TIME magazine blog – Your collector’s guide to the latest hobby updates and insight into what’s trending now.

This is not the end, no, not even the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.  Sorry I can’t take credit for that one (Winston Churchill on the defeating of the German Luftwaffe by the Royal Air Force).  But it perfectly sums up the current evolution of our hobby. 

In recent times, we’ve started to see the beginning of the maturing of the graded magazine hobby.   We now have several thousand graded examples of SI, TIME, Sport, etc, magazines and things have started to settle in like dinosaurs in a tar pit.

A cursory review of these findings leads me to the following opinions.  Focusing on pre-1980 mags, if you have an SI cover that is a 9.4 or higher, there is a high statistical probability that grade will remain the highest into perpetuity.   I believe this to be true (and it is important that investors and collectors alike know this is not just a marketing claim but an opinion based on years of data) because I have observed millions of wannabees thru my countless internet searches, collection appraisals, and blog connections.  Barring the outer edges of the curve, pristine covers are just not out there.  OK – there are still the infrequent entries (outside 3 sigma) that grade high, but no major cover graded 9.4 or above, has been exceeded in over two years.  And that is a statistic to which we should be paying attention.

The reason all this is important is that many buyers are speculating on future results but, 

The more accurately we can predict future results, the less risk we have in our investments.

There are also variables which should be considered when attempting to predict future high grades.  For ex., SI covers between 7-1-56 and 12-31-70 have not held up particularly well under the stresses of time.  Therefore, a high grade from this era is likely to be scarcer than issues outside this era. 

If by chance you were to find the new highest grade of the 56 Mantle, 63 Clay, 77 Bird, 59 Unitas, 60 Brown, 83 Jordan and maybe 5-10 others, you can quit your day job.  Find one of these and you will set the entire hobby abuzz.  Make sure you get it accurately/appropriately appraised before you sell – if you sell.

So we are entering a new era of graded mag collecting.  Perhaps the biggest change is the number of interested parties.  In the past year, I have seen the buyer categories – investor, serious collector, casual collector, gift buyer – each appreciate in size and breadth much faster than early expectations. 

Investors now have competition and serious collectors have come to realize they may not be able to own the top grade and are having no problem buying up lower grades.  The casual collector and the gift giver love the encapsulation but care little about the grade.  Everybody, whether it be collector or gift giver, all seem to want their favorite player, event, or memory in graded encapsulation.

What great time it is to be an SI collector!

Next time we’ll take on the diamonds of the mid-grades.  There’s plenty of opportunity.

I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of TIME and SI magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting.

Great collecting to you and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/TIME!

For a complete review of previous blogs, please visit 

www.sportsillustrated98.com

Welcome to my Sports Illustrated/TIME magazine blog – Your collector’s guide to the latest hobby updates and insight into what’s trending now.

Nothing is more satisfying than verification that our prized collection might eventually support our retirement or undeserving child’s endowment.  To think that we might have made a profitable investment is a testosterone thing.

On this subject, I have been cautioned by a few hobby participants that it’s not all about increasing value.  My contention is that eventually it’s always about increasing value.  One thing is for sure, if you’re not looking to make a great investment, you won’t.

One way to legitimize your efforts is to compare your purchases against existing sold lists.  Problem for us magazine guys, there hasn’t been a whole lot of price comparison available.  Lucky for my readers, your author is the #1, foremost, ultimate source for graded magazine pricing evolution, both private and public.  I have graded, sold, and own more graded SI’s than all other sellers combined.  I only make this admonition because I want to establish the creditability behind the numbers I’m publishing.

In an effort to update current values, I went back to the Price Values Guide I established two years ago in my Blog #19.  Interestingly, I found the original guide, for the most part, was still quite accurate regarding current sales realized.  The major difference always seems to be at the top end of the spectrum.  No surprise, if you own one of a kind stuff, you dictate the price.  What may surprise you is the sell prices of those items.  But you will not find pricing verification anywhere, as these items are in collections and have not been re-sold since their original purchase. 

In fact, not one CGC 9.8 top 10 SI mag cover has changed hands in the past two years.

As a collector you should read into that extremely important statement – the big money isn’t selling – they’re still buying.  If you’re a collector, that is really good news.

Key to using this guide:

1. CGC census matters.  None Higher – POP 1 designations will out value others of the same grade.
2. Lower populations will out value higher populations.
3. “Unlimited” valuations of the Best of the Best are always set by the seller.
4. Grades lower than CGC 9.0 can be factored by a sliding scale continuation.
5. Valuations are first cover only.
6. Guide values are an average of all the variables.  For example, a 1967 Bobby Orr CGC 9.0, None Higher – POP 1 sold at Heritage auction this month for $6,360.  If your CGC 9.0 – 9.4 mag slips out of the Top 10, I’ve experience sell prices at or below $1,000.

2020 Sports Illustrated Evaluation Guide

Never Read	Top 10 Star	11-20 Star	21-100 Star
9.0	$2,500	$1,000	$500
9.2	$5,000	$2,000	$750
9.4	$10,000	$5,000	$1,500
9.6	unlimited	$8,000	$3,000
9.8	unlimited	unlimited	$6,000

One comment on a Top 10, FC, Sports Illustrated, never read, CGC 9.6 – 9.8, None Higher, POP 1 – I’m talking Mantle, Jordan, Gretzky, Mays, Clay, Clemente, Aaron, Rose, and maybe a couple more – bring a minimum of $50,000 if you want to own one – and that might not be enough.

In the end, do your homework.  Put yourself in the best position to succeed.  You’ll have fun and you’ll be happy you chose SI magazines.

I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of TIME and SI magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting.

Great collecting to you and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/TIME!

For a complete review of previous blogs, please visit 

www.sportsillustrated98.com

Sports Illustrated Blog #50 – State of the Collectible Sports Illustrated Hobby – 2020 Edition.

Welcome to my Sports Illustrated/TIME magazine blog – Your collector’s guide to the latest hobby updates and insight into what’s trending now.

We’ve hit a milestone in our journey to recognize and advance our hobby and all things Sports Illustrated. This blog marks my 50^th blog edition spanning coverage of the hobby over the past 3 years.  The mission has been to propel magazine collecting into the spotlight by educating any and all stakeholders to the truth and trends of our hobby.  In my coverage of present and potential values, forecasting, pricing, equity, movements in the market and answers to FAQ, nothing has been off limits.  My hope would be that within these writings you feel you have a bible into the hobby.

One thing I’ve learned over this period is that when you have a good (or great) thing, you can’t just sit on your hands and let the wind of change blow around you.  Building your SI collection has evolved from raw mags to newsstand to condition sensitive to grading to achieving the highest grade on as many issues as possible – and that’s where we are today.  We have built equity in our collections by being first or early in our acceptance of hobby movement.  And I believe those that followed this guideline have been nicely rewarded.

I have written very little about my early investors/believers in our neophyte hobby but I’d like to share a bit about my humble beginnings and my relationship with one investor.    One man believed and put his money in his belief.  My role was to search the world for high grade SI’s and he committed to buy them.  I made a profit on my sales and he built equity – a lot of it.   It was and still is a great partnership continuing to this day.  I wish to thank him here in this blog.  I mention this only to support the idea that the SI market is still a thing for those later adopters.

 Since, others that read my blogs, believed and followed suit, are also feeling positive about their future potential and as a result, they are not selling. 

It’s time for the next evolution.  The premise I’d like to put forth now, can be sufficiently explained by this analogy

“1952 Topps is to 1951 Bowman as Sports Illustrated Magazines are to other sports publications”.

Other sports publications do not compare to SI for all the collectable reasons however I believe as SI’s become more and more expensive and hard to procure, there will be increasing interest in off publications – in high grade. 

Therefore, off publications is the next trend I am hyping and advising to my readers.

Before I continue, I want to caution my readers about a couple of sellers on ebay, one in particular, that are trying to extort those of us that have faithfully and honestly tried to advance the hobby.  These sellers have artificially raised prices to crazy and unrealistic levels, to unsuspecting hobbyists in an attempt to scam my nonreaders.  Be careful of those who contribute nothing but try to piggyback on the real McCoy.  Text me if you have questions here.

Back to the topic, there are really great examples of very desirable pubs – mags featuring the iconic stars, years in advance of SI.  Musial, Mantle, Mays, DiMaggio, Williams…..  But, in my opinion, they must be very high grade and graded, to overcome the poor perception when compared to SI.  One issue I think really has potential is the 1946 Sport First Edition with DiMaggio on the cover. 

This is really an exciting pursuit in that it is as if we were starting over with the magazine collecting hobby.  A whole new window is opened and early believers will be rewarded.  Believe or not, invest or don’t, check my record for hobby predictions.

So there you have Blog # 50. 

I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of TIME and SI magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting.

Great collecting to you and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/TIME!

For a complete review of previous blogs, please visit  www.sportsillustrated98.com

Welcome to my Sports Illustrated/TIME magazine blog – Your collector’s guide to the latest hobby updates and insight into what’s trending now.

Each month, one or two new CGC Highest Graded Star Sports Illustrated Covers find their way into the hobby census.  Such are the dynamics of our growing, evolving graded magazine hobby.  

Three years ago, new highest grades for SI’s entering the market were a common ordinary occurrence but as the census has grown from less than 100 graded SI’s to several thousand, eclipsing an old, highest grade star cover has become less and less frequent.  Currently the hobby is absorbing, on average, approximately one or two per month, at best. 

In fact, I predict that, with extreme few exceptions, the grade on 99% of pre-1980, CGC 9.4 star covers will NEVER be beaten. These issues are so rare that CGC 9.0 and CGC 9.2 star covers for this era (especially those printed in the “dark era” – mid 56 thru 69) have become accepted as the gold standard for condition.  Eclipsing a CGC 9.0 or 9.2 today is a significant find.

Just like the graded card hobby, as the graded magazine hobby organizes and actual off-line buy prices become public, more highest grade submissions will surface.  However, the rate of new highest grade submissions will be just up to the level that attracts the supply and demand competition so healthy for a growing hobby.

One comment on off-line buy prices – currently off-line buy prices have not leaked to the public as of yet because investors are still enjoying artificially low buy prices and want to keep it that way as long as possible.  Rarely, if ever, does one see any auction house selling a highest grade star SI cover.  Same characteristic in the card market – rarely does one of the top cards come to auction.  I know this about off-line SI investing because I’m the market seller.

When the actual off-line buy prices become documented, it is then that the graded magazine hobby will heat up exponentially and you’ll be very glad you bought in early.  There will be more buyers than sellers and in collectibles that phenomenon is what drives the hobby to the next level.

As a graded SI collector and investor, I find this stuff sooo exciting – operating within an almost untapped frontier.  How many times in life does this kind of opportunity come along?  Even now, my readers tell me they wished they’d have joined the party when they first started reading this blog. 

Every day is a new adventure.  These old SI’s are so colorful they just jump out at you from inside the professionally designed CGC presentation case.  They tell a story, a history and chronology of events we saw with our own eyes. 

Sports Illustrated is the TOPPS of sports publications – it’s a Cadillac.   That’s why it’s is so popular – it has the tangibles AND the intangibles.  What a journey in just three short years!

 Here are a few of the new, highest grade, star covers joining the census in the past two months.

I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of TIME and SI magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting.

Great collecting to you and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/TIME!

For a complete review of previous blogs, please visit  www.sportsillustrated98.com