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 landscape for finding vintage, gradable newsstand SI’s has changed considerably over the past year. No longer can a cursory glance across the eBay gamut of auction pages uncover the diamonds in the rough that have so popularized the graded magazine hobby for nearly eight years. Newsstand copies of popular athletes pre-1980 have become tougher and tougher to find as the hobby has organized. A dedicated buyer can search the auction platforms daily for months and not find a single newsstand gradable vintage SI. Infrequently, a new player (seller) will enter the market with a couple nice mags but once they’re sold, that’s it, they’re gone. And the very speculative part of this, the part that ends up costing you dollars, is the inability of buyers, myself included, to accurately pre-determine the eventual grade from an internet picture. So, what happens? Overly optimistic buyers (which is all of us) pay for an estimated 9.0+, which eventually grades out at 7.0 or even lower. It doesn’t take much to drop a grade below 7.0 as those who submit mags will attest. But the difference in sales value ranges from very profitable to unsellable. Given the current scarcity of vintage, newsstand SI’s, creating a nearly impossible situation for SI gold seekers, what options remain viable for hobbyists still looking to stay in the game. I’ve been high on alternative (from SI’s) sports mags since the advent of graded magazines. SI is the king, no doubt the #1, but not in every athlete/issue. Because SPORT, BASEBALL, TIME magazines, and more, hit the newsstand before SI’s inaugural issue in 1954, many alt-pubs have issues more popular than their SI counterparts. Jackie Robinson, Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio, Henry Aaron, Roger Maris, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, to name just a few. For example, Mantle has several major pub, quality, early covers appearing before his first SI cover. My advice is to take advantage of the more obscure alt-pubs while the window is still cracked open. There are still nice values available until prices catch up to SI. Even though it’s getting tougher to find that diamond in the rough, it’s still a fun game as you never know what that next search will bring. Good luck. Many thanks for your patronage. Come grow with us. I hope you are enjoying the reads on the history of SI, SPORT, and BASEBALL magazines as well as an insight into relevant magazine collecting. Great collecting to you in our second century of blogs and best fortunes with Sports Illustrated/SPORT/BASEBALL magazines. For a complete review of previous blogs, please visit www.sportsillustrated98.com |
