| Sports Illustrated Blog # 160 on Our Way to 200 – What Is It That Whales Don’t Have? 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 blog is written for my Non-Whale customers. Decide for yourself if you fit the category. Whales are an interesting component of the collector hierarchy. Because they have the wherewithal to buy pretty much whatever they want, they love to negotiate and they hate to pay market price. The dilemma is that whales always want the best and the best is rarely negotiable. It’s a predicament. Let me clarify a bit before I am inundated with objections. There are exceptions to the whale rule but for the vast majority of whales in my sphere, the whale rule holds consistent. Now, what don’t whales have? They don’t have Mantle or Jordan. Why? Because these collectables rarely are negotiable. Pay the price or walk and whales mostly walk. They don’t like not being able to move the needle. The biggest whale I’ve ever dealt with has many the most valuable mags in the hobby, but no Mantles and only one Jordan which I gave him. I had lots of this stuff available but the price was never quite right. It’s just an interesting phenomenon which I’ve never been able to understand. Maybe once you have the money, you don’t like parting with it. And if you don’t want to part with it, you don’t own Mantle or Jordan. There is a Mantle 1956 PSA 9.6 up for public auction at Goldin right now. My prediction for this piece is two-fold. First, it will not be purchased by a magazine collector whale (who could easily afford the hammer price), and two, it will surpass twice the hammer of the PSA 1983 Jordan 9.6 and 4 times the 1984 9.8 Jordan “A Star is Born”. And I have another prediction. There are other Mantle 9.6’s out there and the next one coming to auction will surpass $200,000 more than the first. OK – I get it. My predictions and $5.00 will get you a gas station coffee. But for those that have taken my advice over the years, they believe but don’t tell. Believe or don’t. When the smoke clears and the 56 Mantle is hammered, it will not be a mag whale collector. Take it to the bank. Best of Luck. My Ebay handle is “sportsillustrated9.8” and sportsillustrated98.com on the internet, not to be confused with other similar tags. If you’re interested in one or more of my ebay auctions and you would like to purchase, email me at wylliejohn@yahoo.com to save on taxes, and shipping. Thanks for your loyal following. My readers always receive “first among equals” pricing/service. Many thanks for your continued support and patronage. On the web – Sportsillustrated98.com |
