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 50th 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!
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