Allow Me To Offend You
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest."--Thomas Paine
I guess I must be pretty honest because I have offended quite a few collectors these last few weeks.
The Case Of The Priceless Worthless Artifact
An article by Adam Schrader on Art Net News on October 3, 2023, summarizes the issue perfectly, so I will just quote it (I am going to omit the paragraph breaks and leave out some of the extraneous details):
“A legal case making its way through the French court system is raising questions about whether a person who has sold an artwork or artifact later determined to have a much higher value can seek further compensation. An unnamed 81-year-old woman and her 88-year-old husband came across an African mask while clearing out their second home. While most of the contents of the home went into a garage sale, they decided to sell the mask to a local antiques dealer, who agreed to buy the mask for €150, or about $157, in September 2021. Months later, they discovered through reading the newspaper that their mask had just made €4.2 million ($4.4 million) at a specialized auction in Montpellier. ... The couple launched suit against the antiques dealer, who they believe cheated them. ... The couple’s argument hinges on the suspicion that the dealer had a good idea of the true value of the object when he bought it from them. The antiques dealer did not display the mask at his shop and instead contacted the auction houses Drouot Estimation and Fauve Paris, which estimated it to be worth about €100–€120, and €400–€600 respectively. Despite these valuations given by two auctioneers, he went on to seek a third opinion from a specialized sale of African objects in Montpellier. After ordering analysis using carbon-14 dating and mass spectrometry, the mask was dated to the 19th century and an ethnologist’s expert appraisal revealed it was used for purification rites by the Ngil society, a secret society that operated within the Fang ethnic group in Gabon until the 1920s. The auction house placed the mask for sale with an estimate of between €300,000 and €400,000. The mask was sold for €4.2 million, about $4.4 million, at an auction in March 2022.”
This has nothing to do with cards but has obvious implications for anyone who is offered an item to purchase and later finds it to be extremely valuable. The response in the hobby blogosphere has ranged from “that’s the way the world is” to one person labeling anyone who would feel OK paying $150 for a multi-million-dollar object: “one of those scumbag pieces of $#!t that gives the hobby a bad name.”
Personally, I side with the scumbag piece of $#!t, unless he committed fraud or a crime. If not, he sounds like a smart professional who took a risk, and it paid off. More to the point, philosophically speaking, even assuming that the dealer knew he was looking at a very valuable object, I do not think he had a duty to tell the sellers anything of the sort. Anyone with expertise has probably worked his butt off to get to that level of knowledge and has a right, in our hyper-capitalist society, to use it to profit. Nor do I think people with equal bargaining power (not knowledge, bargaining power) have anything to bitch about when the counterparty has superior knowledge and uses it to advantage. An expert has no reason to give up that advantage in an arms' length transaction, any more than a stock buyer has to share his financial analysis with the seller.
I have never been bashful about how I operate, nor do I think I am intellectually inconsistent, yet I’ve raised some hackles with my view on the issue. I’ve always said that if someone approaches me with a box of cards for sale at a show, or if I find something at a garage sale or flea market, my first question is what they want for it. If I think is worth more than the asking price, I am meeting the asking price and buying it. I might even ask for a discount and see if I can improve my advantage. If a seller asks me for an offer and I make one, I am entirely unapologetic about it if they accept, even if my offer is low and I know it. That rubs some people the wrong way and they are entitled to their views and feelings, but I don't share them. If you sell something without knowing what it is or is worth or seeking expert help to find out, that's a "you" problem, not a "me" problem. Do your homework and don’t whine after the fact because you sold something you did not investigate. I never sell stuff I do not investigate first. I expect others to do the same. I've made a few really great deals and some very stupid deals over the years, but I didn't consider it the other guy's fault either way. For example, I bought an item from a walk-in at a show and paid his ask because I thought it was a really special item. I put it into an auction, and it sold for 17x what I paid. At the same show, I picked up a card that later sold at auction for a third of what I paid. That's just how it goes with collectibles.
I also dislike hearing talk of morality or ethics in this context, but people throw it at me all the time. I don't think that is a productive place to go with these kinds of discussions because they are slippery slopes. For most situations we face as collectors, there are no objectively right answers, only answers that reflect the speaker's own background, experiences, and beliefs. When you come out of the box flatly condemning anyone who doesn't agree with you rather than discussing the reasons why your views differ, it replaces a discussion with a judgment. The same is true when anyone labels a position as "the right thing" or as "the ethical thing". That's the end of the discussion because any other position is "the wrong thing" or the unethical thing, by definition. My way or the highway has never cut it with me. “The more you say I can’t say something, the more urgent it is for me to say it”--Dave Chappelle
Most surprising to me is the knee-jerk hostility to someone seeing and making a great deal. I see this over and over again and I don’t get it. The whole point of business in a capitalist society is to make money, to get the advantage and use it. Excluding criminality or fraud--which no one thinks is OK, and I certainly hate with a passion--why is there a tendency to attack people who do precisely that? My take on it is jealousy, pure and simple. Every single one of us who goes picking, or to a show, or who bids in an auction--and we all do--is looking for a great deal. We all fantasize about pulling a Wagner out of a junk box at a flea market or garage sale and retiring on the proceeds or having a walk-in hand over a million dollars of cards for a pittance, and we all get just a little queasy when someone else does it. Anyone who says otherwise is not being honest with themselves, as is anyone who claims that they would never make that deal. It is easy to say that in a vacuum, but I seriously doubt that anyone who takes that position has ever flipped an item for a hefty profit and then handed over a chunk of the flip money to the guy who sold it to him too cheaply. Lots of stone-throwing in glass houses, as far as I can see.
So, yes, I am a greedy capitalist pig who would not only sell his own mother but would ship her C.O.D. And?
On to my next offense:
The Case of The Butt-Hurt True Collectors
I spend a fair amount of time commenting on perceived flaws in card investors’ strategies, and lots of that involves the action in the modern card area. As the prices of many modern cards have tanked over the last year, quite a few of the people who touted the values and money to be made off of modern cards have now come out as ‘true collectors’ who loudly disclaim any interest in making money and who chafe at any criticism of their investments. The typical whine from these people is that anyone who equates pack breaks with gambling or who argues that much of modern card investment laddering is something akin to a meme stock pump and dump is just unfairly criticizing their collections, and generally just being a big, bad Blue Meanie. I have been hit with this allegation quite a bit recently because of this column, so let me call out the unfair parts and double down on the parts that are actually accurate.
I genuinely, truly, absolutely, unreservedly do not have any criticism of (almost) anything anyone collects. Short of concentration camp ‘memorabilia’, which only a sick fuck would want to own, collect whatever you like, whatever makes you happy, and I am down. My collection, the Festival of Bric-A-Brac as I call it, has all sorts of pointless, worthless, trashy crap that makes me smile, from Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics to prewar Japanese printed invitations, greeting cards and postcards. They make me happy but have little value. I don’t care and neither should you. The converse is true as well. Whatever floats your boat and isn’t illegal or harmful, knock yourself out, get your freak on, I am 100% supportive. I don’t think I have ever told a collector that his collecting focus was wrong, and if I did, it was completely over the line, and I am sorry. But when people start talking up the financial end of it, start rapping the investment rap about what they collect, then they open themselves up to critical analysis of what they are saying.
Just to be clear, I don't think there is anything wrong with being a collector or an investor, or both. I've been running a for-profit card business for most of my life alongside my collecting, on and off. As an adult, I was pretty much a pure collector. Didn't really care what a comparable WaJo or Ruth sold for, other than allowing me to show the wife that I wasn't a total idiot because I chose to spend money on this stuff and travel to a week each summer in Cleveland or Chicago dressed as a ten-year-old boy, playing with baseball cards and hanging out with similarly inclined card dorks. When the Great Recession hit, I had to sell cards to make ends meet for a couple of months, and at that point I realized this was a business and an investment too and I should start thinking about it that way. I still have total fun with it, as a collector, as a dealer, and as an investor. I relish the research and writing, and I enjoy the work of handling cards, working at a show, etc. My retirement plan is to make a business out of the hobby, format TBD, and have fun with it. Four days selling cards at Anaheim last month was way more fun than four days of lawyering.
Taking off my collector cap and putting on my investor cap, though, I have a different viewpoint as to what investors deserve. In my view, people talking up the financial potential of what they have are not entitled to the same deference as collectors because they are not acting as collectors. I feel that they are exploitative, not collegial. So I say something when I see something that I think is amiss, and recently, some people have taken it rather personally. Umm, sorry you feel that way? Nah, not really. You see, I don’t interpret good hobby citizenship as spreading sunshine and positivity. I don't want to sit back and bite my tongue because my honestly-held views might hurt someone’s feelings. I reject the paradigm that equates feelings with facts. Labeling me amoral, hurtful or as picking on others is not factual, it is an effort to shut down my viewpoint for reasons other than my views being wrong. A mandate to say only positive things so as not to hurt any feelings is the opposite of a free exchange of ideas. Don’t just tell me I am hurting your feelings and think it has any traction with me. Sack up, buttercup, and tell my why my analysis is wrong, not that I’m being mean ot hurtful. Muhammad Ali said: “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.“ I agree wholeheartedly. I welcome critical thinking about my views; what I don't know dwarfs what I think I do, so teach me something new.
But I digress…
My saying that ultra-modern card valuation is similar to a meme stock run is an opinion, not a personal attack on anyone who likes to collect Kaboom! or Jambalaya cards. Nothing wrong with collecting what you like. Heck, I'd happily take some of them for my basketball collection because they are beautiful cards. Nor am I saying that there isn't a genuine base of collectors who really love collecting modern cards. Those folks will be the ones buying at the bottom because finally they can win some auctions and afford some cards. I might be there with them on some cards. But I wonder, if we are being honest, how many of the modern collectors who are having kittens because I questioned the wisdom of modern cards as investments will keep pumping funds into new product when the last year’s run of new stuff loses 80% of its value. We saw it with junk wax, and I think we are seeing it again. When we hit an actual recession, many, perhaps most, of these modern 'collectors' are going to vanish, because they were really investors or investor-collectors at best, and once the money runs out the hobby just isn’t as sexy anymore.
I will close with another Thomas Paine quote:
"It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error."
Couldn't agree more.