The Unknowns

“… there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.”

—Donald Rumsfeld

Confused yet?  Believe it or not, Rummy’s word jumble has great application to buying collectibles. 

Known unknowns first.

I have purchased numerous items at various non-card venues based on an intuitive feel for what I am looking at rather than any concrete data on what I have.  One of the craziest pieces I ever found was a 100+ year old University of Arkansas football booster club publication.  I don’t follow college football and did not know anything about the item itself, but it set my Spidey sense tingling because I knew that the Arkansas program is one of the most storied ones.  I found nothing in the quick Google search I ran. I did know that Razorbacks fans are legion and they are rabid.  I also knew that the booklet was in a pile of crap at a paper show and the dealer was asking a relative pittance for it, and that it was clearly prewar.  I bought it, put it out for sale and got a ton of interest from Razorbacks fans, readily flipping it for a tidy profit. 

Another time, I saw a lot at auction with known and unknown boxing cabinet cards in it (not all were shown or identified but there was a count).  I ascribed market values to the cards I saw.  I ascribed what value I could to the cards that were not shown but were described, and a nominal value to the known unknown balance.  Plugged in the numbers, reduced by a % for profit and overhead, and had my max bid.  I won the lot for less than my max because most people had less expertise than I did with obscure boxing cards and based on the information presented they had to guard against a loss even more carefully as a result. 

I knew that I had already made my money on the known items before I sold anything.  When the cards arrived, it was amazing.  The known unknowns...OMG.  As I unwrapped the bundles of cards that filled out the lot, I pulled out card after card of major HOFers from major producers: Hall, Wood, Sarony, Fox and others.  It was stellar stuff that the auctioneer just plain missed (lack of knowledge absolutely killed their consignor); if the name wasn’t on the mount, they just shrugged. As a result, they dramatically undercounted the major fighters in the lot. I made a small fortune on them. 

Easy peasy, right?  Yeah, not so fast.  The next time I did it with the same auction house, I got cocky and wishful went a few increments over my calculation based on past success; I forgot that known unknowns are really unknown and must be approached with caution.  Of course, the known unknowns in that auction turned out to be crapola and I barely broke even on the deal after a great deal of work turning then out.  My mistake, of course, was extrapolating one independent experience to the next and fantasizing about the outcome based on the prior experience.  I decided that I knew the unknowns because I wanted it to be true.  Stupid.  Should have stuffed my head in the toilet and flushed the dumb away. 

And now, a story about an unknown unknown. 

I once found myself bidding on a lot of cards in an auction run by an auction house that handles general antiques.  They had a lot that was a mixed bag of cards, sports and nonsports.  The description was terrible and there was only one photo.  What caught my eye was an imperial cabinet card of a Massachusetts baseball team.  If the description was right, it would have had a possible HOFer on it.  They were singularly unhelpful on the phone when I called to ask about the lot, and I just could not determine who exactly was on the cabinet photo or what they were selling.  I ascribed a value to it and tallied up what I could see in the picture of the other cards and in the short, terse description.  I bid accordingly. 

I guess I was a bigger sucker than the rest, so I won the lot.  Then the misery began.  That auction house does not ship, it forces you to find a local outside shipper to send your stuff.  That search was a time suck.  Their recommended shippers wanted a small fortune to send me my cards.  I finally bit the bullet and paid nearly 40% of the cost of my win, over $200, to get my cards.  The shipper picked up the lot and…crickets.  Several increasingly nasty calls later over a week or so I finally got a tracking number.

When it finally showed up, the box was gigantic, which really ticked me off.  No wonder they raked me over the coals on the shipping costs.  Total overkill and I paid for it.  I started unwrapping the box in a huff, expecting a Russian nesting doll of smaller and smaller boxes until I got my cards. 

The first thing I found was that they had not packed the Jack Delaney (a boxer) mounted photo correctly and a big chunk at a corner snapped off the mount in transit.  Ruined.  My anger grew.  At least the imperial cabinet of the baseball team was ok, except that the HOFer wasn’t on there.  So much for that gamble.  

I then saw what had snapped off the end of the Dempsey photo mount.  Cards.  Hundreds and hundreds of cards.  Cards that were not in the photo.  Cards that were not described.  Cards the auction house staff had not told me about when I called for more information.  Cards packed in bricks that moved around in transit and crushed the Delaney.  Needless to say, I forgot all about the Delaney cabinet’s damage as I pulled out brick after brick of neatly wrapped vintage cards.  In all, what I thought was a lot of 50 or so cards totaled over a thousand cards.  The unknown unknown.  Courtesy of a lazy, incompetent auction house.  Gotta love that.