The Current State of Sports Autographs

The sports autograph industry at this time is not just for sports enthusiasts anymore. It has reached the professional investors.

Just as investors invest in stocks, bonds, futures, commodities, or art they are investing in sports autographs. It’s no different in this field as it is in the Wall Street. Buy low, sell high. It’s a speculative game where the risk is equal to its reward.

To give you an idea of the magnitude of this business, a famous collector by the name of Barry Halper once had a collection valued at $22 million!! He had over 80,000 baseball related items. About 20% of his collection is now sitting in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

If anybody is unsure about the size of this industry, they just need to look at the craze surrounding Barry Bonds breaking the all time MLB home run record of Hank Aaron.

Everybody couldn’t wait for that magical number of 755 to break. Heritage Auction Galleries even said they would pay $1 million dollars for the Barry Bonds autographed ball even before the home run was hit. That meant everybody in the outfield bleachers of a San Francisco Giants game would be fighting for that lottery ticket.

Matt Murphy became part of history by snatching the ball that broke the all time home run record on August 7^th. The Bonds autographed ball actually went for a total of $752,467 in an online auction. It was bought by fashion designer Marc Ecko. Ecko bought the ball and arranged to let the public decide its future online.

The highest priced baseball memorabilia ever recorded was for the Mark McGwire's 62 home run autographed ball. When McGwire broke the single season home run record, baseball was at the ultimate fever pitch.

The game became, once again the most popular sport in America. Comic book artist Todd McFarlane couldn’t resist and bought the McGwire baseball for $3 million.