Fanatics x Sotheby's

[maj78]

Originally Posted by Asian62150

If Fanatics really wants this to make a splash, offer zero seller fees for awhile. I think a majority of the $100K+ cards are mainly held by collectors who don't have a super high net worth. There are a lot of cardboard millionaires out there. Incentivize these guys to let go of some of their stuff.

Just curious, is any auction house charging seller fees? I thought most were at least at 100-105% of the hammer price for sellers.

[vamz]

Originally Posted by KhalDrogo

Such a terrible idea.

How come?

[vamz]

Originally Posted by boxbuster7

why is a producer of cards getting into the auctioning business? lame...

Because Fanatics is preparing for an IPO and wants to put down multiple growth revenue streams in their prospectus.

[ninjabum87]

Idk, sounds like they're asking for the FTC to rock up and break up some of this if they go too far with it. I already question the fairness of hit distribution in boxes a company gives itself vs their other vendors/partners. Same thing with a company that would grade its own cards and run its own auctions.

[vamz]

I think it's way more egregious that a grading company can also have an auction house arm (ie PSA when it also owned Goldin).

I think it makes sense and is not unreasonable for a card company to have an auction arm. I think this is potentially good for the hobby.

[Antman5]

Originally Posted by vamz

I think it's way more egregious that a grading company can also have an auction house arm (ie PSA when it also owned Goldin).

I think it makes sense and is not unreasonable for a card company to have an auction arm. I think this is potentially good for the hobby.

Exactly

[KhalDrogo]

Originally Posted by maj78

Just curious, is any auction house charging seller fees? I thought most were at least at 100-105% of the hammer price for sellers.

Getting $105 when the buyer pays $122 means you paid $17 in sellers fees no matter how you want to cut it up.

[Spacemanspif]

Originally Posted by maj78

Just curious, is any auction house charging seller fees? I thought most were at least at 100-105% of the hammer price for sellers.

Yeah but 105/120 = 87.5% payout, which is pretty comparable to eBay. PWCC had a special a couple months ago for 115% payout which was a solid deal, but otherwise there’s not much incentive to use any auction house over another or ebay

[vamz]

Originally Posted by KhalDrogo

Getting $105 when the buyer pays $122 means you paid $17 in sellers fees no matter how you want to cut it up.

Well, the argument would be does selling via a major auction house increase the price one is willing to pay for the card by that amount?

For certain cards, i'd argue the answer is probably for all sorts of reasons.

There comes a point where the premium is absurd and that's when your greed could lose you business. As the saying goes 'your margin is my opportunity'.

[tjforce]

Originally Posted by KhalDrogo

Your last comment is the most salient. If we’re talking about UHNWIs, there are only so many cards that I imagine are attractive to own if you aren’t a sports collectibles individual to begin with. The dollar values just aren’t enough to get excited about, whether you are looking to collect or invest.

Yeah. I can see it as a benefit if you are talking the true upper crust of collectables.

I assume Sotheby's can reach out to a few clients on a PSA 9 '52 Mantle and have them pick up the phone and listen. I don't know that they are going to waste their time on an Anthony Edwards NT, even if it's a great patch and PSA 10. Fanatics seems to be catering to the few UHNWI's they can get to take a look, and the breaker crowd, but seem to be missing the mark with the majority of collectors.

[tjforce]

Originally Posted by ninjabum87

Oh god.

How long before "Break Topps Chrome+ with Fanatics Live! Topps Chrome+ is the same Topps Chrome you love, but with higher hit rates on chase cards!"

Oh or perhaps a season battle pass type subscription without which you can join breaks but you have to pay a bit extra to get any case hits or memorabilia, but you can get in the door cheaper and get anything over /99 a lot cheaper for your player/team breaks. Premium pricing to buy in to your case hit based on a special algorithm that predicts the auction prices of said cards using flawed/shilled auction data of course.

Let's go full degenerate dystopia with it.

Corporate loves subscription models...

So why not pay an annual pass to have the opportunity to buy into the first round of breaks whenever a new product comes out? And why not a Premium tier subscription so that you can get into high end products as well.

It's a good thing they don't bother reading things like blowout or else they might get some ideas from our ramblings here.

[vamz]

Ironically, having an auction house arm should result in the chase cards becoming rarer, not more common.

I suspect that won't happen, but strategically speaking, it should.

[boxbuster7]

this whole things just incredibly offputting and makes me hate fanatics even more

[gomiamigo]

I dunno, you see some of the same great masters' paintings come up for sale over and over again just like some 'grail' cards that get re-auctioned every few years.

[vamz]

Originally Posted by gomiamigo

I dunno, you see some of the same great masters' paintings come up for sale over and over again just like some 'grail' cards that get re-auctioned every few years.

sorry, just to clarify what I meant, I'm not saying the cards will come for sale more often. I meant to say, if Fanatics also has an auction house, then, strategically speaking, Topps (owned by Fanatics) should make their 'chase cards' lower print/rarer.

Rationale:

-Currently, the only way for the Card companies to make money is from sales of boxes/cases.

-The secondary card market is huge. The Card companies receive zero of this secondary market revenue.

-So, what do the card makers do to try and increase revenue? They pump out more and more product. They produce 50 parallels of the same card to get folks chasing the same card in 50 diff colours etc. The current market structure incentivises card companies to produce MORE product and make their cards LESS rare.

-How does a Card company get a cut of the secondary market sales? They buy an auction house and then take a clip of the sales that occur on the secondary market. This is exacty what Rolex has recently done with their 'Rolex certified re-sale program' etc. You get the benefit of knowing you're buying a certified Rolex product and Rolex gets to take a cut of the secondary market premium on some of their watches.

-By taking a clip of secondary market sales via their auction house, the market structure incentive changes. The Card company now has an incentive to ensure secondary sales are high, not for all cards of course, but for the chase cards. Hopefully this means that MORE effort is put into card design (not idiotic parallels) and the presumed 'chase cards' are made rarer. Isn't this what was so great about the 90s? Better card design, more creativity and lower pops on some of the chase stuff. Why can't we go back to that? I'm hopeful, by owning an Auction house, Fanatics (Topps) are incentivised to do so.

[tjforce]

Originally Posted by vamz

sorry, just to clarify what I meant, I'm not saying the cards will come for sale more often. I meant to say, if Fanatics also has an auction house, then, strategically speaking, Topps (owned by Fanatics) should make their 'chase cards' lower print/rarer.

Rationale:

-Currently, the only way for the Card companies to make money is from sales of boxes/cases.

-The secondary card market is huge. The Card companies receive zero of this secondary market revenue.

-So, what do the card makers do to try and increase revenue? They pump out more and more product. They produce 50 parallels of the same card to get folks chasing the same card in 50 diff colours etc. The current market structure incentivises card companies to produce MORE product and make their cards LESS rare.

-How does a Card company get a cut of the secondary market sales? They buy an auction house and then take a clip of the sales that occur on the secondary market. This is exacty what Rolex has recently done with their 'Rolex certified re-sale program' etc. You get the benefit of knowing you're buying a certified Rolex product and Rolex gets to take a cut of the secondary market premium on some of their watches.

-By taking a clip of secondary market sales via their auction house, the market structure incentive changes. The Card company now has an incentive to ensure secondary sales are high, not for all cards of course, but for the chase cards. Hopefully this means that MORE effort is put into card design (not idiotic parallels) and the presumed 'chase cards' are made rarer. Isn't this what was so great about the 90s? Better card design, more creativity and lower pops on some of the chase stuff. Why can't we go back to that? I'm hopeful, by owning an Auction house, Fanatics (Topps) are incentivised to do so.

Some decent thoughts here, but
1. It takes a whole lot to make a new $100k card. There’s only a few that can be made each year, and the more you try to make the harder it becomes to make one

2. When has Fanatics ever focused in making any product better?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[vamz]

Originally Posted by tjforce

Some decent thoughts here, but
1. It takes a whole lot to make a new $100k card. There’s only a few that can be made each year, and the more you try to make the harder it becomes to make one

2. When has Fanatics ever focused in making any product better?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

1. Agree.

2. Agree.

[KhalDrogo]

Originally Posted by tjforce

Yeah. I can see it as a benefit if you are talking the true upper crust of collectables.

I assume Sotheby's can reach out to a few clients on a PSA 9 '52 Mantle and have them pick up the phone and listen. I don't know that they are going to waste their time on an Anthony Edwards NT, even if it's a great patch and PSA 10. Fanatics seems to be catering to the few UHNWI's they can get to take a look, and the breaker crowd, but seem to be missing the mark with the majority of collectors.

I found it interesting that the card they’re showcasing in the promo for this is a PSA 8 1948 Leaf Jackie. That’s a $300-350k card. That’s really the best they could do here?

I think this ends up like the Goldin 100. Initial threshold to get in was $100k. A year later, half the items in the auction don’t even sell for $100k. The pool of $100k cards isn’t that large. The majority of ultra high-end vintage is locked down by collectors, and modern pricing continues to fall off a cliff.

[gomiamigo]

Originally Posted by vamz

Rationale:

-Currently, the only way for the Card companies to make money is from sales of boxes/cases.

This is very obviously no longer the case.

[fabiani12333]

Originally Posted by vamz

sorry, just to clarify what I meant, I'm not saying the cards will come for sale more often. I meant to say, if Fanatics also has an auction house, then, strategically speaking, Topps (owned by Fanatics) should make their 'chase cards' lower print/rarer.

Rationale:

-Currently, the only way for the Card companies to make money is from sales of boxes/cases.

-The secondary card market is huge. The Card companies receive zero of this secondary market revenue.

-So, what do the card makers do to try and increase revenue? They pump out more and more product. They produce 50 parallels of the same card to get folks chasing the same card in 50 diff colours etc. The current market structure incentivises card companies to produce MORE product and make their cards LESS rare.

-How does a Card company get a cut of the secondary market sales? They buy an auction house and then take a clip of the sales that occur on the secondary market. This is exacty what Rolex has recently done with their 'Rolex certified re-sale program' etc. You get the benefit of knowing you're buying a certified Rolex product and Rolex gets to take a cut of the secondary market premium on some of their watches.

-By taking a clip of secondary market sales via their auction house, the market structure incentive changes. The Card company now has an incentive to ensure secondary sales are high, not for all cards of course, but for the chase cards. Hopefully this means that MORE effort is put into card design (not idiotic parallels) and the presumed 'chase cards' are made rarer. Isn't this what was so great about the 90s? Better card design, more creativity and lower pops on some of the chase stuff. Why can't we go back to that? I'm hopeful, by owning an Auction house, Fanatics (Topps) are incentivised to do so.

I think it does make sense for Fanatics to emphasized the collectability and resell value of the cards they produce if they are going to provide a marketplace for them.

The problem is they have yet to show an ability to consistently make unique and desirable cards -- they lack creativity and skill. As you said, most of what they seem to produce are derived from other cards, like parallels and retro designs.