Gas Prices Are Getting Insane

Hey Collectors, 

Sometimes it pays to forget. At least when it comes to sealed wax trading card boxes…

Heritage dominated The Hobby headlines this week with their announcement that a sealed case of 1979 O-Pee-Chee Hockey Cards (home to Gretzky’s Rookie) was uncovered in a “long-forgotten pile of boxes” in a collector’s home in Saskatchewan. The case of 16 boxes has been dubbed “The greatest unopened find of the 21st century!”

With an estimate exceeding $2M, largely thanks to the possibility of pulling a flawless Gretzky (A PSA 10 sold for $3.75M in 2021), bidding had already reached $1.77M (with buyer’s premium) as of late last night. 

The auction winner will have a big dilemma on their hands… keep the case intact, sell off individual boxes, or open them all in a hunt for pristine examples of The Great One’s rookie card. 

No matter what, we’ll be watching. Now let’s get into it. 

Collector’s Item

A different kind of “Barn Find”: Earlier this month, a Shell Motor Oil sign sold for A$103,000, but it would never have seen the auction block if it wasn’t for a lucky mistake. Inquiring about selling a Holden car, which had spent decades in a Victoria, Australia barn, the seller provided Ashley Burns of Burns & Co Auctioneers photos to determine an estimate. Instead, the eagle-eyed auctioneer spotted a perfectly preserved Shell “Stick Man” sign from 1925.

The market for gasoline signs is far from new - with a record sale coming just last year for $1.5M for a Musgo Gasoline sign found in a Michigan attic. Musgo signs are prized by petroliana collectors (did you know that was a thing!?) since the gas station was only in operation for about six months in the 1920s.

The success of these recent gas station sign sales is a testament to the ‘collect what you like’ school of thought, which we wholly support. If an item exists, you can assume someone somewhere collects it.

And if this newsletter is making you realize that signage from gas stations of yesteryear is “your thing”, check out this explanation of the market for collectible petroliana by Richmond Auctions, which dives into the quasi-artistic renaissance caused by the early 20th-century gasoline boom. 

Maybe we can help fuel increased interest in the petroliana market.

Penny Thoughts

• If you don’t have any vintage gasoline signs hidden in your house, maybe check to see if you have artwork by a Symbolism master. After 100 years, a Gustav Klimt portrait thought to be lost forever has reemerged in a private collection and is now headed off to auction. Listed with a high estimate of $55M, Klimt’s current auction record is $109M for “Lady with a Fan” which sold last year at Sotheby’s. His painting, The Kiss, can be had for $5.99 with a subscription to Samsung’s FrameTV art store.

• We don’t need to tell you why this new documentary by Morgan Jon Fox called “The Hobby” is already marked on our calendars for its February 16th release. Promising an all-encompassing look at every aspect of card collecting, from grading companies to card shops, the doc appears to be a no-brainer watch for collectors. We’ll be on Mantel release day, sharing our review. 

• Finally, in last week’s newsletter, we dropped a trivia question, asking what item Arnold Schwarzenegger had in his suitcase when he got stopped by Customs at the Munich airport. Roughly 57% of respondents got the question right- a new Audemars Piguet watch, still in its box. The option picked least? A prop sword from Conan the Barbarian, which makes sense because we know it would never pass the airline’s carry-on size restrictions. 

Mantel Update

We’re set to officially launch Mantel on February 13th, and we want to give all of our Day 1 supporters early access. This link will get you onto the site immediately, two weeks before we tell the world about what we’ve been up to. Please come explore, post, and hang. And we’d love any feedback you have- because for Mantel to truly serve the collectors, we need as many as possible helping us shape what this site and this community will become. Want to let us know what you think? Feel free to email me directly, at [email protected]. I’d love to hear from you.