Above the Mantel 003

Hey there, Collectors, 

With the holidays in full force, we know many readers have been gifting, and hopefully getting scores of collectibles. Our wishlist is long, and given it includes this 1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle, this unopened box of 1986 Fleer NBA, this Heuer Carrera 2447N, and this Lamborghini Countach 25th Anniversary, expectations this Christmas are low. 

But here’s hoping all of you score big, and post the hits on Mantel. 

Collector’s Item

Cancel all your plans and head to a Goodwill, stat, because the shops appear to be teeming with incredibly rare and valuable collectibles. In just the last week alone, The New York Times has reported on three wild thrift store finds, including a pair of gold Air Jordan’s custom made for Spike Lee, an N.C. Wyeth painting and a Carlo Scarpa vase. 

Every so often a story comes out about a massive find in the bargain bin at a thrift store (like this personal favorite, a LeCoultre Deep Sea Alarm found at Goodwill for $5.99), and we can’t help but start daydreaming. If there are people out there donating rare items to Goodwill… and if the items make it to the shop floor without being identified… anyone reading this could conceivably end up with a lucrative find…

The Spike Lee Jordan Retro 3’s sold at Sotheby’s this week for $50,800, blowing well past estimates. Proceeds from the sale are going back to Portland Rescue Mission, the organization that runs the thrift shop where the shoes were originally found. 

The Scarpa vase hammered for $107,100 and the Wyeth painting sold for north of six figures in a private sale, creating fat returns for the eagle-eyed shoppers, who paid only $3.99 respectively to walk out of a thrift store with a rare piece of art. 

Meanwhile, our local Goodwill seems to carry mostly out-of-style T-shirts, but that doesn’t mean we’ll quit stalking the aisles, looking for that priceless score. 

Penny Thoughts

• Ok… one more Goodwill story, posted on X.com by Friend of Mantel, Will Stern. A woman, with only $30 left in her bank account, purchased an ultra-rare copy of Nintendo game, Stadium Events, for $8 at her local thrift shop. She then flipped the copy at auction for $25K. Only 2 graded copies exist, and the last sealed version to publicly sell went for $66K in 2020, a wild return for a game that few played, and even fewer remember. 

• If you struck out at your local Goodwill, maybe check the closet. A man in California found hundreds of century-old baseball cards after his father passed away, including incredibly rare cards of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Shoeless Joe Jackson. Now the cards are going to auction, with estimates for the lot anchored in the high six-figures.

Mantel Update

Continued gratitude to all of Mantel’s Day Ones, posting and testing our platform as we fine-tune it for a proper launch in early 2024. The feedback has been massively helpful, and we’ll continue squashing bugs and improving features over these last few days of the year. 

We have plenty of space for more MVP testers, so if you have friends who would love to get in the mix, let us know, and we’ll get them access. In order to turn Mantel into an indispensable platform, the community itself needs to help shape it. So sign up, tell your friends, and help us create something you will love and feel part of.