Calum Johnson: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Alts, the show on Public all about alternative investing and emerging trends happening at the intersection of culture and investing. I'm your host, Calum Johnson from the Alts team. Before we get into it, let's get the energy in the room up. Let's hit that like button. We've got a really exciting episode for you guys with some great guests. So let's get into that.
Today we are joined by Dylan and Bradley from Altan insights, the leading platform for alternative asset investing, intelligence and analysis. Dylan and Bradley will be sharing some of the biggest findings from their latest research on the sports collectibles market covering both sports cards and memorabilia. Since we're going to be talking about so many current events and what's happening in these markets, at the moment through the report, and there's a lot to get through, we're going to skip the five and five and jump directly into it.
So without further ado, let me hand it over to the guests. Dylan, Bradley, could you quickly reintroduce yourself to the audience? I know you've come on Public live a few times. Introduce yourself and Altan insights. Give us a bit of an overview of the new report that you've just released about sports collectibles in general.
Dylan Dittrich: Great. Thanks, Calum and thanks for having us back. My name is Dylan Dittrich, and I kind of lead the research effort at Altan Insights. And what Altan really focuses on is kind of empowering and arming the modern investor to explore alternative asset classes. Specifically, we look at collectible asset classes, things like fine art, wine, sports collectibles, classic cars. And so providing research analysis and data to kind of dig deeper into those asset classes, understand how they perform and understand the different kinds of forces that drive them.
And so as part of that effort on a quarterly basis, we put out a report on the state of the sports collectibles market, how sports cards are performing, how sports memorabilia is performing, you know, what are the different trends in different sports? How are collectors and investors approaching these categories? So I certainly would encourage everybody to visit the site and download the report if you're interested and have the time - but it was certainly an interesting second quarter to chronicle. Much like other assets that can be more speculative in nature, sports collectibles were challenged in some pockets, but had some really kind of interesting and even encouraging things happening in others. So looking forward to kind of diving into those with you guys today.
Bradley Calleja: And I'll just second Dylan. Thank you for having me on. I'm with Altan Insights as well. I do research alongside Dylan. I worked on the sports collectibles report that we put out recently in the first and second quarters as well as our art report and I’m also a qualified appraiser with the International Society of appraisers covering art, collectibles and memorabilia. So I've always had a big interest in the valuations of these assets, following them as actual investable vehicles and just tracking the data and the performance records everything that you can see in our reports on a quarterly basis, and you know, just putting out the research that we do looking at the sales and kind of going beyond just the numbers, so thank you.
Calum Johnson: Okay, great. Thank you both for the introduction. I want to get straight into the report. So like, what have we learned about the sports collectibles market in Q2? And I want to take kind of one of the big points that you made in that report, which was, are we seeing a healthy reset of the market away from speculation, or has a paradigm shift occurred that will change the way these markets perform going forward?
Dylan Dittrich: Yeah, so I think just to zoom out a little bit, like some other categories of when, when the pandemic hit, kind of fueled by nostalgia fueled by stimulus checks, fueled by more time at home, sports collectibles really started to soar. So sports cards in particular, as people kind of, you know, revisited old treasures that might have been in the basement or the attic, and kind of revisited hobbies from their past. And it just brought a huge new audience into this space. And with that new demand came, you know, very rapid appreciation in these categories. And, as was the case, in other categories that saw similarly heightened demand over the last few years, the second quarter of 2022, was was challenging, as people became kind of skittish about the state of the economy, skittish about, you know, traditional financial markets, they were relatively eager and willing to sell these assets. And in many cases, that led to, you know, significant kind of declines in value across many different categories within the sports collectible space. And so I think a part of that is, is very likely a healthy reset of perhaps some things that had run a little bit too high, too fast.
But I think it's also important to add the caveat that, you know, it seems kind of indisputable that since before the last few years, the audience has definitely grown for the long term. And so, you know, we'd still expect to see there, you know, be more interested in this space than there was previously. But you know, when there's economic economic turmoil, when there's traditional financial market turmoil, it's not uncommon to see speculative assets like these sell off, even though that hasn't necessarily always been the case in sports collectibles. You know, historically, in other moments of financial crisis, economic crisis 2008, 2009, for example, you know, there are indices that suggest that sports cards didn't sell off that much. But, you know, we live in a very different kind of market today where people can basically sell cards that at a moment's notice, you know, friction is much lower than it has been in the past. And so when kind of investor and collector sentiment turns, you know, people can act on that, and so very easily nowadays and, and I think that played a role in sending some valuations lower in q2.
Calum Johnson: Bradley, did you want to jump in?
Bradley: I second Dylan on that. And also say that while we saw those pullbacks within the broader market, and I'm sure we'll touch on the upper end of the market, it continued to hold up well, which is something we haven't seen tested over the last few years, right. These are markets that have been tracked in some cases for decades now, and to see the broader market pull back rather significantly, and in some cases, well beyond even just a traditional stock market or other asset classes, but then to also simultaneously see the highest end of the card market your your blue chip type cards and memorabilia, seeing record prices, and in some cases, the auctions seeing heightened volume, more bidders, an increase in bids on high end cards definitely showed just a shift almost, when you look at a traditional market, that movement from maybe growth to value that you see sometimes in downturns. So it's certainly some things that we see across other markets are being replicated in sports collectibles as well.
Calum Johnson: Okay, awesome. And just as a point for both of you, definitely feel free to just jump in whenever you want. We want to be as much of a conversation as possible.
I think you both made some great points. Dylan, I wanted to pick up on one thing you mentioned, which is the sports card market today, there's a lot less friction when it comes to access to liquidity. Could you go a bit deeper into that like, versus what we've seen historically, what are some of the factors that have caused there to be a lot less friction in the market, it's a lot easier for people to, like exit their position. Is that auctions? Is that the fractional markets? What are some of those factors that have caused that?
Dylan Dittrich: Yeah, I think when you think about all of this new demand that's come into the space, you know, with that comes investment dollars and the pursuit of innovation, to make things, you know, easier on that new demand to make it easier for them to transact. And so I think a lot of the leading platforms in the space, whether you're talking about auction houses, whether you're talking about marketplaces, the technology that they're using has advanced considerably. The marketing around auctions has increased considerably, the frequency of auctions has increased considerably. And there's also a lot of, you know, competition to be the venue where people are buying and selling sports collectibles, and so that has the power to lower costs as well.
And so, whereas, you know, in decades prior, somebody might move to sell a card, and they might have to wait, you know, a month or two for the next auction, or they had to, you know, create their own eBay listing and kind of wait for that to be completed, it's really a lot easier today and it takes a lot less kind of manual legwork. And there are many platforms, you know, kind of designed to make buying and selling these things akin to buying and selling stocks. And we see that with fractional platforms as well. And so there's definitely an increased focus on liquidity, which is great, that means you can convert your asset to cash in a shorter amount of time and with greater ease. But on the flip side of that, that means that, you know, a market and valuations and price levels can react a whole lot faster when people start getting a bit nervous.
Calum Johnson: No, I think it's such an interesting point that like the reduction in friction, means that from a psychological point of view, investors in sports cards can now act a lot more similar to how, you know, investors in more traditional assets, like stocks can behave.
Dylan Dittrich: Yeah, and I think, you know, to use an example from a more traditional asset class, you know, you know, the performance of asset classes, like private equity and private real estate, are always touted as being quite strong on a risk adjusted basis. But part of that is because the, you know, the valuations are kind of marked to market, aren’t updated with as greater frequency as public markets. And these, you know, private investment firms aren't buying and selling with as much frequency as actors and traditional public markets. So in a way that kind of smooths over those, those rough economic and financial patches, it's not to say that their performance isn't strong, but there's there is kind of an element of the way that it's measured, you know, kind of making things look a little bit stronger on paper sometimes.
Calum Johnson: No, that's a really interesting point. I want to get a bit deeper into the data.
And Bradley, maybe we can check to you for this one. I know one of the things that you mentioned in the report, was that you use the PWCC indices to kind of understand the market and what's happening. Can you quickly just explain to our audience, first of all, why is the PWCC indices so important for that? And then also, what are some of the limitations of using those indexes to look at the market today?
Bradley Calleja: Yeah, definitely. So PWCC they’re a marketplace and auction house and they have multiple indices, they have five ranging from the PWCC, 100 500, and then 2500. And their indices track a range of cards, but they are primarily vintage based. So you mentioned, like some of the shortfalls of those indices, one of them is that they do primarily track vintage cards, so cards dating really pre 1980s. And so PWCC, they really have the longest tenure as a performance tracking metric, they date back to the early…actually to 2008 is when the PWCC indices start. So you kind of get that tail and in the 2009 timeframe of the financial crisis. So you have one of the reasons why I believe that they're used so frequently is not only because they date back, but more importantly, because they date back to a very specific moment in financial markets history. And they, if you look at the indices, they do change in terms of their composition, but they primarily revolve around your blue chip Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth cards, whether they're rookies or just pre-war, or close to post-war cards, and those cards while they've performed very well, it's not always the greatest representation of the overall market. As I had discussed previously about how the broader market struggled but the blue chip higher end market performed very well, we just saw that happen.
So if you're looking at, you know, the last six to nine months, you might see a lot of cards across the board. And a lot of cars, maybe people on here owned, have maybe dropped in value. But meanwhile, we're seeing some record sales for Honus Wagner or Mickey Mantle or Babe Ruth, or whoever that player might be in their rookie cards or in some of their early cards, that maybe is not the greatest representation of the overall market. So that's the one challenge, it is used just because we need some way of tracking an industry that has a composition of multiple cards across a span of time. But as with any industry, it might not be the best representation of the overall market and also of the sale frequency. So it's not necessarily looking at in a downturn market, is the volume still the same? Are people still selling their cards in that period of time? Are people still buying those cards in that period of time? Is the market still as active? There's a lot of metrics that maybe aren't incorporated in some of those indices, which do create the shortfalls, but are still important to include in any research and analysis.
Calum Johnson: I think it's such an interesting distinction, definitely when I started to learn more about sports cards, the distinction between like the vintage older cards, and then the more modern sports card, and perhaps you can both touch on this. Why do vintage markets perform so differently than like, more modern sports cards? Is it purely just about scarcity and supply? Or are there other factors that we can look at?
Dylan Dittrich: Yeah, so this is, this was definitely one of the more interesting kind of tidbits to come out of our Q2 analysis. If you looked at second quarter performance of vintage and prewar cards, they were effectively flat down very, very slightly 1 to 2% versus modern and ultra modern cards, which were down in the neighborhood of 15 to 20%. And I think part of that is, you know, modern and ultra modern tend to be a bit more speculative in nature, you have speculation on players that are currently active younger players, people who have more of their career left in some areas, particularly in the ultra modern space.
And when you look at vintage, there's a very long tenured collector base, the scarcity is naturally very low, just just by nature of the fact that these cards have been around for decades and decades. You know, over time, some have been lost, they've been damaged, so supply is very low. And I think, you know, many collectors aren't turning these cards over with as great a frequency - they're holding on to them. And that means less supplies available to the market, which of course can help keep, you know, prices kind of higher as demand grows, or even stays the same. And that's where you find a lot of quote unquote, blue chip cards that are very, very popular historically that are very well known, that are kind of like the top pieces of almost akin to fine art in this category. So a bit less speculation, less supply, and more longer tenured collectors and holders of these assets.
Bradley: Yeah, and then just to add, there's also been so many market shifts across you know, when these cards were initially coming out, think about some of the cards maybe you've seen breaking records like a T 206 Honus Wagner like these were really advertisements. They weren't built for card collectors. They weren't being produced in mass for you know..they were being produced and then slid into a pack of gum or candy or cigarettes, or they were being stuck at tables at diners. They weren't being produced where then we saw that shift in the 70s, 80s, 90s, where then it rotated into what is known as the junk wax era where you had producers of cards, pumping out incredibly high quantities of cards. There's a ton out on the market, you don't really see a whole lot of 1990s players with high, high sales in their cards and today, the shift has really turned to grading where we’re seeing such an increase in cards being graded. People are sending them off to places like Beckett, PSA, SGC to be graded and a very high percentage of cards within populations are being graded. So it's just been a real overall shift in the market that has definitely aided I think vintage as standing out and standing alone from a period of time where people weren't collecting cards maybe for investment pieces.
Calum Johnson: Bradley can you kind of go –I think that's a really interesting point you brought up on the grading, right? Can you kind of go a bit deeper? What is the impact on the market overall of you know, you're getting more PSA 10s You're getting more BGS 9.5 or whatever, like, what is the impact on vintage versus modern?
Bradley Calleja: Yeah, definitely. It’s an impact that I don't think is probably being discussed enough. We do cover it quite a bit. We have a partnership with a company called Gem Rate, who tracks the percentage and the number of cards graded by companies like I mentioned previously, PSA, Beckett,STC. And for example, just PSA alone, they're seeing record cards coming through and being graded in items altogether. You know, their Q2 numbers, and this past quarter were the highest they've ever had graded. I believe the past month was their highest month on record. So at this point, you know, they've had two months this year, believe it was March, and then now July that have been their two highest grading totals in company history, in terms of just number of items.
And that impacts everything because a lot of these prices, especially in modern cards are dictated by the grade. So for example, PSA grades on a numeric scale one to 10. With as well as an authentic grade if the card is maybe in too poor of quality, to receive a number. But a PSA 10, which would be like a gem mint card, the highest tier, will historically sell for higher than a PSA nine of that same card, right? There may be a flaw in the nine that deducts that one point. The problem is that people today are pulling cards out of packs and sending them immediately to PSA, the card has a higher chance than receiving a 10. And in turn, that overall population is skyrocketing, right? We're seeing some players like in the NBA, Zion Williamson, John Moran, where they have super high numbers of - I mean talking 10s of 1000s of PSA 10 graded cards for some of their base cards right now. Where for example, with the vintage, you have to almost get to the 60s before you start seeing a lot of these cards, receiving tents and that just comes down to people weren't pulling them and sending them out immediately from packs. So it definitely is having an impact. And I think long term, we're going to see a swell of cards that were graded, that received 10s. It's going to be very difficult to really ever find appreciation and an increase in value when you have a card that has 20,000+ grades, and then maybe 10 to 15% of that population is a PSA 10.
Dylan Dittrich: And if you think about it, Calum, if you're an owner of a great advantage card, the threat of the population have that card growing now and really making your card a lot less valuable just by nature of the supply growing is a lot lower relative to modern because you know these cards have been in circulation they've been unwrapped from packs decades ago, you know, every now and then yes, some some new population will find its way to the to the grading companies. But you know, the likelihood of that happening at scale is much lower than it is for modern and ultra modern cars, and that's why the kind of the risk return formula, so to speak, for vintage is a lot different than it is for modern and ultra modern cards.
Calum Johnson: No, I think that's super interesting. I'm going to ask one more question on the card point before we shift over to game one memorabilia and memorabilia overall, which I know is a very different picture than the card market.
I think one thing that was interesting as I was going through the report is amongst all kind of the doom and gloom in the sports card market, there were some promising signs. The economist David RPA, modern hockey card record sale at Heritage last month, the upcoming heritage auction for the Mantle. Can you both just kind of comment on those two sales and what you think they might indicate about the market overall as we look forward?
Dylan Dittrich: I mean the Mantle sale - so for context, one of the very highest graded 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle cards is up for auction at Heritage auction later this month, the special card because basically what happened was, these cards weren't wildly popular. When they were released back in 1952. They sat on shelves, and it was time for basically the 1953 print run to start being sold and tops needed the warehouse space. So they basically dumped boxes, and boxes and boxes of these cards into the ocean. And Mickey Mantle is kind of one of the preeminent, you know, baseball, cultural icons, certainly baseball card icons. And so probably one of the four very best examples of this card is being auctioned later this month. It's already over $7 million at auction, there's, I think, a pretty strong expectation that it's going to end up at $10 million plus.
The last time there was a sale of..so that's an SGC 9.5 Mickey Mantle. Back in early 2021, there was a sale of a PSA nine mantle for $5.2 million. And, you know, the stats are pretty clear that afterwards, not only did the broader and kind of lower quality Mantle market absolutely soar higher, but you could make the argument that, you know, it led to, you know, significant appreciation in the broader card market as well. It's a really big deal when a sale that big makes a very wide range of mainstream news headlines, because that creates new demand. It gets people excited about the space again, and it tends to have pretty wide ranging impacts. Now granted, it does take a sale of $5 million or $10 million to generate that excitement, which is exceedingly rare, but it does happen and it'll be really interesting to see, you know, what happens in the wake of that sale next month, or later this month rather.
Bradley Calleja: And all along the Mantle card has always stood out from a baseball standpoint, similar to in hockey. We've had a seven figure sale of Wayne Gretzky, but we have also been tracking as you mentioned, the McDavid card. So modern hockey has similar to some of the other modern sports has lagged pretty significantly in terms of the overall market. So in the first quarter, golden oxygens sold a Sidney Crosby card. It was a gold precious metal gems and went for 100 in just under $165,000, which set a record for any modern hockey card. And then in this past quarter or the past quarter we've just had or past month, there was a 2015 Connor McDavid card, which is an autographed patch card. So it has a patch from a game worn jersey within it, and it's sold for $228,000. So that established a new modern hockey card price.
And actually, this is very timely, because just this week, there was one of the other so there are three cards in the population for the Connor McDavid that are graded PSA 10, and another one just sold this week for just over $200,000. So heading into the second quarter, we had never had a sale for a modern hockey card go for more than $200,000 and now we've had one, you know, essentially in the past 30 days now we've had two cards, same card, same grade, but it was definitely a validating sale to see one sell via eBay for over $200,000. So definitely some momentum within that market. But again, it's really a couple names: Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin. But beyond those three, hockey though, just continues to trail the field overall for sure.
Calum Johnson: Okay, very interesting. I'm conscious that we're nearly at time. Everyone can stay on if they're interested to hear more, because we're gonna go into the sports memorabilia market. And I think if Q1 was kind of, you know, there was a plunging in the sports card market. I think it was the exact reverse on the sports memorabilia side.
Could you, and I'll put this to both of you. Can you kind of just give us some context, data wise what we saw with sports memorabilia, and then also like, what is the significance like why did this happen?
Dylan Dittrich: Yeah, so on kind of the second part of that question first. So when the sports card market was was booming, you'd see, and Bradley just alluded to one of them, you would see these cards that have little patches from either a game worn or player player worn jersey, selling for, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars, which in many cases is more than a full game used jersey would actually sell for. And so I think for the last few years, people both outside of the space, especially but also inside the space, have kind of taken a step back and said like, that doesn't make any sense. Like why is this little patch that's, you know, encased in cardboard selling for more than an entire game use jersey. And I think, you know, the idea that that shouldn't necessarily be the case has started to take hold, and the second quarter we saw, really for the entirety of 2022, but really in the second quarter we saw game worn jersey sales make headlines, there was a Diego Maradona, game worn jersey from the famous Hand of God World Cup match sold for over $9 million. Sotheby’s Golden Age auctions sold a set of Tiger Woods clubs from when he won the tiger slam for over $5 million.
And so we just saw a huge volume of sales that were kind of headline sales that were over six figures. So to put it in context, in the second quarter of 2022. There were 42 sales at auctions of game used memorabilia that crossed $100,000. A year ago in the second quarter, there were just 13. So you're talking about more than triple, you know, increase. And I think a lot of that is, you know, card collectors coming into this space and realizing that there's, you know, an opportunity to own some incredible artifacts that, you know, maybe stand out from kind of the traditional to their traditional kind of cardboard pursuits.
Bradley Calleja: Yeah, we put out actually a thread today on Twitter, Altan Insights, where we covered some of these record breaking sales and sports memorabilia. And one of the big highlights is, you know, the record books have really been reconstructed this year. There's three of the five largest public sales ever that have occurred. In terms of sports memorabilia, just this year alone. Dylan mentioned the Maradonna and then also the Tiger Woods. Also the Muhammad Ali championship belt that's sold. So we're just seeing the shift of people going after these really high end really impressive items that have historic context around them.
So it's really exciting to see this shift in this movement of money that's going after you look at even at the Heritage auction coming up that we mentioned, there's the Mickey Mantle card, and that's going to be the big headline grabber. But very likely we'll see a new record set for a baseball bat. There's a 1918,1920 circa Babe Ruth game used in sign that that right now is priced just under a million dollars. I wouldn't be surprised if it by the end of the auction is a multi million dollar bat. It's a really impressive piece that is one of the earliest bats on the market that we've ever seen. I know there's been a lot of collectors out there looking for Babe Ruth's first bat that he used. So that had hit the market back in the early 2000s and went for over a million dollars. It hasn't came back yet. But this bat is probably about the second best thing that we've ever seen.
And the momentum is just continuing within the space. And also just announced yesterday, I believe Sotheby's is going to be selling a Michael Jordan jersey from the 1998 NBA Finals. And that jersey will likely establish not only a new record for any Michael Jordan, game use jersey, but actually any basketball jerseys. We would need to get up to about 4 million to do that. It has an estimate between 3 to 5 million, but with the momentum we're seeing in the prices for other athletes like Ali marathon Tiger Woods, probably seems fitting that Michael Jordan would fit in somewhere in that as well.
Calum Johnson: Now that's pretty iconic. You know, one thing I wanted to follow up on when we talk about these really high sale prices, especially with sports memorabilia. I know one thing that comes into it is the photo matching element. Could you guys just speak briefly about - refresh the audience on what is photo matching, first of all? And then why has it become so important in the valuation of these assets?
Dylan Dittrich: Yeah, photo matching has become a critically important topic. I think it always, not always, but it has been important over the last few years, but its importance has only increased as you see these very high value auction items being sold, and therefore the stakes being raised. And essentially, for those that don't know, you know, if you talk about something like a Michael Jordan worn jersey, or you know, a Wayne Gretzky worn jersey from the Stanley Cup, you want to know, if you're paying millions of dollars for this item? How do I know that he wore it in this game.
And so what photo matching is to kind of simplify it is basically comparing the game worn Jersey in question to very high resolution photos taken during the game in question, to match up very kind of, in most cases, minute details to confirm that this is indeed the jersey that was worn by that player in that game. And it can be things as small as you know, different holes in the mesh different, you know, little pieces of stitching, and how they appear on the jersey and, and matching those elements to the Jersey that's being sold.
And you know, I think when these very large prices are being paid, authentication is so very critical for the credibility of the market, for the credibility of those selling the item. And then for the buying collector to you know, be reassured that the item they've spent money on was who was really as built. And so photo matching is one way that that's accomplished. And you're kind of hard pressed to see nowadays, items sell for very high values without being photo matched to, you know, a certain moment. Generally not the case for more vintage items, for obvious reasons that the high resolution photography that you need to really make a conclusive photo match wasn't available until really, really more recently, but definitely important for any kind of more modern piece of game worn material.
Bradley Calleja: And to follow up, we dove into some of the data behind that photo matching and just looking at so in Q2, out of the top 10 sales, eight of them were marketed as being photo matched. And so there's a few companies out there Resolution, My Gray, who photo match these items, and 18 of the top point five items sold memorabilia wise at auction in the second quarter, add some label or some nod to photo matching, and that compares to 60% of the top 10, the previous year, 12 out of the top 25. So a pretty big difference. It's been around as Dylan had mentioned, but at this point, especially as we start to see these modern assets and the memorabilia side, continue to develop in price, it's pretty much necessary outside of a certificate or a letter of authenticity from the league, or the player itself. You know, memorabilia has always been a little bit of a money market because a lot of these assets weren't supposed to ever make it to an auction house, right?
For example, the Tiger Woods clubs that Golden Age sold, there was a little dispute because Tiger Woods and his agent claimed to still have the clubs, because there's almost this idea that they're not supposed to ever leave the player and it's somebody's responsibility to grab that jersey after the game and keep it, or to secure the club so they never see an auction house. But it was the work of some experts in the space that looked at a bunch of attributes around the clubs between the grip to ball marks to photos, and then were able to provide an opinion a photo match that pretty clearly had an impact considering they sold for over $5 million and easily exceeded any previous golf clubs sold by about $5 million. So it's having an impact on these markets, no question about it. And I really think in the next few years, it's going to become...if it's anything that is photo-matchable so it's not vintage, but it's anything really 1970 on it's going to require some sort of photo matching being a given for sure.
Calum Johnson: It's really interesting, and to be honest, it's pretty incredible that some of these assets they can even match it using photographs and all these things. Before we close out, I wanted to talk about the Muhammad Ali belt. Huge sale, there $6.18 million. I think the initial estimate was to be around like a million dollars.
Can you talk about what was the level of photo matching that we saw there? What was some of the story behind that? Like, why did it exceed the estimate by such a large degree?
Dylan Dittrich: So this is actually one of those interesting and rare cases where there actually wasn't a photo match at hand. And really, what the kind of source of you know, credibility and authenticity here was the provenance so meaning what was kind of the line of ownership from, you know, when the belt was on Muhammad Ali to when it came to auction. So a little bit of background, I think it was last month, heritage sold the WBC Heavyweight Championship belt that Muhammad Ali earned for his win in the Rumble in the Jungle, and they sold it for just under $6.2 million.
This one came from the collection of Drew Bandini Brown, who was Ali's corner man. He kept a lot of artifacts, memorabilia from all of his career in a storage unit. Eventually, the contents of that storage unit were sold. But it's a case where you know you have pretty strong provenance. You know where that belt’s been, you feel fairly confident that this is a belt that was earned by Ali - it was worn by Ali.
And it really led to a bidding war between two bidders who were seemingly unwilling to lose. Turns out the winner was Colts owner Jim Irsay, who has basically been building a museum quality collection of kind of American cultural artifacts that he's actually taken on tour. So it's like, it's one of my favorite kind of investing rules for you know, really blue chip alternative collectibles is like, would Jim Irsay buy this because time and time again, he invariably shows up as a winner of a lot of these auctions.
But yeah, one of those rare cases where, you know, photo matching wasn't playing a significant role in the authenticity here. But sometimes at an auction, all it takes is two highly motivated bidders to drive a value to, you know, levels that people previously thought were unheard of. Especially interesting in this case, because there is another WBC Heavyweight Championship belt that actually trades fractionally. And, you know, now that the question becomes, you know, what's that one worth? So definitely an interesting, very interesting piece of memorabilia. Very interesting story, and, you know, another just massive result.
Bradley Calleja: Just as a follow up, I actually spoke this week with a representative from Heritage who runs some of their consignment, and was talking to him at one point about that night when it's sold, and it was out of the blue for them. So we talked about where something like that comes from, he had actually gone to sleep, said he woke up at like 3am and stuff was like still going. And to see, you know, they, you know, some people that are going to be involved in the auction, for example, they set a million dollar estimate, they had word of mouth from some potential betters that those bidders weren't going to let it go for under a million. But that's all it takes is two bidders on some of these items.
And the same could go for this Mantle card coming up at the end of the month, or the Jordan jersey in September that I mentioned previously, like, it just comes down to if you have some people who are willing to put out that kind of money. And now we're at a point where that table and that tier has been set, where now it used to be a million dollars was a big hurdle for an auction house to clear. If they could clear that million dollar, you know, everyone was clapping and it was a really respectable auction. And that meant that they had a really strong line of bidders where it's almost 5 million at this point where, you know, it's like you're expected to have bidders lined up that are willing to push these items higher and higher the levels that we just haven't seen up until this year.
Calum Johnson: No, it's pretty incredible to be honest, when you look at some of the other asset markets for crypto, for stocks, and you see how bearish people are and kind of the the sentiment there that we still have some of these really high ticket sales and records being broken in some of the alternative asset markets.
Dylan and Bradley, It's been a pleasure to have you guys on the show again, you're always welcome. Thank you to the audience and everyone that listened.
Dylan Dittrich: Thank you, Calum. Thanks everybody.
Bradley Calleja: Thank you very much.