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your number one source. Sports Car Nation, the hobby is the people. [Music] Sports Car Nation. What is up everybody? Welcome to episode 357, aka the Magnum episode of Sports Card Nation. Uh, as always, glad to be back. Happy Friday if you're listening to this on release day. And, uh, we got a great guest today. Uh, Frank the Sports Card CPA's got probably the greatest single Hall of Fame baseball collection probably on the planet, or one of them. He's definitely in the running. Has over 300 of the 350 baseball hall of famers autographs and uh including many of the big ones. And all the current uh uh anyone that's alive, he has all of those as well and is only missing uh 50 more. And he's an accountant uh CPA who does a lot of work in the sports card hobby. So, we're going to talk about his collection, how he decided to go for it, tackle it. Uh, we're going to talk to him about uh some mistakes or or things you can do as a hobbyist or a dealer who who files taxes as well. A lot of great info uh jam-packed into the next two weeks of show with with Frank. So, uh had a blast talking to him. Uh I think you'll enjoy some of the topics we cover. a little different than the norm, if you will, which is to me always fun and always cool to do. Uh, as always, want to thank our sponsors. In no particular order, Iron Sports Cards, uh, Rob, uh, doing your bulk subs, PSA, SGC, uh, doing very well and, uh, one of the best guys, uh, for that. And, uh, Sports Collectors Digest, uh, blessed to be able to write for them. uh Jav Hotline, our every week uh Saturday morning live show that appears on the four collectors network and Upper Deck who allows us to review and and open some product and give away uh some stuff as well. So with that out of the way, let's get the show underway. I'm real excited to have this next gentleman on Sports Card Nation. I met him a few months back in Chicago at the National and he gave me a business card and uh very interested to to talk about him as a whole. He's a collector like most of us who are are listening to the show, but he's also uh a CPA who kind of specializes on the sports card side of the house as well. So, I want to welcome to the show Frank the Sports Card CPA. Welcome, Frank. Hey. Now, John, this is very exciting to have me on. I've watched this podcast for years, so uh very excited to be actually invited to be on the podcast. Thank you for having me. Well, I I appreciate Thank you for your time and coming on and uh you know, getting to meet you obviously in Chicago. Uh like I've told you before recording, I'm a dealer, so you know, any type of and we'll get into the the nuts and bolts of this, but you know, I don't think you know, if you're a dealer who who who profits or makes money in the hobby, obviously we got to pay our sales taxes and that's not avoidable. But when it comes to income taxes and other taxes, depending on obviously what state you live in, um I think it's, you know, the more you know or the more you h have someone who can help you or do your taxes, uh I think the better off you are. And it's just, you know, from being in like tax laws change, uh every year. Um, and for the the the the lay person is not going to know uh all about that where someone who's like yourself who's in that uh line of work is going to be right on on tap top of that stuff. So, uh I don't think we talk about that segment enough. And and again, we'll get into it more uh here in a little bit. But I want to start out with, you know, Frank the hobbyist, Frank the collector, you know, kind of where did for you when did the hobby start as as a as a hobbyist? The hobby started for me personally in 1983. My father took me to a baseball card show featuring Mark the Bird Fid. And yeah, I was six years old at the time. And I really didn't know who Mark Fid was, but he was, let's say, he was as popular as Otanias in the Detroit when when I was a real young child. And so I got to meet him. That's when I got my first of many, many baseball hall of fame autograph. And for those of you that watch my channel, I used to be called Baseball Hall of Fame autographs. I recently did a rebrand as a sports card CPA. But as you could see behind me, I love collecting. I really don't sell. I just collect baseball hall of fame autographs with the impossible goal of getting every single baseball. Uh let me let me piggyback off that. Alive and deceased or or 351 baseball hall of famers. Yes. Alive. It doesn't matter. I currently stand at 301. I need exactly 50 left. And they're all very very tough names. We're talking five fig. Yeah. And and obviously that number goes up with each new induction class. You you add those to the arsenal or to the collection. Correct. Yeah. What I mean what obviously you said you're about 49 or 50 short of of completion. Um I mean what's what's the big one that that will be the toughest of of those? Uh they're all tough in their own right, but what what one you think's the the number one toughest? The number one. Again, a lot of these guys I probably your listeners have never heard of. For example, there's someone named Frank Grant who's a turn of the league Negroly player. Uh rumor is he was illiterate and there's not a single autograph known to exist. There's a lot of other guys especially well that shouldn't that shouldn't count. Like I'm I'm not saying he should obviously he's in the Hall of Fame that that counts and he was a heck of a player to but if he if there don't exist you it's not like you're missing if something really doesn't exist you're not really missing. You know what I mean? It's like a set where the card wasn't produced. So, you're not let's say it was produced but never released. So, maybe one will come out. But, uh I call I count them all the same. Uh I count Babe Ruth the same weight as Harold Baines. Let's say if you're in the Hall of Fame, you're in the Hall of Fame. I need your autograph whether it exists or not. Probably the most common household name of any autograph I need that your listeners would have heard of is Christine Matthew. obviously uh 1936 inductee who passed away about a couple years before that unfortunately because of God tuberculosis I know something to do with chemical warfare and so he passed away very young again the hobby was in its infant and it just makes his autograph very challenging to get and what I do is if you watch my channel I do an autograph analysis of every single baseball hall of fame uh obviously we talk about Frank Grant I did a less than a minute video because no known examples exist but uh like when I talked about Christy Matthew. There's just a so many forgeries out there. You really need to be careful when you're going to buy it. And without going into details, I mean, I know a lot of TPAs, people that work for the TPA, and they're all great people, but even they will tell you they make. So, if you're looking for autographs, it doesn't matter Hall of Famer, not Hall of Famer, current, veteran, whatever, passed away long, do your research. I always say buy the autograph, not buy this. Yeah. Great point by you too, Frank. Right. These are humans, right? Humans make mistakes. That's correct. That's that's part of life. It can ha it can happen. But you you nailed it right on the head, right? Especially with an autograph of significance of significant value. You can't do too much research and investigate. You can only do uh too little uh especially when making a a purchase. Correct. So, like uh I brought out a few autographs and I've shown these before on my channel, but like one of the rarest one of the rarest I have and I don't if you're listening, this is a Frank Chance autograph of Tinkers to Evers to Chance. There's probably 10 known autographs and this one's just a beauty because it's on his letterhead, Frank LC Chance Branch. If you go on the PSA database, this is the single autograph that they refer to on the database. And like I said, I bought the autograph. I didn't. There's a lot of cuts out there. I stopped buying cuts after I had a very bad experience. Again, you can watch with one of these. I bought a cut autograph from a very reputable dealer. And unfortunately, it was deemed not authentic. I don't want to say fake. It was deemed nonauthentic. And what the problem is, once an autograph is deemed nonauthentic, it goes into their database as nonauthentic. You may not know this, but the TPA's do share their database. And therefore, it would probably never be authentic even if it was real. So therefore, even though I have no plans on selling that autograph, I couldn't get a grade in. Therefore, if my descendants ever wanted to sell it, it was pretty much worthless. So, it was a very expensive lesson learned about cuts versus buying the provenence of the autograph. We've heard, you know, recently, I'm sure you heard about the the big forgery scandal of course and in the air. Now, I'm not going to give uh his name. He's he obviously committed suicide. I'm not going to me, you know, and and obviously that's a big story and and it doesn't just hurt people who collect autographs. I think it hurts the hobby in general. I've heard the FBI run estimates that they believe 50% of autographs in the marketplace are nonauthentic. In other words, half um I mean what again it's all speculation. Does does that sound right to you, Frank? about half autographs are are are not legit or does that sound too high? That's me personally. I think that sounds too high in the sense that if you buy an autograph that has let's say a reput JSA, Beckett, and PSA, I would say over 90ome percent of those autographs are good. Uh again, I would not be buying an autograph today of a very high valued player without one of those big searchs. if you don't know what you're buying. Uh I mean again, they've all made mistakes, but if you go on eBay, I'm sure that 50% number is higher than normal, but as like one of the heads said, if it's too good of a deal, I mean, if it's the price is too good, it's too good of a deal. Of course, the cliche is escaping me right now. But yeah, probably that number is if it's too good to be true, it probably is. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, John. So like uh anyways, getting back to that. So yeah, if you look at Mickey Manel, probably on eBay right now, probably I would say maybe 50% are fake. But again, over all those or nearly all those 50% that are fake are probably under $100. So if you're paying under $100 for a Mickey Manel, if it's too good to be true, it probably is. So do your research. I mean, Mickey Manel probably one of the most forged baseball players, at least of all times, in terms of autographs. I did a video about it. It's gotten like close to 10,000 views now and you really there were let's say five main forger around the 2000s with all operation bullpen and they're really easy to the trained eye spot and fake and say this is no good and the TPA's again all know this none of these got through third party I shouldn't say none very very yeah Mickey Mickey definitely is number one on the most uh fugazi autograph list you got Jordan on the basketball side of the house um as well I Believe me, I I have Mickey Man autos that are legitimate and certified. And I've I've had in my hand many of uh of of his that I I know are just by looking at and I'm not even a certification guy, but I guess sometimes you can tell and like you said, if if you're looking at a Mickey Manel auto and someone's just asking a hundred bucks, that's usually just run. Just run. That's a pretty obvious uh signal that uh that is not real. So correct. I mean the big forgery about a couple years ago was the Willie May say hey holograms which a lot of TPA's unfortunately accepted the hologram. It must be real. Again I don't want to name the name but a safety very similar to Barry Bonds. And I was very fortunate there when Revel reached out to me because like I exposed it pretty early that these were bad autographs and what to look for. But again, probably like I would say Willie Mays is the number one autograph that has been passed by TPAs that are for if I had to take one to be careful it's going to be Willie Mays. So and they all have the say hey hologram they all look very similar. So besides that is that he passed away like I said last year so he's obviously had players have an influx when they pass away and so that's again that's that's the exception not the norm. The TPAs are all good people. They're not trying to steal your money. Yeah, that's a tough if you if you if you know about Willie May's autograph, that's a tough autograph to to duplicate. Uh if you're a forger, you know, but again, correct. These these unscrupulous people practice their craft repeatedly. And then you you know, then you got auto pen issues like it's not just all necessarily handwritten things, you know. Uh in the 40s and 50s, you had the clubhouse signatures where a bat boy or a club uh learned how to do players on that uh team's uh signature to take the workload in the sense off of them. And and and back then too was a little more innocent than it would be today because there there wasn't like a huge marketplace uh like we know now. That was just hey kid, you know, sign these for me so I can do some other stuff. But yeah, still not, you know, talk a little bit about that, especially on the Hall of Fame stuff. I mean, the most famous one is the 1955 Dodgers that won the World Series. There was a guy, a bat boy, clubhouse attendant. His nickname was the bro. He had like a unibro and he Duke Snider said he could sign my name better than I can. And so I' I've actually seen him in person where the guys are like, I got this baseball from the 1955 Dodgers. It's real. They had this great story how it was passed down. I mean, autograph experts now can probably spot the differences. There's certain things to look for, but again, that's probably when the secretarial really took effect. They became really good. Prior to that, like Lou Garri and Babe Ruth, yes, they had secretarial signatures, but they were not real close to what their actual signatures look like. Again, like 1955 is kind of the turning point where like, wow, he's been close. And going back to what you said with the recent autograph scandal that broke without giving you information, the majority of the autographs were not forged as much as they were auto pens. And they dropped a video on that. And there's certain things to look for even with an auto pen. I mean, the autograph looks real in the sense that he forged like 100 Wayne Gretzky autographs and everyone looks exactly identical. Exactly identical. Like Wayne Gretzky on a perfect day couldn't do that himself. So again this is like with the autopen again bringing it from uh bringing that little forward again that started mostly with politician in the 1970s 1984 then it's taken over now to sports stuff. I mean we see that very commonly let's say sports signed books are being auto penned a lot and passed off as real and the other thing you really problem now is a lot of these athletes they don't know how to sign their name so they make lines and little drawings or just initials just initials yeah like it would be like me just putting JN on a sticker or a piece of paper or the card itself it's just it's a different generation you know yeah it's a different generation also A lot of these players, again, I don't want to like segregate this, but a lot of them that come from the Dominican League in that area, they really never learn how to spell their names. They they just learn baseball and that's all they really care about. So, uh making making a glove out of milk cartons. Yeah, exactly. You know, so yeah, they weren't thinking about signing autographs, trying to survive and enjoying a game that they love that if they were fortunate enough could provide them a living uh eventually, which it did uh for some. Time for a quick break, but we'll be right back. [Music] Iron Sports Cards is your number one source for all your PSA and other grading submissions. Their elite status improves turnaround times. Heck, they even provide the card savers. Their chat rooms provide updates on all your submissions. They also offer wax options and single cards to cover all the bases. Check them out on Facebook at Ironportscards Group or on the web at ironportscards.com or even give them a call at 1877 O N PSA. Rob's got you covered. Sports Card Nation has returned for for you. I mean, you have a great collection. Obviously, you talked about it kind of started but with with Mark Friedrich the bird. When did you real like when did you know like I want to collect autographs and and then maybe twoprong question Frank when did that and then when did you say I'm going I'm going for all the baseball hall of famers that ever are in So in 1993 I went to the nationals at the Rosemont Convention Center. Not the Rosemont I'm sorry McCormack Place Convention Center downtown Chicago. you're probably familiar with it. Uh, and they had a bunch of Hall of Famer and I couldn't I wasn't real rich as a kid. I was middle class growing up. So, they weren't that expensive the autographs then like they are now. Uh, so in 19 so I got as many autographs that I could. I don't have the baseball. They're behind me. But I got I filled the baseball with like 20 Hall of Fame and I'm like this is really cool. And so my father and I started a tradition and in 1994 we went to the George R. Brown Convention Center for the 94 National. And what's interesting about that, I always talk about this, is Mickey Manel was there. It was his last show. Nobody knew it was going to be his last show. Obviously, he just signed with Upper Deck. He was charging $80 an autograph. And now that's like a bargain, obviously. But back then, $80 for an autograph. Insane. The next closest person was Carl Shrimsky. So, I remember looking at his line. I have a picture somewhere. And there's nobody in line for Mantel because no one was gonna pay $80. He's been do he a year ago he would do the show for $30. Of course he passed away less than a year later and I made a vow to myself. Whenever I see someone's baseball hall of famers I always love baseball I would get their autograph. So my initial goal was to get all the living baseball hall of famers in person. Uh I have flown all over the country all the nationals getting them in person. In 2001 I got Kirby Pucket and finished every living hall of fame. And then like now what do I do? in about 200. This is when Operation Bullpen was really coming to light. So, I'm kind of glad I didn't start until when I did. Then in 2007, I started making, let's say, some real money, like adult money. And I said I I'm looking at it right now. I a Chief Bender autograph. He was a pitcher for the ATH Philadelphia Athletics came for sale. And I'm like, I'm going to bid on it. And I bought it and I said, you know what? I'm just going to go for them all. I'm going to go for them all. I know it's an impossible task. Uh, I've taken out small business loans to get some autographs. I got some real toughies that way. Uh, fortunately the vintage autograph market has like all like a rising tide rising tide raises all ships. Like vintage sports cards, the autographs have gone up as well in value. So, uh, it may be my retirement. I'm hopefully I won't need to sell them one day, but if I have to, they're all here. And I'm really proud of not only the autographs, but like the the medium that's on. Like you see behind me over here is Roberto Clemente's signed tax return. I just did Bill McKenchney. It was a really cool endorsement that appeared in a 1928 baseball uh magazine. So like everything behind me are government postcards, checks, documents. I've been very careful since I learned a very expensive lesson to avoid cut autograph. Yeah, that's that's awesome. uh awesome pieces uh for those looking on in in video and and again having 300 of the 350 just tells you what kind of collection that you have. Do you know anyone else like yourself that's attempting to do this? And and if you do, do do like-minded folks are you like do you work together like hey I have an extra one of these and you have an extra one of those or how does that work or not? I I know that works with cards. Is it is it the short answer is yes. So I have a text chain with people you probably know Bill the Hall of Fame collector uh Mike Moahan Jake Legends Ever Die and we're all in different points of our let's say journey to finish them. Bill and myself are the closest and we kind of look at the major auction houses like Rea Heritage this is coming out like this is my high bid. I'm like if you want it you got to bid X or Y. There's been other time there's a a rare Negro League Hall of Famer named Alex Pompei. Uh his autograph came about in a really small auction house and I know I had him. Bill needed him and we're friends. So I called him. I said, "I can get it for such and such price. I'm not going to charge you anything extra." And I just picked it up for him. I turned around and I sold it to him for cost and he looks out for me. So we really do look out for each other because right now it's a small niche. I don't know anyone personally that has a bigger Hall of Fame collection than me, but I'm sure they're out there because I see the autographs now of players I need. Let's say Christy Matthews for example, and they're going for insane amount of insane amounts of money. So, you know, some high dollar people out there spending that on autograph. Yeah, no doubt. So, when you attend a national, is it twofold for you? In other words, what I mean by that, Frank, is are obviously you might attend uh wait in line or or whatever you do for some that are are are there or at this point all the living ones you have you so it would only be maybe a a new inductee that you haven't got in person. So you're more showcase shopping than waiting at online for someone in person. Would that be accurate? Uh that's fairly accurate. So like when you get to my level and again someone taught me this who had the biggest hall of fame auto monograph collection at one time is you start to speculate who's going to get it. You know what I'm saying? So like this past national and I know he's only played one and a half years but Peter Crow Armstrong was signing in person. I'm a real big in-person collector and so he was signing in person. So I did wait in line. I got Petro Armstrong's autograph. I got Kyle Tucker's autograph because you don't know if they're ever going to do a show again. If so, they're going to be much. Uh, PCA's autograph. I was so disappointed. If you're watching this, Pete, I don't think you are. Please learn how to spell your name. Not just put PCA for the amount of money you charge. Uh, unfortunately, most of the vintage autograph dealers are disappearing. Auction houses are just cleaning up. So, everyone that has a collection of autographs, let's say that I need in my level, let's let's say besides the Roose, the Cobbs, or the more rare baseball hall of famers, they're all going to auction these, John. I have to be honest, it's kind of disappointing because I'm sure you can do this with baseball cards in the good old days, like the Frank Chance autograph cost me, I'm going to be honest, $12,000. So, I said to the dealer that had it, I'm going to give you $1,000 a month. You hold the autograph, give you $1,000 a month. It'll come back to you next year at the National. you're gonna hand me the autograph. Handshake deal. Both sides, I think, ended up very happy. You can't do that anymore. Yeah, it's it's it's it's tough. Yeah, I get it. And that's nice that even he was willing to to to do that uh and that sort of thing. Um you you know it I like what you said too that like you'll get you'll speculate, right, with a guy that's playing well and like they're they're not obviously in the Hall of Fame yet. you're still playing, but like you know the trajectory kind of points to that and rather than wait and maybe miss a boat that leaves port, you were sort sort of like locked in. I want to ask you, have you ever bought a collection of autographs because you didn't need them necessarily all of them, but you needed a few in there, but you whoever was selling wasn't piecing it out. So, you had to buy the whole thing. And if you if the answer is yes to that, you know, I know you say you don't sell them, but in that case, would you sell the things that you don't necessarily need from buying the collection? And I guess if the answer is no, I guess the the second part of that would be would you ever consider that if if like an opport arose like uh great question. The answer is no. I just am so busy with let's say my real job. I don't have chance. I did one time. So, there's a Hall of Famer named Stan Kovaleeski. Uh, he was a pitcher with the Indians and the rumor was he was illiterate. So, his family was selling off his entire collection. And as I said, all you could find of his was index card. And so, in this collection was his social security. I'm like, this is a cool piece. And I framed the social security card. I'm pointing to it back here. And I said, I just want social security card. So, I spent a couple hundred dollars for the collection. And in it turned out, was a government postcard as well that he wrote in 1917 to his then girlfriendwife. And also in the collection was his, believe it or not, his uh wedding certificate. So I did turn around and sell the rest of the collection and just kept the social security card. But that is the only time, John, that I have ever bought something just to piece one thing out and then turn around and sell it. Uh yeah, there's been Go ahead. Yeah, I was I was just going to say if if another opportunity where it was more like, hey, there's there's 12 autos in this collection, the the owner of this collection does not want to break it apart. It's one price, takes it all, and you need, let's say, two or three or two of them. Would you consider that or and again with the 50 that you need, it's going to be one heck of a collection based, but would you consider some a deal like that where you you you buy that for who knows how much, but you're keeping the two or the three that that you don't have and the other nine or 10 you you're going to uh obviously sell and maybe even hopefully offset some of your costs on the two or three you're you're potentially. Yeah. I mean, if there were one in there, I would do Sure. I'll tell you a quick story. I hope I'm not losing your like deep deep hall of famers. No, that people love I I love this stuff. People I'll tell you a story. So last year I think Rea sold a collection of Chicago Cubs kind uh checks, cancelled checks. There had to be 300 checks in batch and they sold five batches, let's say 200 checks. Now buried in these 200 checks was a Hall of Famer named Tommy McCarthy. though there was only two known autographs at the time before this collection these checks got released and so in these batches of collections and no one knew it the the what's it called the auction houses didn't even go through the checks they said here's 300 checks from this time period and of course in two separate batches were of the five were two Tommy McCarthy checks uh I know at least two one was sold for 30,000 and the other one is for sale right now privately for about 35,000 again beyond my price range But like the batch sold for $8,000 they total. So that would be a steal obviously if I would have known about it. But like those that's what you have to do these days to find let's say the 50 or anything like that. Yeah. That's that would be a nice haul to get it at least price. Yeah. Be a nice haul. But like you said when when they sell lots like that are they are they showing each check individually or or not really. So you don't you really can't tell? No, you couldn't tell. As soon as I saw the check for sale, I knew exactly where it came from. So, I remember seeing the lot. But, I mean, I'm not a big gambler. I'm like accountant, which shortly, but as a CPA, I don't want to spend $10,000 gamble cuz you would think, you would have thought that a major auction house like Robert Edwards Auction would have gone through and look for big names. Obviously, they didn't. So, lesson learned, but no, they did not show every single check. Yeah. Yeah. Uh it's it's it's interesting when you see lots like that like if they still do them and and like you said that the fact they don't take a look see if there are any diamonds in the rough so to so to speak but if you purchase something like that and you hit that's a nice and my guess is the person that went through them is a person like your average baseball fan they're looking for Babe Root IOB they're not looking for Tommy McCarthy who's Tommy McCarthy so yeah yeah no it's a great point sometime sometimes you Oh, it's it's worth a shot in the dark, as they say. Awesome stuff from Frank right there. What incredible uh collection of all time baseball hall of fame autographs. And uh I know we talked about that heavy today, which is just great stuff. And I'm I won't apologize for that. part two, which is next uh next week, uh episode 358, we will dive into more of the tax advice. So, if you're a buyer, seller, full-time, part-time, weekend warrior, whatever, we're we're going to go over some tax dos and don'ts and and tips and tricks, and I'm going to ask him some questions that I've I've always wondered about uh as well. So, uh, ne if you enjoyed this week's episode, uh, next week's episode is going to be right up your alley, uh, as well. So, uh, come back and join us then, uh, and Frank will, uh, be back to tackle some of the accounting, uh, of the hobby, if you will. So, we're going to get to our hobbies, the people announcer of the week, and wrap up this week's episode. Time for our hobby is the people announcer of the week. This is Andy Freriedman. Remember, the hobby is the people. If you'd like to be the hobby is the people announcer of the week, do a WAV or MP3 file and send it to sportscardationpc@gmail.com
