for now I’ve been playing with the pen tool and some of the shapes, just to see what I can do. Back-of-card text sucks to do… which is why I’ve only done the one for Jeff so far.

And this painting holds the record at $140 million:

Whether it’s a baseball card or a painting, it’s considered artwork. I think it is ridiculous to pay such outrageous prices, but they do hold value to some people. Ask yourself why housing prices go up? The land becomes rare just like the a piece of printed art. You can always build the same house somewhere else, but you lose the value of location. With art, you can have it reprinted, but you lose the value of the original material.

collecting.
It’s not just “visuals” like artwork, baseball cards, stamps, famous letters, autographs (Pablo Picasso became fascinated by the fact that he could sit at a cafe table and make a lot of money, simply drawing anything on anything, (napkins) and signing, and instantly people gave him money for it!). People also collect cars, war metals, guns, fossils, meteorites…even gold nuggets are more valuable than just their weight in gold. An extraordinary nugget can cost 2x or more its intrinsic gold value.

Until you get above a certain income level, collecting means nothing beyond the intrinsic nature of “owning” something, and you will be stopped by financial considerations. Also, many enjoy the support of other collectors, which makes your collection “worthwhile” and raises your own self-esteem. For people buying a Klimt, it is the esteem they feel, owning it in the face of others wanting it. In my opinion, it is that reason the bidding goes so high, not the artistic merit, but the popular collecting merit.

Personally, I have modest collections. My baseball cards are from 1960-62 and personally bought at only 2-3 stores that carried cards. I rarely pull them out. They were worth more in 1989 by 4x or 5x. I have two or three Mickey Mantle 1961 cards that were worth thousands then, now down to less than $500. The internet pulled many collections out of attics and storage, and the flooded market dropped prices. Fleer was just getting in, in my 1960s days, and their gum was exotic-tasting and different from Topps gum (which, could be good, or unbelievably old-tasting).

By selling the original Fleer NBA set. Most of the value was in the Jordan Rookie card of course.

Design’s pretty simple, though. I could probably whip something up.

All of those game-used rookie cards crack me up. Um, this prospect is 2+ years away from the majors. This card in particular, for instance (I actually have 2 of them):

It was issued BEFORE the 2004 season got underway. George made his MLB debut in 2004. Which game was it used in, in 2003? An R’s jersey? A spring training jersey? Hmmm…