The infamous $2,500 per pack Razor Oval Office is now live and a few of the cards have already hit eBay. While the winner among the pulls appears to be a “1 of 1” Ulysses S. Grant and a Richard Nixon/Gerald Ford dual cut signature, one has to wonder how much money will be lost on the Harry & Bess Truman dual. (link)
An Upper Deck Harry Truman cut signature hit eBay in January with a starting bid of $999 dollars and failed to sell. It made a return in February and sold for just $510 dollars. Topps released a Bess Truman autograph in 2008 which sold for just $153.49 so unless there is some kind of crazy bidding war you could be looking at the first Razor Oval Office pack that fails to sell for a thousand dollars.
I am going to keep track of all the pulls that make their way on eBay to see how many cards make a profit. I am going to make an estimated guess that 60% of the cards placed on eBay will make $2,500 or more. If you see any on eBay not on the tracking list, please let me know.
Tracking information:
1. Harry & Bess Truman – Final Sale: $1,009
2. Benjamin & Caroline Harrison – Final Sale:
3. Ulysses S. Grant – Final Sale:
4. Richard Nixon & Gerald Ford – Final Sale: $810
5. Bill Clinton/George Bush – Final Sale
6. Ronald Reagen/Margaret Thatcher – Final Sale
The Baseball Card Blog 
Not the best product, but better than the cut autos Razor was making with Upper Deck stickers, lol. At least these are actual cut autos, I wouldn’t buy the product, even if I had the $$ though.
60%? Sheeeeeeeeit.
If it breaks 10% I’ll be shocked.
Looking at the checklist, I would think that the percentage selling for more than the cost of the pack would be more like 20-30%, especially in this economy.
Although I know nothing about the market for presidential autographs, I’m guessing that single autographs are not that scarce given how many things presidents sign. Therefore, I would argue that only the interesting double sigs go for big bucks. Therefore, what will be interesting is whether people treat the double sigs as scarce “1 of 1’s”, or realize that there is nothing stopping anybody else from pairing those same sigs on a product in the future. Let’s face it, if I wanted to and had the $$$, I could go buy a Washington cut sig and a Lincoln cut sig and have them framed and matted together and have something just as unique and valuable as Razor’s dual sig card of them.
Given that Razor is netting only $148,500 in revenue from this product (99 packs at $1500 each) and certainly built in a sizeable profit margin when initially pricing the packs at $1500 each, you have to think that the cumulative cost of acquiring the signatures was probably only $100,000-$120,000.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the value of unopened packs on the secondary market as more and more of them are opened and the cards revealed. Will be kind of like “Deal or No Deal”…
OK, so I guess I don’t get your point here. You keep talking about how people who buy this aren’t going to recoup their cost unless they hit something big.
Well, yeah.
The same can be said of pretty much EVERY product.
The kind of people who spend $2500 on a pack do it knowing full well that it’s a gamble. If they were guaranteed to pull a $2500+ auto, the pack would cost a lot more than $2500.
I don’t get why you have such a problem with this product. It’s a product geared at a particular niche, and they have just as much a place in this hobby as a set collector, player collector, or whatever other kind of collector you can think of. Actually, more of a place, since these are the guys who drive the card companies’ profits and keep hobby stores open.
What a load of crap.
the person i pity is the person that gets like the clinton/bush 41 card or something like that…. that will go for nothing….at least most of the others are dead presidents…better question is which one sells for the most?
Bill Clinton/George Bush dual for $5,000?
I don’t think so.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=380102538521
Love your conspiracy theory Adam Reeves but i highly doubt it.
How is this any different then Dropping 2 grand on a high end UD product and getting garbage? I still dont know how Razor will end up doing in the card market but i will say that these cut sigs are some of the nicest cuts ive ever seen. The eye appeal is amazing. I think that the hype of the most limited set and the great card design will help drive prices on this stuff. I cant believe the seller of the Truman dual and Ford/Nixon is doing it auction style and letting it ride. From what i was told by the seller, there are three people pushing hard for the cards from this product. As for your not reaching 1k, you may end up having to eat your words since its just under $800 right now and im sure there will be some bidding at the end. I do feel really bad for the person that pulled the Clinton/Bush.
Adam, thanks for your comment and sorry for the late reply.
I won’t take the invitation because I am retiring from posting in forums. It’s just too much hassle and with the blog and Cardboard Connection time is limited. Thanks for the offer, though.
As far as your conspiracy theory: I don’t think it’s possible.
If Brian truly is up to no good with prices of his cards there is no way he gives the responsibility to a bunch of message board users/mods/etc.
That information would be too delicate to hand over to a group of people. Maybe employees but no one else.
As far as having multiple accounts, I know several collectors who do have them and use them to their advantage. I wouldn’t be surprised if Razor had them but I really don’t care. I’d just like to track prices of the cards pulled and avoid any more drama.
I still would rather have $2500 *actual* lottery tickets than a pack of these. I don’t mean to pick on Razor. This just seems to be the absolutely wrong time to release what amounts to a 100% discretionary spending luxury good. Hell, even cigar.com sold the “Rolls Royce” of cigars (Ghurka His Majesty’s Reserve) for $200 each a couple months ago. They’re normally $750.
All this effort expended in ruining some reasonably historical documents to put them in a card, and for not a pile of profit, just seems like a waste of time. This product will still sell out, but I think we’re looking at a maximum of 13/99 (13%) having a reasonable shot at closing an auction at more than the purchase price.
Last point–the Ford/Fromme and Garfield/Guiteau dual autos are in seriously bad taste. Where’s the Reagan/Hinckley, J. Kennedy/Oswald, or R. Kennedy/Sirhan Sirhan dual autos, if that’s the case? Those are 1/Lame, to be sure.
There’s a Reagan / Gorbachev up now as well that the FCBers pulled. They’ve opened 3 so far and gotten bupkis. 2 of theirs are ending in 10 hrs and are only at $810 each. Ouch!
Brian isn’t bidding on any of the cards we’ve opened. No one is shilling the cards. If someone bids and doesn’t pay, I’ll call them out and block them. All of the bidders have good feedback.
We’re having fun with it. We’re putting in a fairly small amount of money at the chance of pulling something pretty amazing. Even if the cards tonight end at 810.00, we’re not each out that much money. Something close to the same percent as busting random boxes and much better than buying 6 blaster boxes from a big box store.
So far we’re on 7 packs. What the hell? As I’ve said, we’re having fun with it. It’s not a lot of money. I’m not asking anyone for handouts.
Justin, are you serious?
Box/pack cost – $2,500 (approx)
Current bids – $810
If the final selling price for those 2 cards are both $810, that’s approx. $1,700 in the toilet on each pack.
You can buy one hell of a lot of wax/singles for $3,400.
For all your sakes, good luck on the other packs man. I feel like a lot of “gamblers” are gonna take a bath on this, and a lot of history buffs/collectors are gonna make out like bandits.
Justin, thanks for not participating in the bashing.
Good luck with everything.
huh, curious george bush and bill clinton auto? for 5,000 bucks? lol. hmm well, i wouldn’t pay but a lot of people would right! i just got a laura bush and george bush couple insert card, i laughed that whole night! i can’t imagine me buying a george/bill auto!
Charlie
We didn’t pay 2500 for those first two packs. The average was something like 2300. Not a huge difference but what i think you are missing is that yes, 3400 is a lot of wax, singles. That is as a group though. We are all losing a much smaller amount.
How many cards go the last day without bids? From the thousands of auctions I’ve listed, it’s less than 15%.
We may take a bath on this. We probably will take a bath on this. People have been acting within their means so far as I can tell and no one is spending mass amounts of money getting upside down over it.
The loss for me per pack currently is like going to a movie with my wife and having a few drinks during the movie. If people cannot afford it, then I hope they use their heads and stay out.
For as little as 63 bucks people can have a share in something pretty damn cool. After buying this many of these, in the future don’t you think the dealers will give us better prices on things? (Although I should have bought at least 1 pack of this direct)
This is purely for fun and the gamble.
justin
Justin,
Didn’t realize that the packs had been purchased by a syndicate. In that case, with the downside risk being spread out over a lot of people, it is just some pretty harmless fun.
TO others whove asked…
It cost us over $100,000 to buy these cuts for this product. With other production costs, we made virtually nothing at $1500 factory cost.
In addition, in all the above analysis of value, no one is factoring in the monster hits….
I say.. buy it if you like it, dont if you dont….
At $1500 factory cost, it is a good value… Common names will bring $700-800…. Big names $10000-20000… We dont set secondary market values, you (the public) do with your purchasing decisions……. I dont think its fair to judge our efforts based on resell value at $2500…. Base it on factory cost and it is a tremendous value…. BG
p.s.- to the gentleman that said he’d rather buy lottery tickets, the payout is only 50% on lottery tickets…. Ill bet you any amount of money that the cummulative sell price of all cuts is well over 50% of pack cost…
Brian,
The problem with your product, as I see it, is that you are trying to use artifical scarcity to create value that does not really exist. Your premise is that taking two cut signatures of famous people (let’s say George Washington & Abraham Lincoln, for example) and putting them together on the same card creates a scarce “1 of 1” card that is much more valuable than the two individual signatures would be by themselves, which is illogical.
The problem is that the scarcity of your monster double signature cards is entirely artificial. There is nothing out there preventing anybody else from doing the exact same thing in the future. As I noted in an earlier post, anybody in the world could go out and buy George Washington and Abraham Lincoln cut sigs and frame them together and have a “1 of 1” item that is just as unique and rare as your card.
The idea that taking multiple individual items and putting them together on a single card creates a scarce item with additional value beyond their combined original worth does not stand up to the test of logic.
Brian you said, “It cost us over $100,000 to buy these cuts for this product. With other production costs, we made virtually nothing at $1500 factory cost.”
Why would you pay $100K for the autos, and take a risk on a ultra high end product like this in this BAD economy if you “made virtually nothing at $1500 factory cost?”
Where’s the pay off?
I did do a bit of Devil’s Advocacy when I wrote earlier, as I’m not apt to buy over two grand in lottery tickets either. The perspective I was taking is that if I’m after a gamble thrill, then the clearly astronomical odds of a lottery jackpot is the downside, but even a medium win could be enormous, say even in five figures. If out of 99 chances, only a small fraction can reasonably be expected to auction off for more than pack price, then even the top possible sale is not comparatively that big for the price of entry. Therefore, if you’re really a gambler, go where the jackpots are.
However, apart for a distinct minority of cards in the set in dubious taste, the collectible quality does exist. In fact, I think the key way that these cards would have real value is if someone out there decided to try to bankroll the assembly of all 99 cards to make the full set. That, at least, is where the power of average sale value below retail pack price after opening can be helpful. Even I have to admit, if the whole set could be assembled, even five years from now–now that is something. I’m not the guy to do it, though.
I also didn’t anticipate the collective pack purchase plan. I would even join something like that. Diminish the risk, and it does become a venture more for fun than be dominated by its financial flip potential on eBay.
I also understand the near zero-sum game to play in terms of profitability. This is something of a loss-leader to promote the platform, gain publicity, and leverage that for the other products.
I gotta say, though, the Razor website is not doing the company any favors. It really needs some TLC to make it more contemporary and lively…
We will be holding another break tomorrow. My ustream is justinmandawg. I don’t have the link handy but it will be easy to find. i would guess early afternoon central time. maybe around 2pm
man, I just spent a few grand to get one of these cards… you know what I got?
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a redemption for the 2000 florida recount.. something tells me I will be waiting a long time for this one. I guess thats what I get for making fun of a bess truman auto 😉