It’s hilarious how for a Hobby that lives and dies by “book value”, guys who are connected so closely to it like “Mr. Mint”, Al Rosen, have the gall to offer a senior citizen and someone who spent his entire life collecting $80,000 dollars for a collection that would have netted close to half a million dollars if sold on eBay and other auction services.
Please check out the entire series of videos to see the vintage cardboard goldmine this collector was sitting on. The last video at the bottom of this post is of the shyster counting out his dirty money to haul away the guy’s entire life. Granted, it would have taken months to sell of the entire collection one by one and maybe they needed money immediately but this is a perfect example of highway robbery.
(Thanks to D.D. for the hat tip)
PART 1 PART 2 PART 3 PART4 PART5
The Baseball Card Blog 
Thats alot of vintage cards on the 5th video.
You can’t help but feel bad for the old man who trusted him to give him a fair price for his cards. It was nice to see the collection, but I think he should have gotten a lot more for it.
I saw Mr. Mint at the Philly Show yesterday. As I went by, I turned my head the other way. Very sad indeed. Thanks for showing.
Don’t forget eBay and Paypal fees, Mario. Not that it gives Alan Rosen an excuse to lowball someone like that though. Sad, indeed. Hopefully for the sake of the seller, he needed the money right away and it helped him out for the time being.
This guy had complete sets dating back to the 50s and Mr. Mint was going through them like they were pieces of junk. Blurting out “THOUSAND” and then throwing the binder to move on to the next one. This guy is truly a crook of the hobby.
Thanks for sharing this Mario.
That guy is a card shark…. its people like him that have killed this hobby!
The IRS probably doesn’t like seeing that much cash trading hands.
I have mixed emotions watching those videos, but ultimately, this hobby (as mixed up as it is about nostalgia and the golden age of baseball) is still a business.
The seller, if he can’t bother to go down to Barnes & Noble and pay (an exhorbitant) $9.99 for a Beckett price guide, or go on Ebay to see what similar items are selling for, then he gets what he deserves. I don’t buy that though. I have to believe he knew his cards were worth a lot more than what he was paid, but as we all know, saying something is worth $100 and actually getting someone to pay you $100 are two separate things. These economic times being what they are, I can’t imagine many other people would be lining up to offer $80,000 for a collection of old cardboard.
At the end of the day, the seller probably didn’t get exactly what the cards were worth but he still ended up with $80,000–probably a good deal more money than he started out and a nice return on what amounted to probably less than $1000 in investment. (I know if any of us could do that well with our own card collections, we’d probably retire right now!) Also, the buyer, Mr. Mint, ended up with a nice collection of cards that will earn him some money on the resale. The way I see it, both people won.
Mr.Mint what a Diva.What more can I say? I wish that I found this guy before he did. Myself still on the hunt to strike it rich on finding some vintage.
Above Like Steve from Texas said it’s a win win all around.
I think it’s pretty harsh to pass judgement without knowing more about the details of the seller’s situation. Maybe he needed the money now to pay bills or avoid foreclosure, and couldn’t wait the 6-12 months it would take to maximize the value of his collection.
After all, every transaction needs the agreement of BOTH parties, and maybe the seller had a very good reason that we don’t know about for selling it to Mr. Mint.
I’m sure the old guy thought he was going to someone who would give him a fair deal. It’s not like he called some local nobody who likes baseball cards…they brought in “Mr. Mint.” They probably thought that this was the best deal that they could get to sell it in one lump sale…and they might be right.
But they could, and probably should, have pieced it out and sold the sets individually *IF* they had the time. I don’t know their circumstances, so I can’t make that call. If they needed the money that day, they got it and good for them. If they just wanted to sell, they probably could have doubled, tripled or more, their money by auctioning instead of selling all at once to one dealer. It’s hard to say what “should” have been done since I’m not in the old guys shoes.
I can say that Mr. Mint really jobbed that guy out of a ton of cash and even when he was counting it out it sounded pathetic. He was saying something about still having another $30k on him and the old guy said he didn’t have any more cards to show and Mr. Mint just kind of shrugged and left it at $80k. Pitiful! He knows he’s going to make a TON off of those cards and he knows he’s hosing the guy and he had more money to offer and he’s just tossing the cards around and wanting more. Squeezing every penny he can. Do what you can to make a buck Mr. Mint…you’re exactly what this hobby loves…seeing old people get screwed so rich guys get richer!
You’re right SteveTX, this guy did make much more money than he originally paid for the cards AND Mr. Mint paid him in cash. Sure, he could have spent months ebaying, but he doesn’t strike me as an ebayer. There’s probably not too many people that are going to lay down that much cash for his collection (though I could be wrong). I’m not saying that Mr. Mint doesn’t seem shady though, he definitely will make a big profit off this. But he’s a shark and a business man.
Mario – You know I think I think you’re great, but come on…. this video is nearly a year old now! Chris Nerat had this on his Gavel Chat blog with SCD last summer.
http://gavelchat.sportscollectorsdigest.com/default,month,2008-07.aspx
He went along for the ride and to document everything. The Gavel Chat isn’t updated anymore. I talked to TS O’Connell via email this week. Chris left SCD for MEARs, but is now looking for something else.
I don’t know what’s going on with Mr. Mint these days – he skipped the National last year too. Here’s a link to an interview with him: http://gavelchat.sportscollectorsdigest.com/CommentView,guid,c031e1c3-9ad4-4e08-9449-d84ea1253676.aspx
I’m not defending Mr. Mint at all here, but to me.. it’s like selling your car to a dealership for the trade in. You can sell it on your own and make more money or you can ‘pay’ for the convenience and trade it to the dealer but you know you aren’t making what you could have.
JRJ, I didn’t say the video was new. I just wanted to show it to those who may have missed it.
It was good to see the Mint-Mint Man on video.
Wow, Chris Nerat is a douche. Man, I had never read his stuff, but now that I read a lot of his articles, he is all up in Mr. Mint’s ass.
Ugh, ill have to post on this later.
Wow he got robbed, but not sure how much more if any he could’ve got in one sale.
That Mr. Mint guy comes off as a real A-hole. But the fact is that he is a business man and what he is doing is not any different than Wal-Mart buying a boat-load of T-shirts from China at $1 a piece, then reselling them for $10 a piece in their stores. Mr. Mint is not a collector, and the cards are worthless to him if he cannot sell them at a substantial profit. If the old man wanted to make more money off of his collection, he should have sold to a collector and not a businessman, but he probably wouldn’t have been able to find a collector willing to buy in such volume.
It’s a good rule to reference the source and the date. Otherwise, we’re no better than Chris Ol….. 🙂 j/k Whoa!
Gellman – Chris was cool to talk to via email and always answered questions. He didn’t blog a lot, but he had some interesting subjects. But you’re right… he had something for Mr. Mint. I never liked how MM just casually flipped open binders, spit out a number, and tossed the binders on the table. Whenever I’ve seen MM at a show he’s always with his feet on the table and reading a magazine.
It’s obvious this Mr. Mint guy is an opportunist, so what do you expect? Assuming there was nobody else with that type of cash for the whole collection, I hope the seller was expecting a lowball offer and was OK with it, while realizing there were 100 other ways of getting more money if he had put more time into selling them. After all, $80,000 is a LOT of money for the average person, especially if it’s what I assume to be a huge return for the original cost.
That said, MM did seem like a massive douche, flipping through the cards like they were 1991 Donruss (or more like counterfeit 1991 Donruss). But I guess that is part of his deal and how he became so “successful”.
It wouldn’t have been too tough to find someone else willing to pay more than $80k in one shot for all that. The kind of people who have that kind of money to spend on cards have that money no matter what the economic climate is, and $80k is not that much money.
I don’t know what the seller’s motivation was for selling, but I seriously doubt that it was to keep from being foreclosed upon. A guy his age living where he does, coming from the generation he came from paid his house off a long time ago. You can tell he’d lived there for a long time. He was probably just looking to sell while he could.
This hobby is full of snakes. Mr Mint is definitely a snake, one of the biggest in the hobby (Beckett and UD are two more), and it’s sad to see him be such a prick to the old guy who spent his life collecting that stuff. To add insult to injury, the dickhead kept making bigoted remarks about Polish people and midwesterners, not to mention his potty mouth. What a piece of trash Mr Mint is.
I must throw my two-cents in this blog. I will start by saying, if you have seen countless thousands of these vintage cards then its not a big deal. Mr. Mint has been in business for a long time and he has handled some cardboard, way better than the stuff in the video. My second item, if the guy didn’t want the 80K then he could have declined.
Finally, I wonder how many folks that bash Mr. Mint have sold to him. Many years ago I had a 1952 Topps Jackie Robinson that was very clean. I thought about sticking it on eBay just as I do with all of my other cards, but at the time the going rate for that card was $1,000. Insted of paying fees for eBay and PayPal I contacted Al Rosen. He ask me to send him a high resolution scan of the front and back of the card. I did so and by the end of the day Mr. Mint had ask me to FedEx the card to him and he would send me a check for $1,000. It was that easy…no waiting on non-payers or paying fees on that much money.
I cant say anything negative about Mr. Mint. If I had his cash I would do the same thing….I am sure everyone else would too.
Later,
Submarine Shane-The Man on the Street
The seller continually downplayed his own collection. He said “I know a lot of it’s just junk” at least three times. Not saying it was, because I haven’t a clue, but he quite obviously wasn’t concerned about getting the most value he could for the collection.
I would so love to know what the guy said to the camera, “Off the record,” midway through the second video.
Dude … that’s awesome. I don’t fault Rosen for low-balling the guy. If the seller didn’t like the offer he coulda told Rosen and his boys to hit the bricks. Like some said above: it’s not like that was the greatest collection of cards he’s seen. I mean Rosen has purchased BRICKS of untouched ’52 Topps stuff. That’s business baby. If any of us had the means to purchase a collection like that for that price we’d be all over it too …
As for the seller, never stand there and apologize for what you’ve got. All you’re doing is enabling the buyer to low-ball you and giving yourself less leverage. If the guy stood there and talked up his collection, he might have been able to get another $20k, if not more.
“Oh, Mr. Mint I’m sorry my ’54 Topps Jackie Robinson is cut, I don’t want to mislead you …” Yeah, like Rosen is butt hurt about that card when there are two key rookies in that issue (Aaron and Banks), both of which are probably 6s or better.
And while $80,000 is far less that what Rosen likely will (or did) sell the stuff for, it’s pretty tough to turn down that kind of cash when it’s sitting in front of your face.
Shoulda warned me about the nasty belly shot around 9:50 of video two.
That’s something I can’t unsee.
Is that professionalism on their part, by the way? Can’t remember if exposing undesirable flesh is part of the bargain. The guy should have got an extra 50 bucks for having to endure that at his dining room table. Bleh.
Cash is King and that’s how he’s made such a killing in the business. I think to say that it would take months to list all that stuff on eBay is generous. Well over a year or 2. Think about it, scanning and photography, listing, fulfillment. Everybody’s time has worth. How much time would it have taken for him to sell this directly to the secondary market? 100’s and 100’s and 100’s of hours, multiplied what an hour of his time is worth.
On the other side, I’d love to be a fly on the window on the car ride back to the East coast. What percentage do you think he paid relative to what he is going to flip it for? 20%, 30%?
I think a “fair offer” would have been a minimum of low 6 figures.
Note to self- Revise will. Upon my death, collection is to be sold via eBay and not to Mr. Mint
Although Mr Mint puts the douche in douche bag, one thing we’ve got to remember is that this stuff is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Could he have gotten $40,000 + more using ebay? Maybe. Also couldve made less than what he got paid in cash with 100 times the hassle.
Dont get me wrong, I personally think that Rosen is evil personified. He is a huge vulture waiting for broke people to go belly up so he can swoop in and feed on them.
Business or not, even the shrudest business person shows some kind of emotion during a transaction. I guess techincally, he did show rudeness and I honestly felt like he made the old guy feel bad for having him out there.
I’m glad I showed my wife how to sell stuff on ebay so when I’m gone she wont have to deal with this prick. Wait a minute, I hope she doesnt decide to take me out early… (starts sleeping with both eyes open)
Keith Olberman would have give him more than 80K
those early football sets were awesome, and mr mint just throws them around like candy. what a douchebag. if i were the old man, i would have told him to throw in that extra 30k he had in his pockets, or else get your fat ass out of my house!!! he got ripped off big time.
This is a buisnuss, just like everyone else they have to make money.
Mr. Mint and his crew are something else. I understand that Rosen is a business man and has to make a profit, but you should also know how to conduct yourself and be professional. The Hank Aaron jersey obviously had sentimental value to the guy and Rosen throws it around like it is nothing and says the oil mark will be tobacco juice. Wonder if the person who bought the jersey saw the vid?
I would rather auction my collection off to a “collector” than to a bloodsucker like Rosen.
There is a way to stop shisters like “Mr. Mint”-ahole from robbing people- refuse to purchase cards off of him. Before I bid from an auction house, I ask for the pedegre information. Any card that has anything to do with Mr. Mint I pass on. You folks don’t realize how many people he screwed to make the 80k to by that collection worth probably 10x-15x the value…probably more depending on condition of the star cards.
This is the first time I ran across these videos. I stumbled on them when I did a search on Mr. Mint to see what he’s been up to. I noticed that he hasn’t been getting much press lately and has been absent on the card show circuit.
My take on the videos:
1.) Mr Mint is a rude ass. Someone welcomes you into their home to see their lifetime collection and that is the way you act? Very unprofessional and rude to say the least. Tossing around albums and collectibles like they are common trash is not the way you treat someone else’s property in their own home.
2.) I dont have much of a problem with the deal itself. It looks as though Mr. Mint detailed what he would pay almost item by item. If the guy didn’t like the offer nobody was twisting his arm to sell. An uneducated seller is not the buyers problem. Its not like it was highway robbery, $80k in a bad economy is a pretty nice haul. Remember MM has overhead, travel expenses, and costs to sell off the collection that may take months or even years. He could have paid a little more but hey when you buy in bulk you get bulk rate discounts – the same rule applies in the collectible world. How many of us have haggled with dealers where we ask for discounts if we buy multiple cards???
3.) It is ultimately the buyers decision wether or not to sell at the offer price. It is ultimately the buyers responsibility to do some research.
4.) At the end of the day this is a business and Mr Mint is not a collector but his attitude and arrogance are inexcusable.
I was curious to watch the transaction. I sold some unopened wax to MM in the 1990’s at a sports card show. He wasn’t the nicest guy in the world but he made a quick offer that was very fair and we made a deal. It would be nice if more dealers/buyers were more straight forward like MM. If you think MM is a sleeze, visit some of your local card shops and see how they steal peoples collections every day – but they do it much friendlier!
Mr Mint is such a blowhard 80s leftover. I am amazed he still has any credibility left. Through the years his behavior has only seemed to worsen to the point where seasoned collectors practically run past his table at card shows less he make them a ridiculous offer on their cards.
This is why retarded hicks like all of you people dont know anything about the hobby…Since I was sitting at this deal you people have no idea of the condition of the cards. You love to talk smack about Mr. Mint just because you are jealous of a successful business man that has being doing this for over 30
YEARS!
Ok, Antice I was going to leave your rant alone, but retarded hicks, why don’t you tell everyone how Mr. Mint got to be successful, taking advantage of older people how cashed out for retirement, newspaper ads, telling them fast easy money for cards. Condition or not you prey on people, the modern day Meyer Lansky. Jealous of Mr. Mint, please although holding hundreds in ads maybe narsisic, but retarted hicks you sir are a shill.
MM overpaid at times in the beginning, especially the 64-67 Philly sets (VG) for $1000 total. He will not make that back. However, this was at the start of the negotiating, so perhaps he wanted to set a precedent of throwing around big numbers.
When he gets to the meat of the collection, 50’s and 60’s Baseball, he’s paying baout 20% of book value, for what I imagine were some very nice PSA 6 – 8 range cards.
All of the complaints I read here are either jealousy or uninformed. I just purchased several nrmt cards at a reputable card shop in my town for 35 cents on the dollar value of the price guide. I did not feel guilty or felt like I took advantage of the dealer. I am sure he purchased them for less.