I saw this article on ESPN this morning about a collector who has been secretly buying up every 1964 Topps Curt Flood trading card. Whether he intended to or not, Mike Haply has cornered the market for that particular card. Collectors who try to complete their set are forced to pay an average of $30 for a low-grade sample and upwards of a $1,000 for a pristine example. There’s nothing really special about Curt Flood or that particular trading card, other than the fact that one person owns about a quarter of all of them!
This kind of collector has always fascinated me. Remember the Ram Man guy? Whatever happened to him? Another example, Rolland Comstock, was a big book collector who had over 1,000 copies of Jim Crace’s first novel, Continent, in his collection before his tragic murder.
I’ve often wondered what it would be like to collect just one item. I tend to focus my collecting on just a few characters, but collecting just a single item takes pure dedication. I just don’t have that kind of resolve. Variety is the spice of life, right?
What other instances of these monopolistic collectors have you heard about? If you could corner the market on a single item, what would you choose? Me, I’d probably go for built-up Aurora King Kong models, but the allure of those is how different each one would be, so maybe that doesn’t count. Maybe I’d hoard the AJ Renzi King Kong banks …but where would I put them all?!?
I’d probably go with something relatively attainable that involved artwork. So, for instance, a Magic the Gathering card that was relatively worthless with art that I loved. First I’d try and buy the original piece of art, then secretly try and get as many of the cards as possible. Easy to store, most people would be willing to trade, and in the end you’d also have the original so you could have the ultimate corner on the market.
Like the Curt Flood card, this is probably entirely doable. There’s a low cost of entry — you would just ave to buy them all before people realized what was going on. 😉 Collectors NEED the full sets, and they will go to any length to complete them.
Interesting. The Ram Man guy seemed to be going in a different direction and making him rare would just be so difficult with the numbers he was produced in.
For me I would start buying up 11″ Krang in Android Body. An already scarce toy it wouldn’t take much to make it even harder to find. I guess the ultimate factor is having the cash to do so!
I can fully endorse the Krang army idea.
Have you heard about this crazy guy?
Another excellent example! Why do these people fascinate me so much? 🙂
At one point in my life, I seriously considered trying to do this with the Billy Ripken “f*ck face” card.
Personally i think it’s crazy to do something like that but people do crazy things i guess.
I would buy every Star Wars Galactic Marine from Revenge of the Sith if I could.
A close second would be the vintage Kenner cloth caped Jawa.
Interesting thoughts. I just the other night was wondering what happened to the Ram Man guy, as I watched my son play with our old Rammy. He’ll never pry this one from our hands!