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Posted
13 minutes ago, tchookem said:

Shoulda sold the coupon on eBay.

Seriously though, that sucks... sorry.
 

I mean, I hope Adley has a good career and all but if he makes the HoF....

Posted

My kiddo opened up a Topps Heritage Value Box from target just now and pulled this…..

No comps yet, but will be curious to see how the few up on eBay sell.   I’ll probably get it graded.  
 

IMG_1362.thumb.jpeg.e6a29e3d476934049e88fd1de25c27a3.jpegIMG_1363.thumb.jpeg.9111ed14378dfd3684f7a911b9d6ac00.jpeg

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Posted
On 4/16/2024 at 10:44 AM, Scraps said:

Stopped for a drink and bought a hanger....not on my nephews level lol


a36b7736bdd7360e1370c65d9a3696d7.jpg

Damn looks like I hit the jackpot now lol.  This is going for $150+ raw on ebay recently since he is blowing up.  I may send it off to get graded and see if I can get 9 or 10 on it and sell.  

Posted
23 hours ago, A-Tex Devil said:

My kiddo opened up a Topps Heritage Value Box from target just now and pulled this…..

No comps yet, but will be curious to see how the few up on eBay sell.   I’ll probably get it graded.  
 

IMG_1362.thumb.jpeg.e6a29e3d476934049e88fd1de25c27a3.jpegIMG_1363.thumb.jpeg.9111ed14378dfd3684f7a911b9d6ac00.jpeg

one listed on ebay for a stack right now

Posted
On 5/4/2025 at 3:10 PM, A-Tex Devil said:

My kiddo opened up a Topps Heritage Value Box from target just now and pulled this…..

No comps yet, but will be curious to see how the few up on eBay sell.   I’ll probably get it graded.  
 

IMG_1362.thumb.jpeg.e6a29e3d476934049e88fd1de25c27a3.jpegIMG_1363.thumb.jpeg.9111ed14378dfd3684f7a911b9d6ac00.jpeg

I’d be interested in buying this

Posted
13 hours ago, Bogeywon said:

I’d be interested in buying this

I’m PCing Skenes a bit as I landed a number of his Bowman signatures last year (including a mini diamond auto). Am going to get this graded then figure out if I want to sell.  He’ll probably go out for TJ surgery while this is sitting with PSA, lol.  
 

I sold a bunch of PC-A in the offseason. Oh well.  On the flip side, I dumped a lot of numbered Jasson Dominguez high last year.  That’s looking smart. 

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

I was really into sports card collecting during from late-70s to late-80s, then again in the early 90s.  The change between those two eras was stark.  Dozens of new sellers, tons of junk wax, and the birth of the special limited edition insert.  The last of those actually helped move a lot of junk wax, but it was just high production, so-so product.  Some of the inserts included game worn jerseys, autographs, etc.  

I've paid some attention to the hobby over the past decades and it has evolved even further.  Numbered inserts, meticulous focus on grading, etc.

With a little spare time and a little spare money, sports card collecting is becoming interesting again.  I am curious what everyone's approach is.  I see a bunch of things happening:

  • People spending tons of money hoping to pull a super-rare, high demand modern card so they can flip it for something they really want (money or another card).
  • People focusing on specific players, specific eras, etc. and building a moderately sized, specialized collection.
    • Cards of players that have some sort of nostalgic value
    • Cards of HOF players

For fun, I bought around 20 of the Topps Now Pope cards when they were released.  Told a friend (who's a really passionate collector) and he asked what I ended up with.  19 regulars and 1 "white smoke" X/267 card.  He bought 100 and pulled a X/50 Gold card.  One has recently sold for around $1000.  He's kind of doing all of the approaches above: using modern purchases to flip into things he wants; building a collection with interesting/nostalgic value.

From a "store of value" perspective, it seems like pre-1980s HOF players is the best option.  But I should never really view this as a store of value.  I realize it's a hobby, and hobbies are where you pour money, never to be seen again.  Another of my hobbies is enjoying local microbreweries wherever I travel, visit, etc.  I literally piss the money away :). Perhaps that's how I should view this...

How are others around here viewing it?  I am sure there are additional approaches that what I stated above.

Posted

This guy goes all over and gives out packs to people in stadium trying to pull Griffry RCs etc (not that box but he has done it before)

Dodgers say fuck off lol

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  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

Waited since Dec 2023 for this fucking redemption from Panini and finally requested a replacement.

They fucking ended up sending me the card I had been waiting on all along.

What a shitty fucking sig on this too.

Smh

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Posted
10 hours ago, Scraps said:

Waited since Dec 2023 for this fucking redemption from Panini and finally requested a replacement.

They fucking ended up sending me the card I had been waiting on all along.

What a shitty fucking sig on this too.

Smh

e8e4f61dd58e192d116376c5fdc283e2.jpg

I immediately sell all my panini redemptions.  They are a joke.  I’ll sell most of my Topps too unless I intent to grade it or it’s in PC. 

Posted

Man, I'm going to start unloading my cards.  I have so many from my younger years.  Anything good in them?  Not sure... a bunch of 80s - 90s rookie cards but I'll probably starting eBaying a a bunch of .99 listings.  

Posted

My son pulled this from a blaster box recently. Was hoping for a patch based on the thickness of the card but this might be cooler being a Harper too.

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  • Like 2
  • 3 weeks later...
Posted

 

Westfield man posts manifesto of $350 million sports memorabilia scam then dies by suicide

Portrait of Dana Hunsinger BenbowDana Hunsinger Benbow

Indianapolis Star

 

 

 

 

 

 

What we know about Brett Lemieux's $350 million sports memorabilia scam; including questions about the size of the operation

Lemieux illegally gained access to holograms, a security feature used to authenticate autographs

What to watch for when buying sports memorabilia to avoid being scammed

INDIANAPOLIS – It was 9:30 p.m. in Seattle when Scott Mahlum got what he thought was "a really weird" call last week from a friend in the sports memorabilia business telling him that Brett Lemieux had just admitted to a massive scam in a manifesto he posted to Facebook.

 

 

"And I remember just reading it, and my first thoughts were, 'Why is he burying himself? Why is he giving the FBI and police all the information, everything they need?'" said Mahlum. "It made zero sense."

 

Mahlum knew all about Lemieux, 45, who lived in Westfield. Just about everyone in the sports memorabilia world knew of Lemieux, he said. Lemieux was known in the industry as a scammer, pushing out counterfeit autographed items en masse, a shady character who operated as "Mistermancave" and several other entities. He was single-handedly helping to dilute prices and, in turn, the profits of legitimate sellers.

 

 

Mahlum's company, Mill Creek Sports in Seattle, and other big names in sports memorabilia had been going after Lemieux for years. They say he was illegally gaining access to their holograms, a security feature used to authenticate autographs and other collectible memorabilia with a serial number.

 

Lemieux would then replicate items, he wrote in his Facebook post, using an autopen to forge autographs and then sell signed items – jerseys, footballs, baseball bats, photographs – by the thousands.

 

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Among the big names he made his fortune on — which Lemieux claimed in his confession was $350 million – were Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant, Russell Wilson, Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Judge.

 

Mill Creek Sports and other companies had been meeting to talk about Lemieux as long as eight years ago, Mahlum said. They had filed cease and desist orders against Lemieux, called police and hired lawyers, and they went to the NFL Players Association, mostly to no avail. But when Fanatics, a multibillion-dollar company that sells sports memorabilia and collectibles, spoke out about what Lemieux was doing, authorities listened.

 

"On July 15, the Westfield Police Department executed a search warrant in the 16800 block of South Park Drive regarding a counterfeit sports memorabilia scheme," Westfield police said in a statement, the only one the department has made publicly regarding Lemieux. "The next day, the search extended to the 300 block of Hoover Street. Upon arrival, officers found the individual deceased with a self-inflicted gunshot wound."

 

The coroner’s office in Hamilton County confirmed that Lemieux’s body was found at the 300 block of Hoover Street in Westfield and that he died by suicide. Lemieux's death occurred hours after his Facebook post, at the location where law enforcement conducted search warrants July 16.

 

The FBI is assisting with the investigation, said Chris Bavender of public affairs with the FBI field office in Indianapolis. The FBI referred media questions to Westfield police.

 

Westfield's assistant chief of police Billy J. Adams told IndyStar on Monday there were no updates on the case. "We hope to be able to release more this week."

 

Back in Seattle, midnight struck hours after Mahlum had gotten the call about Lemieux's confession. It was a different friend telling him Lemieux had died by suicide.

 

"I'm like, 'Well, that explains why he confessed to doing millions of dollars worth of counterfeits,'" said Mahlum. "We'd been trying to stop him. It's been an ongoing really big pain in all of our businesses."

 

'He wanted to go out in a blaze of glory'

Hours before his death, in a since-deleted confession on the Facebook group Autographs 101, Lemieux boasted about the scheme he said he pulled off, alleging to have "the largest framed jersey inventory on the web."

 

He wrote that the money was "too good" to pass up and that he wanted to stop the fraud, which had been going on for the better part of two decades.

 

"Mistermancave has sold over 4 million items. Yes million. Surpassed 350 million in sales," Lemieux wrote. "When Kobe died, we put out 80,000 items into the marketplace."

 

While Mahlum believes some of the missive Lemieux posted, he doesn't believe Lemieux’s operation was as big as he claimed. Mahlum has been in the business for nearly 35 years as owner of Mill Creek Sports, a full-time retail wholesale sports memorabilia dealer that opened in 1991.

 

"I think he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory and it's just like anybody else bragging about how much money or how many girlfriends they had," he said. "So I imagine (his business) was a lot smaller scale."

 

Take the 80,000 Bryant autographs Lemiuex claimed to have sold, which after Bryant's death in 2020 were going for an average of $2,000 to $5,000 each. Even if Lemieux sold them for $1,000 each, that's still $80 million.

 

"And if he had 80,000 of them, we would have seen them being offered everywhere," Mahlum said. "And we do see a lot of fakes, we saw many, many, many of his fakes, but 80,000? That's a greatly exaggerated number."

 

As for the $350 million Lemieux claims to have made, Mahlum says the market wouldn't have absorbed such a massive financial infusion of fake items. But the exact number doesn't really matter, he said.

 

Lemieux "was destroying a lot of people," said Steve Grad, with Beckett Authentication Services, a third-party company in Plano, Texas, that authenticates autographs. Grad also appears as an expert on the television show "Pawn Stars."

 

How Lemieux managed to pull off his massive scheme will be revealed as more information from the investigation is released.

 

But if Lemieux's claims are true, he outlined it clearly in his confession, saying he had a source in China duplicating holograms. He would then take that serial number and use an autopen to replicate autographs on items and sell them en masse.

 

"He was able to duplicate the numbers from signings and knock off the autographs," said Grad, who said he has known about Mistermancave for years. "So instead of, let's say Patrick Mahomes did 2,000 signings, he could make that 2,000 into 10,000 or 15,000. He's got the numbers and he could just keep pumping."

 

Lemieux would then seek out items being sold by reputable companies like TriStar Sports, Mounted Memories, Steiner Sports, Fanatics, or Mill Creek Sports, said Grad. "And then what he did is he went in and he started duplicating their shirts and taking their exclusive athletes."

 

In his post, Lemieux showed no remorse for the scheme he allegedly pulled off, saying, "I always took it as a challenge. I spent sleepless nights planning what items to counterfeit next."

 

"We are going to be what records are made of. No one's ever sold the volume of items in holograms ever. It was an addiction. How many items can I sell? I did it for years," Lemieux wrote. "Every company I've touched is now my (expletive). That was my goal."

 

Started seeing weird Tom Brady jerseys

Fanactics, which was a key force in the investigation of Lemieux, said it never bought and re-sold products from Lemieux or Mistermancave.

 

"Unfortunately, bad actors harm fans and collectors, and that is why two years ago we began implementing the newest, most secure hologram technology available, and we believe our new hologram has not been replicated since," Fanatics said in a statement provided to USA Today Sports. "The best way for collectors to know that they are buying officially licensed, 100% authenticated memorabilia, is to buy from a reputable primary source."

 

The problem is, Mahlum said, Lemieux made himself look very reputable. Once he had the holograms for Brady jerseys, he would have that same number counterfeited and put that hologram on a jersey with a forged Brady signature.

 

"So the unknowing customer, whoever bought that item, would then take it and go to whatever company it was, PSA, JSA, Fanatics, Beckett," he said. "They would go to that company's website, type in that number, and it would come up as a Tom Brady signed jersey with all the details. And nobody had done that before that I was aware of."

 

As an authenticator, Grad said he saw the scheme playing out in real time.

 

"We had started seeing these really weird looking Tom Brady (jerseys) and we kept saying, 'These don't look right. There's something really off here,'" he said. "Well, it turns out, we were right. He did this with Aaron Judge. He did this with anybody you could really think of, Derek Jeter. These are all really big names."

 

The counterfeiting of those big names was worrisome to those in the industry because companies pay millions of dollars to get exclusive autograph rights to star athletes.

 

"So what was happening is that the price of Tom Brady starts getting diluted in the marketplace because they're putting out so many fake ones," said Grad. "They're watching their exclusive client who's their number one client, they're watching his value go down and they're saying, 'What is going on here?'"

 

The most frustrating thing for those in the industry since the Lemieux case came to light is that some people believe they were buying items they resold from Mistermancave.

 

"No, we never bought anything from the guy. I never met the guy before. We sent cease and desist to him. We've never talked to this guy," said Mahlum. "We got him removed from eBay on any Russell Wilson stuff."

 

The message reputable sellers and authenticators want to come from the Lemieux case is to use common sense when buying autographed items.

 

"If Fanatics, Tristar, companies like ourselves are priced at $2,500 on a signed Tom Brady Jersey, but yet you can buy them on eBay, Amazon for $700, $800, there's a problem," said Mahlum. "There's a reason it's that price. There's a problem."

 

While Lemieux's fraud coming to the forefront is a good thing, Grad said, it's been a black mark on the industry.

 

"You know, we do the absolute best job we can," he said. "We try to add more and more security features as we go along to our (holograms) because they're being reproduced as we speak."

 

For Mahlum, he's been thinking a lot about Lemieux's death.

 

"I don't know if he just couldn't live with the guilt, his embarrassment to his family, what it was, but it's still a white-collar crime," he said. "And my guess is that if he would have been prosecuted and everything goes to trial, it'd probably be a plea bargain. I'm guessing the guy does a couple, two, three years in a kind of country club-type prison."

 

But Mahlum also says no one could know what was going on in the mind of Lemieux, a master manipulator.

 

Lemieux ended his Facebook post, hours before his death: "Enjoy the industry all."

 

Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X:@DanaBenbow. Reach her via email:dbenbow@indystar.com. 

 

 

 

 

35 minutes ago, Sgt Hulk said:

Pay walled. Give us the deets 

 

2 hours ago, Bogeywon said:

Paywalled what happened?

See post above 

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