In a recent post I asked for you favourite autograph card under $50 and got some interesting replies.

I would like to push this a little further and would like to know what is your most expensive autograph card. I don't want to know how much you paid (that's between you and your bank manager) but why you bought it.

Was it:
a) A card you were chasing for a long time.
b) A card you needed to complete a set.
c) A favourite actor.
d) Just a great card you wanted for your collection.
e) As an investment.

My most expensive card (modest by some as I have just starting collecting) is a Star Trek Voyager card featuring John De Lancie. It's not a classic 'Q' image and so reminds me more of his character Al Kiefer from the West Wing. My all time favourite TV show.

These posts are intended to be trivial and light-hearted but as a new collector, they do help me learn more about the hobby. So thank you.

I think I have probably pulled more expensive autograph cards or autograph cards that became expensive afterwards, than ones I set out to buy. However the two cards I did buy and remember well are Maggie Smith in HP & the Goblet of Fire and Kirsten Dunst in Small Soldiers.

I really wanted the Smith, so I picked it up right away, even though it was the most I had ever spent on a card up to that time. The Dunst gave me fits because I thought the price too high and kept waiting for it in my range. I held off for nearly two years as I recall and lost multiple auctions in the last five minutes. Finally, you guessed it, I just paid the price.

The Smith because she is a great actress, the Dunst because it became something of a "white whale".

Most expensive autograph was a Harry Potter POA Update of Rupert Grint . I bought it because I had opened six cases of the product without finding any of the three main cast children . I already had Watson from the original release and even then Radcliffe was too pricey .

I won it for £120 in an auction and thought at the time it was a fair price .

Sorry, I would like to know the most expensive card you bought.

The most expensive autograph I ever bought was the 2012 NECA Hunger Games Jennifer Lawrence. I think I paid $750 for it and then sold it for @$1300 a year or two later. Even though her career has stalled I really regret that one. I am still a big fan of hers - not to mention that card would probably be $5000+ in today's market. This seems to be a very bad habit of mine. I buy things I like, sell them when I lose a little interest and/or I'm able to make a decent profit, and then regret it afterwards once my interest is rekindled and the card's value has skyrocketed.

My most expensive autograph is my Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson from the Return of the King Update set.

I have it because it did not cost me anything, i got for free.

Honestly I really don't know as some of my high end cards have dried up for awhile. I really don't know what they would sell for in this market.

A few that I know of are:

Chris Pratt paid $240
The Rock paid $180
Sylvester Stallone (Topps 75th) pulled from a pack

Are going for over $2k

I buy what I like and thankfully was a collector long before prices started going crazy.

I have only 4 or 5 cards I have paid more than $500 Two of them were Sam Jackson and Ewan McGregor from Star Wars Stellar. Have never spent more than $800 and probably wont.

This. My dad bought the set when it was new, for something like $5-6, and then I got the card autographed in person when he was in town at a game.

Emma Watson from Harry Potter DH2.

I collected all the autographs in DH1 and DH2 sets as they were released(except for the daftly priced Ciaran Hinds...picked up his Tomb Raider one for £15 instead ) and had Grint from DH1,(I'm never going to get a Radcliffe from previous sets as I don't want to sell a kidney) so jumped on an auction in the middle of the night and got the Watson for a bit under £200. I know it was a lot less than the going rate and there was a nice exchange rate at the time and it didn't get caught for customs either.
Of course, turns out that Watson can't act anything other than being Hermione, but it's still in my collection.

Frank Oz - Clone Wars widevision set

Traded about £300 worth of cards but as they were doubles I was happy

quote:

Originally posted by wuher:
Frank Oz - Clone Wars widevision set

Traded about £300 worth of cards but as they were doubles I was happy

I think you mean it's from Attack of the Clones WV.

I have the same card, paid $90 for it. It was just a card I needed for the Star Wars collection, I'm blow away that it's a $1,000 card now.

I've only paid more than $100 a few times. The most expensive auto card in my collection is a Miranda Lambert 2014 Panini Country Music Retail Green #/25 Authentic Signatures card that I paid $194 for. I'm a huge fan so when I found out she'd signed for the Panini set, I had to get my hands on one.

quote:

Originally posted by Ted Dastick Jr.:

quote:

Originally posted by wuher:
Frank Oz - Clone Wars widevision set

Traded about £300 worth of cards but as they were doubles I was happy

I think you mean it's from Attack of the Clones WV.

I have the same card, paid $90 for it. It was just a card I needed for the Star Wars collection, I'm blow away that it's a $1,000 card now.

new it had clones in the title

Mine is a Harrison Ford Star Wars Stellar auto.

Always wanted his auto, but NEVER thought I would get one after seeing his first SW 30th Anniversary autos sell for $10k.
Love the original Indiana Jones trilogy and Star Wars, and enjoy Ford's films in general. Definately a favourite actor. He'd have to be to even entertain the idea of buying it.

Finally justified it because:

Watching Topps pump more and more of his autos onto the market, his price was fast tumbling and I felt I had to either jump in when prices were the lowest they had ever been, or sit it out a bit longer to see if prices bottomed out further, while at the same time risking prices going back up and missing out completely.

The auto was hard-signed (would never entertain spending daft money for a sticker auto)

Picture on card was from Empire (favourite movie), and image of Ford was classic promo shot - the whole look of the card was 'on-point' for me

I never buy for 'investment' but I was reassured that if I had buyers remorse I would likely be able to shift it with ease due to the popularity of Ford and Star Wars, with value likely to rise again when the market dried up.

I don't spend all that much on cards any more so that in itself made it a bit easier to make a one-off crazy purchase I spread out over several months.

So how much did you pay for it ?

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
So how much did you pay for it ?

Ebay auction for £725/$945 in January 2019 for his base Stellar 2 auto.

Stellar 2 had just come out a couple months before and all the 'high-end' Star Wars flippers and speculators were complaining Topps had 'spoiled' the whole concept of the first Stellar set by releasing a second series only a year later. Endless whingeing that the card designs where not as good as the first set, blah blah blah.

Well, I preferred the series 2 design and the Ford ESB image (which he'd never hard-signed before). I thought I'd never have another crack at an example I liked better. I think the auction being just after Christmas, and the seller in Belgium, kept away higher US bids and meant no import fees for me.

As it turns out, Ford's Stellar 3 autos the year after went as low as $700~ but now all Ford autos have dried up/shot back up in price again.

quote:

Originally posted by X:
Ebay auction for £725/$945 in January 2019 for his base Stellar 2 auto.

Outstanding buy. As an unbiased view, because I have no personal attraction to a Ford autograph, I would still have to say that his certified signature in non-sport cards will be as close to equal in stature to Mickey Mantle in sports as you can get from any modern celebrity. On such a limited card I have no doubt you will be sorely tempted to sell someday.

I am debating whether to pick up the Sean Connery cut auto from the 2017 Rittenhouse Bond set.

At the time of release, they estimated that about 40 were made. You always see at least 3 or 4 on ebay in the $ 1500 or so range. But since Sean died last year, it looks like they are starting to disappear as people are scooping them up.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

quote:

Originally posted by X:
Ebay auction for £725/$945 in January 2019 for his base Stellar 2 auto.

Outstanding buy. As an unbiased view, because I have no personal attraction to a Ford autograph, I would still have to say that his certified signature in non-sport cards will be as close to equal in stature to Mickey Mantle in sports as you can get from any modern celebrity. On such a limited card I have no doubt you will be sorely tempted to sell someday.

Well, the spend makes far more sense to me than what some collectors lay out for the likes of Jessica Alba. Each to their own of course, but Ford is a bona fide A-lister.
I'm not a fickle collector Raven... I'd be hard pressed to move it given my reasons to buy it in the first place and would be too hard to replace.

He seems to have warmed up to signing in recent years and Topps keep pumping out more of his autos. I'm sure there will be plenty more for collectors to buy in the years to come.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
I am debating whether to pick up the Sean Connery cut auto from the 2017 Rittenhouse Bond set.

At the time of release, they estimated that about 40 were made. You always see at least 3 or 4 on ebay in the $ 1500 or so range. But since Sean died last year, it looks like they are starting to disappear as people are scooping them up.

Was suprised these didn't sell for more given it's Connery.

It's a cool card but thought the design was VERY bland/underwhelming with a needlessly tiny image of Connery.
Still, maybe the speculators are snapping them up.

The signed bookplates used to make these RA cut autos is always another option at a third of the price...