Pieces of Eight: A £20m Hologram, Kobe's Breaking Jersey and the 'Mona Lisa' of Baseball Cards.
🎨 Christie's are using hologram technology to take a £20m sculpture on tour. In March the cost of oil reached its highest in 14 years and estimates for shipping art jumped eight to twelve times higher than recent prices. Christie’s, however, may have found a futuristic way around the sky-high costs and shipping bottlenecks affecting traditional methods of transporting art....
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Our Take: A wonderful example of shifting and overlapping boundaries between the digital and physical display of Art. Initiatives such as the Degas hologram should become more commonplace as owners and institutions become more sophisticated. We're proponents of any technology which provides greater access to cultural icons, would you like something similar for your Showpiece? Let us know at hello@showpiece.com.
🏀 A jersey worn by Kobe Bryant in his rookie season, including two playoff games, will be sold at auction. The jersey from the 1996-97 season could fetch between $3 million and $5 million in an online auction that begins May 18, David Kohler of SCP Auctions said Saturday.
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Our Take: Bryant memorabilia continues to prove popular, is this driven by speculative investors or nostalgic collectors? After analysing the value of baseball cards for deceased hall-of-fame players, Matheson and Baade found that the higher prices were not sustained, suggesting educated speculators would often lose out. They labelled the increase “the nostalgia spike,” suggesting it reflected heightened interest in the Hall of Famer as a consequence of his death.
While the intriguing mythology of this card is well-documented and extensive, this sale is just another recent, wild addition to the Wagner legacy: This version is missing three sides, has been trimmed and wields a massive crease across its middle.
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Our Take: Referred to as the 'Holy Grail' or 'Mona Lisa' (nothing on the 1c...) of cards, the value is born of 'scarcity and ego' according to ESPN. We reported on a torn T206 Wagner which sold for $500k a few months ago, and whilst the sums seem incredible the stories associated with the card are numerous and powerful. A rags to riches tale for Wagner, nicknamed the 'Flying Dutchmen' (despite is german lineage...), he entered the hall of fame with as many votes as babe ruth and dominated the sport. Add to this the mystery as to why only a tiny number of cards were released and the rest is history!
That's it for this week, thanks as always for reading and if you have any comments please get in touch via hello@showpiece.com.
The Showpiece Team
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