The buyers of the most expensive card in the world revealed themselves on Monday morning.
Kevin O’Leary, known as “Mr. Wonderful” on “Shark Tank” told CNBC that he and two other partners bought the 2007-08 MJ-Kobe Logoman card at Heritage Auctions on Saturday night for a record $12.932 million.
O’Leary appeared on “Squawk Box” saying that he, Matt Allen, known in the industry as Shyne, and Paul Warshaw bought the card.
“We bought it together,” O’Leary said. “Yes we did and I’m very proud to own it. I’ve been looking at this asset class now for three years. It’s an extraordinary return.”
Before the appearance, O’Leary quoted tweeted a column by cllct’s Ben Burrows on saying, “I remember an original oil #Warhol painting described in the same way.”
“I’ve kind of looked at the research back in contemporary art and modern art,” O’Leary told the anchors. “The majority of the capital gains accrue to the rarest (Jackson) Pollocks or, you know, Warhol pieces that are extraordinarily priced. You think and then you wait a decade and look at them again and see you get extraordinary capital gains. It’s a very thin market, but as an alternative asset class, I’m all in.”
O’Leary said that Warshaw, a partner with him in a business called Bottom Line Concepts, which helps businesses recover government money, convinced him to go into the space about three years ago.
“I was a business partner with him and I just started and I thought it was nuts. I said, “Why would anybody pay a million bucks for a piece of cardboard? He said, ‘You don’t get it.’ And I slowly kept looking at the numbers.”
O’Leary said he, Allen, who was in Spain, and Warshaw, who was in Miami, stayed up until the early hours of the morning to make sure they won the card.
Although O’Leary is part of a fund called Secure Collectibles, the group doesn’t seem to be looking for a return on this investment.
“I don’t think this piece will come to market again during my lifetime,” he told CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin. “It’s going to be part of an index that I’m going to continue to grow along with my partners. We look at it no different than our Bitcoin holdings, our Ethereum holdings, our gold holdings. For me, this is going to be five percent weighting into my portfolio, maybe more. I don’t see it any differently than any of those other asset classes. However, it’s a lot more fun. The people I’m meeting in the hobby are truly crazy.”
O’Leary said he did face some opposition to the purchase, but that was in his house.
“My wife thinks I’m nuts,” O’Leary said. “I can tell you that. She just went to bed saying, ‘this is too crazy.’ And I woke her up the day and we owned the card.”
On its way to the record, the card passed long time stalwarts, the T206 Honus Wagner and the 1952 Mickey Mantle as the most valuable card ever sold at auction.
