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Permalink Reply by Cogo on September 27, 2018 at 10:53am

To me it’s without a doubt true. Both then it comes to the biggest names like Michael Jackson and Prince and celebreties on a little lower level like Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell. 

Then these died = value rised in a big way! The difference between the above categories is the the value of the biggest names stays strong but the ”lesser” names value drops after a while. It’s still higher than when they lived, but it goes down quite a bit.

IMO

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Permalink Reply by Joe W. on September 27, 2018 at 10:57am

Usually, there is a brief, intense uptick in interest and value upon the passing on a celebrity. As you said, the circumstances impacts the initial uptick selling prices. After a period of time the autograph values settles into a value more in line with supply and demand factors. Collector interest, etc.

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Permalink Reply by Joe W. on September 27, 2018 at 11:36am

Let's take, Burt Reynolds, there was definitely an uptick of interest in his autographs when he passed away. Some were selling much above market value. Although, I also noticed, that many were still being offered at only slightly more or at the same level before his death. Obviously, when someone passes, many autographs of theirs which have been stored away quickly hit the market. Thus diminishing the effect.

Prince, for instance, was a relatively scarce autograph before his death and his autograph value skyrocketed and still maintains it's value. 

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Permalink Reply by Jason Strecker on September 28, 2018 at 2:40pm

I think the biggest thing is supply and demand of bigger stars. For baseball, you have Mantle, DiMaggio and Williams who did a fair share of public and private signings and yet the demand might outweigh the supply. Plus, the "supply" sees a lot of fakes versus authentic. And people who do have authentics are probably holding on to them for a while. Where you see real value is when the demand outweighs the supply and I think the knowledge of that fact by collectors fuels the higher pricing.

Where my theory is skewed is on celebrities who uses secretary to sign fan mail. I think an actor like Charlton Heston or Jerry Lewis should hold much more value but collectors may still not know of their secretary use so the demand just is not there. The supply is there, though secretarials, so some may not even realize there's a much lower supply than there really is.

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