Chance to Buy a Real WS Ring -- from a Cubs fan

[Migrant Redbird]

e-Bay

The seller says that he's a "former employee" and that the ring has been appraised for $11,800. However, he's asking for a "starting bid" of $15,000, for a personalized ring which has his name on it. That might be fine, if he were a player on that 2006 championship team, but not for a ring bearing the name of an office employee. There was an article in a local paper which said that he worked in the Cardinals group sales office. Must have been a closet Cubs fan. Typical Cubs fan -- over valuing everything!

Just out of curiosity, how many warehouse employees do you think would get $11,000 rings from Peter Angelos if the O's shocked everyone and won a World Series?

[twoBshorty]

Don't most teams give rings to all full-time staff? If you don't meet the hours cutoff, you get a nice watch or something. It sounds like that's what the Cardinals did, and I think the White Sox and Red Sox did as well.

I was amused to find out that the company that does the championship rings is the same one that does high school class rings and yearbooks. I guess I thought they bought them at Tiffany's or something. Ours were $350 for some hunk of metal I'd never wear, hence, I have no class ring. The diploma is souvenir enough.

[Migrant Redbird]

Don't most teams give rings to all full-time staff?

Rings that appraise at $11,800 to a clerk in the season ticket office? I wish that my employer were so generous.

The bill for the rings to the players -- not including the staff -- was reported at being $275,000. I assume that was for 30 or so players, possibly as many as 40 or 50, counting those only with the team for part of the season, so the cost per individual ring to the team was somewhere under $10,000.

I can kind of see doing that for the players, manager, coaches, and senior team management. Maybe even the trainers and clubhouse attendants. But when it gets into all the employees of the team headquarters, that's carrying it a bit further than I would have expected. If there were a discount version of the ring for the $300 or so your high school ring cost, it would be different, but rings costing several thousand dollars each?

And Bill DeWitt is supposed to be a "cheap" owner?

This is a team that won't even expand the September roster by more than a few players, even omitting some of those on the 40 man roster, just because they want to keep down the per diem costs for travel. Penny wise, pound foolish!

Anyhow, it's funny that the guy is selling this grand, sentimental memento of the 2006 championship. That's why someone suggested he must have been a closet Cubs fan.

[byrdz]

Found this article on the ring.

[Migrant Redbird]

Thanks. Someone mentioned on the Cards forum that there was an article in the Belleville, IL paper, but I didn't go looking for it.

[NewMarketSean]

Well if the O's won the WS with a regular season record that was 1 game above .500, I'm not sure I'd want it.

[Migrant Redbird]

Well if the O's won the WS with a regular season record that was 1 game above .500, I'm not sure I'd want it.

Why would you want this ring anyhow? It's got the wrong bird on it.

When you flash the gaudy ring with all those rubies and diamonds at a cocktail party, nobody who's dazzled by it will remember the team's regular season record.

[NewMarketSean]

Why would you want this ring anyhow? It's got the wrong bird on it.

When you flash the gaudy ring with all those rubies and diamonds at a cocktail party, nobody who's dazzled by it will remember the team's regular season record.

You will though. It's like a stain on your shirt no one else will see, but you know is there.

[Migrant Redbird]

If I were bothered by stains on my shirts, I'd have to stop having the soup and salad at Olive Garden.

But I sure don't need no stinkin' ring to remind me that the Cardinals own 10 World Series Championships, 16 behind the MFY.

[Sports Guy]

An appraisal isn't worth the piece of paper it is written.

It is a meaningless figure used for insurance purposes only.

[Migrant Redbird]

An appraisal isn't worth the piece of paper it is written.

It is a meaningless figure used for insurance purposes only.

If the insurance company allows you to insure it for that appraised value, it surely must be worth some fraction (1/3?, 1/2?, 3/4?) of that appraised value. Insurance companies wouldn't find it profitable to pay off on appraised values if they were too inflated. People would be placing ads in the paper begging cat burglars to come and steal their jewels.

We'll see what it's really worth if Hess finds a willing buyer. I kind of doubt if he achieves his opening bid of $15,000, but stranger things have happened.

[Boy Howdy]

I had a chance to buy a player's ring (through a third party) from the All-Star Game for $800 bucks one time.

I just didn't have that kind of cash to spend, but I'm still kicking myself for it every now and then.

[Sports Guy]

If the insurance company allows you to insure it for that appraised value, it surely must be worth some fraction (1/3?, 1/2?, 3/4?) of that appraised value. Insurance companies wouldn't find it profitable to pay off on appraised values if they were too inflated. People would be placing ads in the paper begging cat burglars to come and steal their jewels.

We'll see what it's really worth if Hess finds a willing buyer. I kind of doubt if he achieves his opening bid of $15,000, but stranger things have happened.

The bottom line is something like that is worth what someone is willing to pay for it...The gold and diamonds I assume this ring has is only worth a few hundred dollars.

But there is obviously more value to someone because it is a WS ring.

That is not something you can place a dollar figure on persay but bringing up the appraisal value of it is beyond worthless.

[Mad Mark]

Many people have looked at items like this and decided "I'll take the cash, thanks". If you really don't want it, why should you have to bother with insuring the thing, and worrying about it all the time?

I bet both eBay and PayPal are salivating over the prospect of this thing actually selling. It'd be worth almost a year of my paltry selling efforts!

[Migrant Redbird]

The bottom line is something like that is worth what someone is willing to pay for it...The gold and diamonds I assume this ring has is only worth a few hundred dollars.

Based upon the reported cost of the players' rings, I think that you're off by an order of magnitude.

There were copies of the rings made for sale to fans at prices between a few hundred dollars and a couple thousand dollars, but the rings provided to the employees were supposedly in a tier between those given the players and those offered to the public as memorabilia.

I would guess that the cost of manufacturing this ring was somewhere in the $2,000 to $6,000 range, compared to a range of $5,000 to $9,000 each for the players' rings. Obviously, that's just a guess, since I have no inside information beyond that which has already been made available publicly to Cardinals fans, but I think it's a reasonable one.

But there is obviously more value to someone because it is a WS ring.

There's more value because the ring was personalized and given to an employee, but an employee's ring -- even aside from apparently being less costly to manufacture, does not carry any where near the cachet of a ring belonging to a player or even a coach. This guy was in group ticket sales -- for goodness sake! (Earlier, I mistakenly said that he sold season tickets.) I wouldn't expect that his ring would have that much more value than the souvenir rings sold to the general public, except that it's a "one of a kind", given that most of the recipients will want to pass their rings down as family heirlooms.

That is not something you can place a dollar figure on persay but bringing up the appraisal value of it is beyond worthless.

I would emphatically disagree! If appraisal values had no relationship to real values, insurance companies wouldn't accept them for underwriting purposes. We can recognize that appraisals usually are inflated over the "real" value, but they're still closely related to the real value.