One man's passion for baseball memorabilia leads to impressive Sports Museum of Los Angeles
Hans Gutknecht / Staff Photographer (Hans Gutknecht / Staff Photographer)
Gary Cypres, who maintains the Sports Museum of Los Angeles, says today's memorabilia collectors have to be 'slightly insane.'
By his own devices, Gary Cypres consciously surrounds himself with baseball history.
But the uber-collector admitted he didn't realize until maybe 10 or 15 years ago the front doors of his current Sports Museum of Los Angeles are just a pop-up away from one of the city's original hardball landmarks.
Cypres maintains his 32,000-square foot, two-story warehouse on the corner of Washington and Main, just southeast of the Santa Monica Freeway.
As it turns out, right across
Gary Cypres is owner of the Sports Museum of Los Angeles, one of the most impressive collections of sports memorabilia around. (Hans Gutknecht / Staff Photographer)
the street from a parking lot and furniture design center is the former site of Washington Park. Between 1911 and 1925, that served the home field of the Pacific Coast League's Los Angeles Angels and Vernon Tigers.Prior to that, it was Chutes Park, created in 1887 as an amusement park that also had a baseball diamond used by the Angels.
"I hadn't known anything about it until someone told me," Cypres said. "What an interesting discovery to be on hallowed baseball grounds, something that was part of the baseball fabric of L.A."
Maybe it's just part of Cypres' karma.
"We'll leave that up to whoever believes in
that," he replied with a smile.It's more than just popular belief that Cypres, who made his fortunes in the finance and travel business, continues to maintain the largest and most provocative private collection of sports memorabilia around.
Once opened to the public in 2008, only to close a year later for business reasons, the Sports Museum of L.A. remains an important landmark.
Cypres allows charities to use it as a fund-raising gathering as well as stage events such as the one coming Wednesday, when Dodgers president Stan Kasten will appear for a town hall meeting attended by Los Angeles News Group readers.
Cypres, who has amassed his
multimillion dollar collection through auctions and private contacts, collected his thoughts for us on various aspects of the sports memorabilia business as it stands today and continues to evolve:
Q: You've probably seen some of the things the Dodgers franchise has in its own collection. They've considered opening its own Hall of Fame or museum on its property. Is there any working relationship about either you or them buying items that come up in auctions?
A: No, because I think the Dodgers usually refer things that come up to me. Their view of it is mostly to duplicate things. For their purposes, it was quicker and more efficient to do that. That's not me. The heart of any museum is the real stuff. The Dodgers have their view and I have my view. I collect very deeply, anything with the Dodgers from balls to bats to contracts to correspondence, hats, trophies. I have a different purpose and different collecting feel as to what I want and what's important to me.
Q: Before the Internet, which makes things easier to find and connect with people, how did you network and get started on finding your treasures?
A: Like anything, start on the lowest end of the totem pole. I would stand in line at a card show for 45 minutes, go around and see everything, met the dealers, wrote to them to get brochures. Now, I can get in with an exhibitor pass. But I'm still making them rich and making me poorer in finances, but richer in memorabilia.
The amazing part of collecting, for awhile I got a lot of Dodger stuff, and a friend will email me with Dodger things from his collection and wondering if I'd buy it. So it's, all right, here I go again. It's like the forbidden fruit. I said enough, but then he'll say, well I have these, and it's oh, well. I wanted to relax for awhile. I'm getting old. I have estate issues. But somehow, maybe it's a good thing, I get drawn right back into it. It's like the famous line from "The Godfather." No matter how much I want to stop and consolidate, something comes up that I treasure and all these logical considerations stop and the collector comes out.
Q: This is a good time to be in the sports memorabilia business as far as having investments come to fruition?
A: Yes, this is a good time to be a seller and a buyer. From a seller, you're seeing substantial gains over things you've bought over the years. It's a strong market. The dynamic between seller and buyer is there especially for expensive things, you need that combination.
Q: The market isn't too saturated?
A: No. In fact, I think it's the opposite. For the first time, you see a lot of new buyers. All my friends in the auction business say there are new, younger, wealthy buyers. We saw a Babe Ruth uniform go for $4.4 million -- that's a milestone, like they'd have in contemporary art. You've broken through price-resistant barriers. You have to remember it takes two to create auction prices. The auction houses are having record years. More are coming in. It shows the industry is maturing.
Q: You've spent your time on your collection, but you also have a business, a family and a life. How do you divide time to what you want to focus on?
A: Given my druthers, I'd rather be playing down here (laughing).
Q: It is a huge playground.
A: This is a wonderful man cave, probably the biggest man cave around. My wife collects contemporary art -- and I do, too -- and she has no interest in sports or in any of my collection. That's good. It leaves me to myself. My two boys, 22 and 24, I took them to all the sports shows since they were 5 and 6. There's a social part to this. The reality is, as a collector, there's some who want to open it up and share it, and there are some who personally want to get their satisfaction just from owning it. I'm in that first category.
I come in every morning, walk around here, say hello to all my old friends. I remember 25 years ago when I bought this piece, and that piece, and dwell on the fact it can't be 25 years because that's impossible.
From a collecting point of view, the fun is always in the chase. Anyone who's serious will tell you it's what's coming tomorrow. That's one of the problems if you stop collecting. It's that joy that really isn't money driven. It's the objects, seeing new stuff.
Collecting anything is wonderful. If it wasn't sports memorabilia, it would be folk art. Collecting is in my genes. You don't someday discover it, you have it or you don't. You get excited about collecting or you don't.
Q: You see some players' families donate items to the Hall of Fame. But sometimes those things get circulated in the memorabilia market, and the family can't figure out why that happens. Is there a problem today with things on the open market that don't belong, a need for better authentication?
A: Oh, yes. In 1999, Barry Halper, one of the most well-known collectors in the industry, became ill with cancer and died a few years later. His entire collection went up for auction. But prior to doing that, he sold many of his own items to the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately, it was discovered that a lot of it was bogus. Now, this is the Hall of Fame. You'd think they'd have the ability to siphon through that. For reasons I don't quite fathom, the Hall of Fame never made any issues about it, maybe because they were embarrassed to admit they paid millions for items that weren't real.
So, many of items that came out in the market were also bogus. Clearly, in the memorabilia field, especially 15 or 20 years ago, there weren't the procedures, and not the sophisticated methods to verify things, including things I owned.
A lot of authenticators have come up, and there are questions if they can do the job honestly. There are some federal cases ongoing against Mastro Auction for fraud charges, and they sold more than $40 million a year at one time. And quite honestly, I'm sure in my own collection, I've got some real bogus junk in here. It happens at museums, with forgeries occurring even in the best of circumstances. Every collection, no matter how diligent you are, has some degree of fraud.
Like everything in life, there's a risk. Hopefully, it's not too bad and inflation and price increases offset the losses you take. You hope it all balances out. But you still have the joy of collecting, right? That never goes away.
Q: What, then, are the key personality traits for someone who to become a sports collector -- patience, skepticism, sentimentality?
A: It's insanity. You missed that one (laughing). There's a loose screw up in your head. You had all the nice things there. Face it, to collect on a major scale you have to be slightly insane. I won't run away from that. I readily admit to being a little nuts in this area. But I don't know a serious collector who isn't a little irrational about all this. The auction houses are very smart. One thing they like about live auctions versus Internet auctions is this loss of discipline that occurs even with the most sophisticated business people. Two guys bidding against each other can go way over the value of something being auctioned. In any other situation, they would not let their associates do something like that. But they wind up overspending. That's their joy. That's human nature. We appreciate that we have excesses in live.
Q: And maybe buyer's remorse too?
A: You always have that, and then buyer's joy. I gotta tell you, sometimes it's 'Why did I do that? (groaning). I promised myself not to do this. Now what do I do?' Five years later, it's 'What a smart thing. Look how much it went up in price.' "
Q: Are you also driven by the fact your mom probably threw away all your baseball cards when you were a kid?
A: Oh, definitely. But then, if all the moms kept them they wouldn't be worth anything like they are today. Scarcity creates value, remember?
Q: If someone doesn't have the financial means to start collecting things the way you have done it, do you have a suggestion on how they can get started without bankrupting themselves?
A: I think you start with the idea that it's the collecting that's fun. If you have limited resources, even within the baseball world, there are all kinds of things to collect that doesn't have to be high-end stuff. Think of all the bobbleheads or other giveaways over the last 20 years for just the Dodgers. A funny story: A senior judge in the state of California came by here one day, very distinguished man, impeccable credentials, Ivy League educated -- he collects football programs. You'd never know what people collect. Football programs don't involve major dollars, but here's someone, an intellectual, sure as can be, just this quiet collector. It doesn't matter what profession. Collectors are collectors, in their blood from when they were little.
Q: So as collector, would you buy up a bunch of Yaseil Puig memorabilia right now and just put it away for safe keeping?
A: I would buy some of it, but I wouldn't spend a lot of money on it. First of all, it's much different today. Now, they could put on 1,800 uniforms because they're smart. Way back when, the players only got two a season. When you're buying something today, realize it doesn't have the same value. There could be 10 rookie uniforms for someone like him. It's not a money issue in making new uniforms. I want to let history begin to form the value.
Q: What's the future of your museum? It was open to the public for awhile, now you open it to those who do events. Is it feasible to open as a museum in the future?
A: I've wrestled with this. First, it costs a fortune to house all this stuff. From a business point of view, it's the worst thing I've ever done. It's horrible. It got really expensive to try to keep it open to the public because of security reasons.
This is all readily accessible. It's not like the Hall of Fame where it's behind glass and you can't touch anything. That's not how this operates.
We could also put some of it on tour, like the Brooklyn Dodgers items to see if other places might want to house it. Maybe even the Dodgers some day? I don't think it'll ever go to Dodger Stadium, for whatever reason.
My instincts are to put all my Dodger stuff into a perpetual trust and hopefully find a home. When you amass a certain collection, now you have the history of a major historical thing. Probably unless someone says here's $30 million bucks. I don't think current owners are as interested in that. Ask yourself the question: Why don't more teams have museums of their own? The answer is that almost none of them do. They haven't saved their artifacts. Why? When Ebbets Field went, they auctioned off everything. I can't believe it. Gratuitously, I got a lot of it. Why is it? It's rare you have ownership that is both interested in historic things as well as the future of their ownership. That's been a great problem for museums now. Maybe owners are beginning to understand to have the artifacts important to the franchise.
Q: The event with Stan Kasten coming here, another opportunity to let fans see what you have, how do you feel about that opportunity leading to more exposure?
A: It's a wonderful opportunity for people who are really interested in seeing things about the Dodgers they could never see. It's unique, nothing else like it. For those interested in understanding the long history of the franchise, which is important in how they became established into this thing worth $2.5 billion, it had to come from somewhere. You can see how the brand was created, notice how almost every Dodger Hall of Famer came from Brooklyn, every retired number, you get a sense of how this was built. That's what the collection is for, to go back in time to see something that'll never be repeated from the 1950s in New York when you had the Dodgers, Yankees and Giants in one city and so competitive. If you took the Yankees away, do you realize how great the Dodgers would have been in history? They probably would have won five more world championships, maybe never had to move because of such great momentum, but that wasn't the case as attendance was declining.
Q: Is part of the joy of the collection being here and watching people react to it and marvel at what they're experiencing? And you get to be the historian who also explains it to them as well?
A: Yes, especially the older folks like me who love to reminisce; those in my age bracket can remember how it used to be. Sometimes, we just talk and have fun. The wonderful thing is seeing fathers explain to their kids the history. That's the greatest joy. It evokes wonderful memories of childhood with their parents. That's what I've witnessed.
More Q-and-A with Gary Cypres on the blog: insidesocal.com/tomhoffarth
thomas.hoffarth@dailynews.com"?On Twitter @tomhoffarth
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