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Sara Coello
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Rally is betting that the most lucrative name in sports memorabilia will carry a so-called fractional ownership deal for a real estate asset, something the company has never tried before. Rally has said in a regulatory filing that it plans to convert the house, which it bought for $175,000 in 2022, into a museum.
Company officials also see potential for Airbnb-style short-term rentals, a market for trading cards with pieces of the property embedded in them, and the construction of a little league field on the property.
“If we could do something like they’ve done in places like Graceland or in parts of Motown, where you have this place that a lot of people who care about the game and about Mantle will visit given the opportunity,” Rally co-founder and chief product officer Rob Petrozzo told ESPN. “We really believe that it’s just that they don’t know what exists.”
Petrozzo says shareholders will ultimately decide on the direction of the property, though Rally said in a September regulatory filing that it can “in its sole discretion determine when it is in the best interests of investors to sell” the house. According to the filing, Rally intends to distribute cash to interest-holders after covering operating expenses for a minimum of one year.
Rally plans to keep between 1% and 5% ownership in the house. Since purchasing the property, the company has spent about $50,000 on refurbishments and maintenance and expects monthly operating costs going forward.
Petrozzo didn’t have details regarding shareholders’ responsibilities when it comes to paying taxes, insurance, repairs and improvements to the property, or any operational costs of running a museum, but estimated that costs would be cushioned by Rally’s own cash reserves for three to five years.
Rally also intends to offer free shares in the property to city residents. The company has set aside about 2,200 shares for residents, which Rally is paying for to avoid diluting the value of other shares.
The home sits on a small street in Commerce, a city of about 2,200 people in the far northeastern corner of Oklahoma. Some houses near the Mantle home have been long abandoned, and some residents interviewed by ESPN responded with raised eyebrows to Rally’s valuation of the property. City administrator and former mayor Michael Hart estimated a similar home in the city would generally sell for about $10,000.
Mantle, widely considered the best switch-hitter in baseball history, lived in a few different homes within walking distance of the lead and zinc mines where Mantle’s father worked. But the property on the corner of C Street and South Quincy Street — a two-bedroom bungalow near the edge of town — is where Mantle learned to hit.
Mantle would take at-bats by the rusted tin-covered shed in the home’s yard, which leaned precariously to the east even during his time living there. With his right-handed father and left-handed grandfather trading off pitches, Mantle learned early how to hit balls coming from many angles. Eventually, they devised a game to keep track of his progress: any balls hit over the home’s short roof and toward Main Street counted as home runs, according to Mantle’s memories repeated on a plaque mounted next to the front door.
Apart from the shed that serves as Mantle’s baseball origin story, and possibly even including it, there isn’t much to see from the outside: Faded velvet couches and a mint-colored stove are visible through the windows, the haint-blue ceiling of the front porch. Inside, more of the same: An empty display case, folded easels in a bedroom Mantle shared with his six siblings and half-siblings, two plaques noting that the Mantles relied on the kitchen stove for warmth and that indoor plumbing was added to the bathroom. The home’s previous owners left behind kitchen utensils and a miner’s hat hung by the back door.
The Mantle family sold the house to new owners in 1993, and city officials have previously considered plans to turn it into a museum, though those plans never gained traction. A Mantle statue was unveiled at the Commerce High School baseball field in 2010.
Around town, few people have heard of Rally’s upcoming deal, and some are skeptical.
A few streets from the Mantle home, David Mason has spent 10 years turning an old factory building into what he claims is the largest flea market on Route 66. Mason said customers snap up Commerce Comet memorabilia more quickly than he can get hold of it. But the idea that collectors would be as interested in shares of a house as they are in physical Mantle swag made Mason snort.
“I wouldn’t; that sounds crazy to me,” Mason said.
Hart, the former mayor, grew up next door to the Mantle home, separated only by a wooden fence that his mother built to keep tourists from peering into their yard. Hart now lives with his family in a different home in the same neighborhood, and he still helps wandering sightseers find the house. They come every day, Hart told ESPN, often taking up a batting position in front of the shed for pictures. Hart said more of them visit the house than any of the other Mantle tributes around town.
“The most common reaction I get is: ‘This is it?'” Hart said.
Petrozzo said he can understand there would be “a little bit of skepticism” about the deal. The company is holding a town hall in Commerce next week “to make them understand our intentions are not to go in there and commoditize this really important piece of property, to ensure that it’s maintained properly and treated as the collectible that we feel like it should.”
Fractional ownership, by design, is rarely if ever lucrative. Part-owners profit when they sell their individual shares at a premium, or when the underlying asset receives a buyout offer at an elevated price, and part-owners vote to approve the sale.
Rally notes that sports cards and memorabilia can fluctuate wildly in price. For example, Rally offered 6,000 shares in a signed Mickey Mantle bat, used in the 1962 World Series, at $25 each in October 2020, valuing the bat at $150,000. Those shares last traded for $16.25, according to Rally’s website. A basketball used in a pick-up game between Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Magic Johnson and Barack Obama, signed by all, originally sold for $10 a share, and those last traded for $5.55, according to Rally’s website.
“There was a lot of hype and buildup [with fractional ownership during the pandemic], but it’s leveled off,” said Ryan Cracknell, Beckett Media’s hobby editor. “Just like cards, if you’re looking at it from an investment angle like stock going up and down, things are down.”
For baseball lovers and collectors alike, Mantle has long held an unparalleled esteem. The most expensive sports card or piece of memorabilia is a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card that sold for $12.6 million in August 2022.
“Mantle is directly connected to the growth of baseball cards as we know them today,” Cracknell said. “If you trace the history, if we look at baseball cards, when the 1952 Topps set came out, that set the standard. As it’s evolved, they’ve had their ebbs and flows, but they’re still around.”
But the average person can’t afford a $12.6 million 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card, a $7.25 million T-206 Honus Wagner or even the $474,000 that one collector paid for a Jasson Dominguez rookie card — the Yankees outfield prospect reached Double-A. So fractional ownership companies like Rally, Collectable and Dibbs stepped in to allow more collectors to participate.
“This is exactly what we look for when we acquire any asset: to have that history, it has to be relevant now [and] we believe will be relevant in the future, it has to have a story to tell,” Petrozzo said. “It’s an important thing to sort of be maintained and owned, not just by a group of people, but by the right people.”
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