O.J. memorabilia not exactly going like hotcakes
The personal memorabilia O.J. Simpson tried to retrieve from a Las Vegas hotel room last week may have had some value.
Most other Simpson memorabilia? Not so much.
Experts in sports and pop culture collectibles say most O.J. items, such as trading cards and autographs, tend to sell for far below market value -- if they sell at all.
A quick check on eBay proved them right: A Simpson rookie football card in near-mint condition sold for $58, even though it should go for close to $80. There were no takers on a copy of his 1976 Hertz Rent-A-Car ad, priced at $9.99, or an autographed football, priced at $9.50.
And as of Wednesday morning, a "Let the Juice Loose" T-shirt, sold outside the courthouse during his 1995 murder trial, hadn't attracted a single bid -- even though it was priced at a penny.
"Ever since the trial, the price of his stuff went in the toilet. It's because everyone thinks he's guilty," says Jim Anderson, owner of Shoebox Memorabilia in South Elgin.
Simpson now faces a host of new charges, including robbery with a deadly weapon, for trying to get back a number of personal items -- including photos and his wedding video -- that he says were stolen from him.
Yet, considering the whole mess landed him behind bars, he may have been better off just buying his stuff back off eBay.
Sales of Simpson merchandise were "solid" before the murders of his ex-wife and her friend Ron Goldman, but tanked along with the former athlete's popularity in the '90s -- despite his acquittal, collectors say.
The same thing happened to other scandal-tainted celebrities, like Michael Jackson, Barry Bonds and Michael Vick.
"Vick was one of the top sellers two to three years ago ... and he is completely unsellable now," says Dan Hitt, price guide editor for Beckett Football.
Simpson merchandise falls into three categories: items related to his athletic achievements, to his movies and commercials, and to his trial.
Regardless of the category, the only O.J. memorabilia worth much today, collectors say, are the one-of-a-kind personal items, such as the suit he wore when the not-guilty verdict was read, or the jersey he wore when he rushed for his 2,000th yard in 1973.
Simpson's Heisman Trophy was auctioned off in 1999 for $230,000 as part of his civil lawsuit settlement.
Hard-core and deep-pocketed collectors might want things like that. The rest of the stuff, well, is likely to languish.
"For stuff to sell, it has to be a popular player. And O.J. certainly isn't popular. He's the guy everyone loves to hate," Hitt says.
Bad reputations don't stop sales, though. Simpson's book, "If I Did It," which the Goldman family published and released, is No. 2 on both Amazon's and Barnes & Noble's best-sellers lists.