Bonds' 756th ball going to auction

[coryj]

Originally Posted by FlyerFanX

I'm not sure he can be taxed on this. Does that mean every person that has anything that has amassed value - a painting, a baseball card, whatever - can be taxed on the "possible" value of the item? It's not worth a penny until someone pays more for it. I think someone is giving this guy some bad info.

I don't know for sure, but I saw that story a few weeks ago on various news outlets (Headline: "Dude who caught ball may be taxed on it!"). Didn't make much sense to me at the time either... in fact, I commented on it here and I see you did too flyerfan. Doesn't make much sense to me, but we're talking about the IRS here so I didn't expect it to.

[hamncheese]

Talk about the baseball cards got me thinking...

If you buy a pack of cards and you pull some crazy Autographed, 1/1, patch memorabilia card that will easily net you $1,000 on eBay, you can't possibly be taxed on it just from opening it up. Sure it has an assigned value, but it's nowhere near the secondary market value (which is nebulous, at best, to begin with). Who is to say how the ball/card should be valued for tax purposes? Really if you wanted to, you could find someone to appraise it at a really lowball value and just tell the IRS that that's what it's worth. Too many question marks to say "there's no way he can keep it".

If I was this kid, I'd keep it. No amount of money is worth this kind of history.

[FlyerFanX]

Just because a book, person, IRS, whatever, say any item is worth a certain amount, well...until someone is willing to lay dollar bills down for that item, it's all just a guess. He could keep the ball.

I wonder what they think the ball David Wells has is worth - only ball that exists with babe Ruth, hank Aaron and Barry Bonds sigs on it.