OT: And you think those "hot" 90s comics took a hit.....

[The Less Blob]

Nothing of interest at my LCS, but picked up a few baseball cards for fun. All in nice little plastic holders and such, 6/$1 (well, it was 5/$1, but I'm a regular...)

 

Fred McGriff Fleer '87 (I think this is maybe his rookie, although I think there is an "update" that is the true RC)

 

McGriff Donruss 87 rookie

McGwire Donurss 88 MVP insert card

 

Benito Santiago Donruss 87 (Rookie)

 

Rafael Palmeiro Fleer 87 (2d year I guess)

 

Wally Joyner 87 fleer rookie card

 

I wonder what the total value of these worthless cards was at the heigh of baseball card speculation in the late 80s/early 90s or whenever it was? (Actually, maybe not given that McGriff and Palmeiro had not busted out yet...)

 

I passed on the Canseco Donruss 1988s for 10 cents each, the guy disgusts me.

[jonjesper]

I had all those cards...and sold them!!!

 

McGriff I believe had an update in 86 or possibly even an 86 Donruss rookie.

 

Palmeiro's RC card is 87

 

Of those cards, I remember the McGriff being in the $15 range, and Palmeiro being a little less. Joyner was hot for 1 year and slowed after that, his card got hot in 87. McGwire had a Topps card in 1985 that was a USA Baseball card and part of the regular set. That card was going for crazy prices in 85, slowed down then got hot again when he was chasing the record.

 

Benito, hot for about 2 years, maybe a $8-10 card at the time.

 

That is all from what I remember, but 87 was a great year to collect cards...what a great crop of rookies at the time! Even 88 Donruss had the Greg Jeffries rookie that was short printed...THE NEXT MICKEY MANTLE!!!

 

memory lane...

[SEABISCUIT]

Current baseball card collecting is a mess IMO...my dad gets the monthly Beckett magazine, and I am shocked out how many different card sets there are that come out every year! The old days were so simple with one set each from Topps, Donruss, and Fleer. Then they slowly added the "traded" sets, and then rookie sets, bla bla bla....and now fans have to deal with a gazillion different variants, that make no sense to me. I wouldn't even know where to begin if I wanted to collect baseball cards. yuck...

[Pirate]

the old fleer and donruss weren't worth much even when they were out. Upper Deck Griffey and Topps McGwire were the hot cards of that time.

[Pirate]

I had all those cards...and sold them!!!

 

McGriff I believe had an update in 86 or possibly even an 86 Donruss rookie.

 

Palmeiro's RC card is 87

 

Of those cards, I remember the McGriff being in the $15 range, and Palmeiro being a little less. Joyner was hot for 1 year and slowed after that, his card got hot in 87. McGwire had a Topps card in 1985 that was a USA Baseball card and part of the regular set. That card was going for crazy prices in 85, slowed down then got hot again when he was chasing the record.

 

Benito, hot for about 2 years, maybe a $8-10 card at the time.

 

That is all from what I remember, but 87 was a great year to collect cards...what a great crop of rookies at the time! Even 88 Donruss had the Greg Jeffries rookie that was short printed...THE NEXT MICKEY MANTLE!!!

 

memory lane...

 

Think i had like 100 al leiter topps rookies at one time and don't get me started on the randy myers speculating

[The Less Blob]

"McGwire had a Topps card in 1985 that was a USA Baseball card and part of the regular set."

 

I believe my old LCS gave me like a $100-150 credit in trade for that one at the height of the insantiy in 1998. And I got a similar credit (Becket value, whatever it was) for the Marino and Elway rookie cards just as they peaked.

 

What ticks me off is that I had many multiples of each of those bought (or however they came into my possession...) from Woolworths, in packs, when I was a kid and my kid brother sold them out from under me (and I didn't see a dime!) in like 1990-93, when I was in college along with about 15 Clemens rookie cards! Dang, I could have gotten some sweet stuff at my old LCS with like a $1500 credit 5 or 6 years later!

 

Anyway, I normally ignore cards, but when they're encased and so cheap, ah, what the heck. More junk to throw in my hobby room. The 1986 and later stuff can probably never bounce back, there are probably 10X as many of each card as there are collectors or even baseball fans! But I wonder if there's any potential in the 70s and early 80s stuff that's totally worthless right now but wasn't warehoused to the same extent as the later stuff. Seriously, you can probably pick up a Ripken rookie card for like $10-$25 in nice shape, even less for a Ricky Henderson RC and Ripken just went into the HOF and Henderson is going in whenever he is eligible unless he kills someone.

 

 

[carcrawfordfan]

"McGwire had a Topps card in 1985 that was a USA Baseball card and part of the regular set."

 

I believe my old LCS gave me like a $100-150 credit in trade for that one at the height of the insantiy in 1998. And I got a similar credit (Becket value, whatever it was) for the Marino and Elway rookie cards just as they peaked.

 

What ticks me off is that I had many multiples of each of those bought (or however they came into my possession...) from Woolworths, in packs, when I was a kid and my kid brother sold them out from under me (and I didn't see a dime!) in like 1990-93, when I was in college along with about 15 Clemens rookie cards! Dang, I could have gotten some sweet stuff at my old LCS with like a $1500 credit 5 or 6 years later!

 

Anyway, I normally ignore cards, but when they're encased and so cheap, ah, what the heck. More junk to throw in my hobby room. The 1986 and later stuff can probably never bounce back, there are probably 10X as many of each card as there are collectors or even baseball fans! But I wonder if there's any potential in the 70s and early 80s stuff that's totally worthless right now but wasn't warehoused to the same extent as the later stuff. Seriously, you can probably pick up a Ripken rookie card for like $10-$25 in nice shape, even less for a Ricky Henderson RC and Ripken just went into the HOF and Henderson is going in whenever he is eligible unless he kills someone.

 

 

You are referring to raw cards though. Graded HOF RCs in nice shape will fetch quite a premium and are much, much more abundant than comics in high grade from the same eras. The sportscard industry is very heatlhy right now and should not be discounted because certain prospects didn't pan out. A majority of the cards you bought for 6/$1 are not even true rcs and were obviously printed in the millions and millions.

[hockey&comicsguy]

It is pretty sad.

 

I remember being about 12 years old and saving up for a couple of 1960's (can't remember exact year) Topps cards. One was a Willie Mays the other was a Mays/Mantle statistical leaders type card. Anyway, by modern grading standards these would've been like PSA 3's. So I shell out like 80 bucks for 1 and 100 for the other or something ridiculous at my local card shop. I remember selling these on ebay about 4 years ago. I think I got about 40 bucks for both of them.

 

The past few years I would go to this one card shop and buy a random box of hockey cards. I remember when they started putting jersey swatches and pieces of equipment and auto's on the cards, it was quite novel at the time. Now you see autograph cards in the dollar bins and the market is flooded with these kinds of cards. Pretty much the only thing worth anything is if you get a 1/1 card or a really great rookie card with an auto, swatch, player sweat or whatever on it.

 

Who was the guy who sold the Jordan/Lebron card a year or 2 ago for like 300 thousand? A 1 of 1 card with a cutout form each guy's jersey. I can buy a ridiculously sweet Action #1 or have a Lebron/Jordan card? WTF?

[jonjesper]

The George Washington 1 of 1 signature card was pulled from my local LCS. Was a pretty big deal a couple of years ago. Upper Deck bought a George Washington autograph and inserted it into a George Washington card, brought some decent money...

[hockey&comicsguy]

"McGwire had a Topps card in 1985 that was a USA Baseball card and part of the regular set."

 

I believe my old LCS gave me like a $100-150 credit in trade for that one at the height of the insantiy in 1998. And I got a similar credit (Becket value, whatever it was) for the Marino and Elway rookie cards just as they peaked.

 

What ticks me off is that I had many multiples of each of those bought (or however they came into my possession...) from Woolworths, in packs, when I was a kid and my kid brother sold them out from under me (and I didn't see a dime!) in like 1990-93, when I was in college along with about 15 Clemens rookie cards! Dang, I could have gotten some sweet stuff at my old LCS with like a $1500 credit 5 or 6 years later!

 

Anyway, I normally ignore cards, but when they're encased and so cheap, ah, what the heck. More junk to throw in my hobby room. The 1986 and later stuff can probably never bounce back, there are probably 10X as many of each card as there are collectors or even baseball fans! But I wonder if there's any potential in the 70s and early 80s stuff that's totally worthless right now but wasn't warehoused to the same extent as the later stuff. Seriously, you can probably pick up a Ripken rookie card for like $10-$25 in nice shape, even less for a Ricky Henderson RC and Ripken just went into the HOF and Henderson is going in whenever he is eligible unless he kills someone.

 

 

You are referring to raw cards though. Graded HOF RCs in nice shape will fetch quite a premium and are much, much more abundant than comics in high grade from the same eras. The sportscard industry is very heatlhy right now and should not be discounted because certain prospects didn't pan out. A majority of the cards you bought for 6/$1 are not even true rcs and were obviously printed in the millions and millions.

 

Definitely their is still a market for HG rookie cards, especially your 80's guys like Roger Clemens or Patrick Roy, etc.... And 1960's and earlier cards always seem to do well, especially staples like Mantle and Mays.

 

I just laugh at the new gimmicks they throw out there. There are so many packs now that average roughly 8-12 dollars per pack for like 5 cards. Then you have the uber high end, premium cards that are like $100.00 per pack. I have a problem forking over 100 bucks on pure speculation. Yeah, you'll get a swatch and an auto or whatever but there's a huge difference in getting a say, Sidney Crosby 1/25 auto and a Joe Sakic 1/25 auto. One might get you double what you paid for the pack, the other might get you 25 bucks.

[The Less Blob]

"Graded HOF RCs in nice shape will fetch quite a premium and are much, much more abundant than comics in high grade from the same eras."

 

Well, yeah they're common, that's why they're cheap, but the Yankees also draw 4 million fans and there are probably 100 million+ baseball fans in the country, so larger #s are being sold to a larger market. My point is, unless we're talking about "rare" inserts, which seem to lose interest/value almost as quickly as "rare" comic variant covers, there's an awfull lot of this stuff out there! It doesn't help that those chuckleheads on Tv are selling truckloads of stuff supposedly worth a million bucks according to beckets for three easy payments of $9.99....

 

I don't think $41 ( to $50+/-) for a graded "gem 10" Hederson rookie sounds like much, when a raw "nice" one was $50+ 15 years ago, no?:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/1980-Topps-Rickey-Henderson-Rookie-Card-GEM-MINT-10-RC_W0QQitemZ250160218281QQihZ015QQcategoryZ28085QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Or $46.50 for the Ripken rookie in graded GEM 10...

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/1982-TOPPS-21-CAL-RIPKEN-JR-ROOKIE-GEM-ELITE-10-RC_W0QQitemZ220150127197QQihZ012QQcategoryZ28085QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

yes, i know the above isn't "totally worthless", but there are very few examples of cards from that era that get out of the 5/$1 box.

 

I understand the times were nuts (although cards were hurting in 98 in general), but a raw, "nice looking" McGwire 1984 olympic rookie was what, a $100-$150 card and these slabbed, earlier, vastly less common, RCs of legit HOFers (who had actually won an MVP or two ...) are $50 in Gem 10? (The olympic card came out in the year that baseball card speculating started to get hot hot hot and continued for a while.)

 

I don't follow the market, so I shouldn't talk, but it does seem quite tricky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The Less Blob]

Definitely their is still a market for HG rookie cards, especially your 80's guys like Roger Clemens or Patrick Roy, etc.... And 1960's and earlier cards always seem to do well, especially staples like Mantle and Mays.

----------------------

 

How does it compare to the prices getting realized on perfect 10s when PGA started out 8-10 years ago?**** I guess in th case of clemens, it should have gone up. He had not yet won 300 then and now, despite this mediocre year, when looking at his career at a whole, within context, he's arguably the best starting pitcher ever.

 

 

***** stupid me. the owner of my LCS, told me, at the time, go out and buy the highest grade books you can find. they'll be doing this for comics soon and some insufficiently_thoughtful_person is going to pay $200 for a perfect Web of Spiderman 1 that you can buy for $2 now. i did start paying more attention to grade around then, but it was too late.....

[delekkerste]

I don't think $41 ( to $50+/-) for a graded "gem 10" Hederson rookie sounds like much, when a raw "nice" one was $50+ 15 years ago, no?:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/1980-Topps-Rickey-Henderson-Rookie-Card-GEM-MINT-10-RC_W0QQitemZ250160218281QQihZ015QQcategoryZ28085QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Or $46.50 for the Ripken rookie in graded GEM 10...

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/1982-TOPPS-21-CAL-RIPKEN-JR-ROOKIE-GEM-ELITE-10-RC_W0QQitemZ220150127197QQihZ012QQcategoryZ28085QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

yes, i know the above isn't "totally worthless", but there are very few examples of cards from that era that get out of the 5/$1 box.

 

doh!

 

Great Caesar's Ghost, I guess that means my old collection of baseball cards is pretty much worthless (except for perhaps my extensive autograph collection that I accumulated back when Beckett published a book with player addresses circa 1979-80 ). Less than $50 for pristine, slabbed RCs of two of the best players of my generation? It hardly seems worth the effort, no?

 

I am a customer of both Mastro Auctions and Robert Edward Auctions and get their sports memorabilia catalogs on a regular basis. Every single auction has so many primo complete sets, slabbed keys, unopened packs/boxes, etc. from even the 1950s-1970s that I understand why the post-1980 stuff is so worthless, being orders of magnitude even more abundant.

 

By the way, I picked up and started reading that book "The Card" about the Gretzky T-206 Honus Wagner that was recommended in a recent OT thread on that card's sale - I'd highly recommend it; I'm only on Chapter 3 and it's already worth the price of admission...

[moonlite]

The George Washington 1 of 1 signature card was pulled from my local LCS. Was a pretty big deal a couple of years ago. Upper Deck bought a George Washington autograph and inserted it into a George Washington card, brought some decent money...

 

My nephew got one of those 1 of 1 prez autos. I think it was one of the Adams if I recall right.

 

Guy from ebay offered him 12K to end the auction early. He said no and got $8k for it. WOW! but he buys a lot of cards from his LcardS

 

 

[carcrawfordfan]

"Graded HOF RCs in nice shape will fetch quite a premium and are much, much more abundant than comics in high grade from the same eras."

 

Well, yeah they're common, that's why they're cheap, but the Yankees also draw 4 million fans and there are probably 100 million+ baseball fans in the country, so larger #s are being sold to a larger market. My point is, unless we're talking about "rare" inserts, which seem to lose interest/value almost as quickly as "rare" comic variant covers, there's an awfull lot of this stuff out there! It doesn't help that those chuckleheads on Tv are selling truckloads of stuff supposedly worth a million bucks according to beckets for three easy payments of $9.99....

 

I don't think $41 ( to $50+/-) for a graded "gem 10" Hederson rookie sounds like much, when a raw "nice" one was $50+ 15 years ago, no?:

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/1980-Topps-Rickey-Henderson-Rookie-Card-GEM-MINT-10-RC_W0QQitemZ250160218281QQihZ015QQcategoryZ28085QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Or $46.50 for the Ripken rookie in graded GEM 10...

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/1982-TOPPS-21-CAL-RIPKEN-JR-ROOKIE-GEM-ELITE-10-RC_W0QQitemZ220150127197QQihZ012QQcategoryZ28085QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

yes, i know the above isn't "totally worthless", but there are very few examples of cards from that era that get out of the 5/$1 box.

 

I understand the times were nuts (although cards were hurting in 98 in general), but a raw, "nice looking" McGwire 1984 olympic rookie was what, a $100-$150 card and these slabbed, earlier, vastly less common, RCs of legit HOFers (who had actually won an MVP or two ...) are $50 in Gem 10? (The olympic card came out in the year that baseball card speculating started to get hot hot hot and continued for a while.)

 

I don't follow the market, so I shouldn't talk, but it does seem quite tricky.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not to be a jerk, but those are not real grading companies. They are viewed as about 500 times tier than PGX in comparison to CGC. A PSA 10 (which there is only 1) Rickey Henderson 1980 Topps RC sold for about $14000 in 2001. It has not been resold since. PSA 9 Henderson rookies get $200-$300 depending on the centering and overall eye appeal. A PSA 10 Ripken 1982 Topps Traded RC is worth about $1000-$1500 these days and both of these cards are worth well less than $100 raw. McGwire cards have taken a huge hit because of steroids and the way he left baseball. His PSA 10 1985 USA Rc is still worth about $400 and the Tiffany Version is worth about $2K. I think if you look at these figures and the figures for legitimate grading companies of high end rookies you will see some substantial prices and a very healthy market.

 

[Aman619]

what about that new shiny Topps set? The first metallic cards about 1992 or so? Has that maintained any of its value?

 

[The Less Blob]

Not to be a jerk, but those are not real grading companies. They are viewed as about 500 times tier than PGX in comparison to CGC. A PSA 10 (which there is only 1) Rickey Henderson 1980 Topps RC sold for about $14000 in 2001. It has not been resold since. PSA 9 Henderson rookies get $200-$300 depending on the centering and overall eye appeal. A PSA 10 Ripken 1982 Topps Traded RC is worth about $1000-$1500 these days and both of these cards are worth well less than $100 raw.

----------------------------------------------

 

So the only market for this stuff is perfect 10s from PSA of which there are an infinitesimal # (seriously, 1 out of what, 10 million cards printed?)?? How is that a strong market?

 

So the only market is a 9 or 10 from PSA of a few rookie cards and same rare 1 - 25 copy edition of some card? And the Henderson card is worth $14000 in "10" but you can get something that looks a lot like a "9" raw for $20?

 

If only the virtually unique stuff is worth anything then that's a tough market. I hope comics don't go there.

 

Granted, I don't think I can get it now, but I tossed a borderline VF ASM 300 up on ebay earlier in the year and got $85 and $50 for a beat to smitherines Spotlight 5. Ghost RIder is kindah the Paul Molitor of comics, what's a beat up Molitor rookie going for nowadays? Venom might be Barry Bonds.

[COMICKINGS]

The hottest football cards right now...certain rookie cards of....Peyton Manning...Tom Brady....Randy Moss...Tony Romo...let these guys put up numbers for a couple more weeks like they did last week,and it's gonna be crazy!

[carcrawfordfan]

Not to be a jerk, but those are not real grading companies. They are viewed as about 500 times tier than PGX in comparison to CGC. A PSA 10 (which there is only 1) Rickey Henderson 1980 Topps RC sold for about $14000 in 2001. It has not been resold since. PSA 9 Henderson rookies get $200-$300 depending on the centering and overall eye appeal. A PSA 10 Ripken 1982 Topps Traded RC is worth about $1000-$1500 these days and both of these cards are worth well less than $100 raw.

----------------------------------------------

 

So the only market for this stuff is perfect 10s from PSA of which there are an infinitesimal # (seriously, 1 out of what, 10 million cards printed?)?? How is that a strong market?

 

So the only market is a 9 or 10 from PSA of a few rookie cards and same rare 1 - 25 copy edition of some card? And the Henderson card is worth $14000 in "10" but you can get something that looks a lot like a "9" raw for $20?

 

If only the virtually unique stuff is worth anything then that's a tough market. I hope comics don't go there.

 

Granted, I don't think I can get it now, but I tossed a borderline VF ASM 300 up on ebay earlier in the year and got $85 and $50 for a beat to smitherines Spotlight 5. Ghost RIder is kindah the Paul Molitor of comics, what's a beat up Molitor rookie going for nowadays? Venom might be Barry Bonds.

 

You are kind of right. Beat-up raw copies of 50s-80s Rcs still have value, but nowhere near the value of high end graded. These days a lot of people are speculators and invest in new rookies cards of minor leagues. People hoard as many of the rookies as they can and hope the player hits it big. It is getting more and more like a stock market. You should check out Thepit.com which can give you an idea on some of the prices and what can happen on a day to day basis. There is only 1 Rickey Henderson PSA 10 because the card is insanely condition sensitive. I do not think it is any different than a 70s $20 raw comic selling for $1000 in CGC 9.8. The "collectors" with the most money will always pay insane (IMO) amounts for the top end items and it does not always reflect on low end sales of the same item. A raw Molitor Rc in Near Mint probably fetches $5-$25 based on centering and print dots. A PSA 10 Molitor would probably fetch $5k-$10k these days and I do not think I have ever seen one before. I also want to address your other point about the scarcity affecting value. This is pretty accurate for obvious reasons, but it isnt like there are only 25 copies of rcs. Most of the high end products limit the better rookies to between 99 and say 1000 copies of the rookies. This keeps them collectible and most of them are autographed so it is harder to accumulate more than that anyways. I hope this helps sort things out a bit.

[The Less Blob]

like someone else said, it sure was a heck of a lot less confusing when there was a set of topps, fleer and donruss and maybe a traded/update set for each!

 

I guess one bit of difference is that let's say you have a really nice copy of Marvel Spotlight 5 (= to Molitor Rookie card), it need not be a 9.8 (assuming a 10.0 doesn't exist) to get some nice money. If the comic looks like it could possibly be a 9.8 or 9.6 or 9.4 or 9.2 based on a scan, and it goes for $1K in slabbed 9.8, it's not going to be a $20 book. (A more similar analogy would be 10.0 moderns where the raw copy could indeed be a $1 issue and the 10.00 is a triple digit book)

 

And any pre-1976 Spidey that looks really nice in a scan is probably a minimum of a $20 book. Can you say the same thing about, let's say, a Tom Seaver/Ryan/Schmidt non-rookie card?

 

At the end of the day it is comparing apples and oranges. I guess I just found it amusing that cards that were once $5-$15 cards in an insane time of irrational speculation in cards are now 5/$1. That's all. Perhaps the B&W comic bust in the 80s is the closest comparison. There was no basis for those to be $5-$15 cards then based on the fact that you could buy $5 of wax packs and supposedly have $50 of cards. My old LCS used to laugh about the days when he'd sell Dan Pasqua rookie cards for $10, the Mattingly second year card was $20, etc. He'd open up a 35 cent pack and put $20 in cards in the display.

 

I guess the main thing I'm talking about is semi-vintage mainstream RAW cards that were once, what, $50-$100 cards are now a lot less, putting aside what a PSA 10 would be. It's like the whole 70s/80s market, aside from your uber high end slabbed cards, took a Valiant-like nosedive (even factoring in the recent uptick on valiant stuff, it's still at 20-50% of what it once was and 50% is probably pushing it). I honestly don't think raw BA or SA in any grade has gone down in actual FMV other than maybe a couple of once hot titles, at least not in the last 10-15 years. I know what I was paying for stuff back then and what I can sell it for on ebay and it has gone up. True, if you paid full guide for overgraded SA books back in 1994 you might have done poorly.