Red Cross Type 1s, going up?
 

In the last few weeks, two different Type 1 Red Cross cards sold, a PSA 4 Tinker at PWCC and a SGC 50 Crawford from Goodwin. The Tinker sold for $5111, the Crawford for $3259. Is this normal for Red Cross cards, are they on the rise, or is this a set collector going for the highest graded? I am curious what your thoughts are.

Well, I was the under-bidder on the Tinker was very confident that $5k+ was sufficient to get it done; obviously, it was not. The Crawford went strong as well. I guess Red Cross (esp type 1) are getting caught up in the rare-back mania, and are being treated more like the Red Hindu and BL rare, than the Brown Hindu and AB/Cycle/EPDG/Tolstoi

As they should be...imo!!!!!!

Agreed.

atleast the "types" with brown print...like t206.

I lost out on the Crawford, which I thought was a fair price. The Tinker shocked me. I don't know if the Type-2s are up as well. To me they're the same, but I know some of us prefer the brown-captioned Type-1s because they're identical to T206s.

I blame Ted for this price increase on the Type-1s. :)

Those are also really nice grades for T215s, HOFers, and from popular teams - there are lots of reasons why these two might do well. I think we need to wait for fall auctions to really see what might or might not be happening. After following these somewhat closely, T215s seem to fluctuate quite a bit but don't trend up or down for too long before reversing course. With all that said, I might be full of crap too :D

If anything, I think these two prices point to how illiquid and volatile prices are in these sets (and others like them).

The Tinker last sold for $4183 in Heritage 2014, and that was a high price at the time relative to other sales within the set. With the eBay Tinker sale, two bidders put in what look like nuclear bids just above 5k -- the seller got lucky. Out of 17 bidders, the second underbidder only bid $2444... So where does the next PSA 4 Tinker sell tomorrow, if one existed? Probably $2500 at most.

On the Crawford, a nice example sold for $1375 back in March. Slightly lower technical grade, but almost as nice from a visual perspective.

REA had several very nice, high grade T215s in their last two auctions that barely cleared 1000 for non-HOF...SGC 60s range.

These two sales (Tinker/Crawford) look like outliers to me.

Cheers,
Steve

Interesting observations, guys. Thanks for your input. I guess Jobu is right, we will see what happens in REA (if there are any in the auction).

I think there will be highs and lows in future t215 sales...people going for runs and sets will drive up prices for specific cards...Hofers will bring strong prices...but I think occasionally some may go a bit cheaper...like many other issues.

Does anyone know if there's any differences in population between type 1 and 2s?

There are certainly differences for individual players, but for the two types overall, they are roughly equal in population.

At various points in time, one was tougher than the other -- Type 2 carried a 20% premium in Erbe's 1982 guide. Today though, I wouldn't think that people would put a premium on one or the other. As previously mentioned, the Type 1 cards look more like a T206 with the brown name/team captions, so they have that going for them. :)

Cheers,
Steve