What creates this price difference?
 

These two cards sold side-by-side in REA's recent catalog auction. One sold for $3,120; the other sold for $5,040. Any ideas why? Is that hologram worth $2 stacks? Is the assumption that the older flip is really a 7?

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1692112627
https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1692112632

I would say the obvious tilt of the older grade makes it far less desirable, I would also say it is overgraded due to the tilt and the registration issue shown by the yellow line at the bottom from the off pass.

Maybe
 

Hologram plus L/R centering. $2000 bucks extra for those I guess

The top edge of the $5k one looks pretty ragged from the photo. That jagged top edge was the first thing that caught my eye. As such, I prefer the way the $3k one looks, notwithstanding the tilt.

It’s always fun to speculate about a situation like this, particularly when it’s two cards for the same player, same year, same grade, same auction, and the final prices are so far out of whack.

Usually the centering acolytes will come out in force and go to town to explain centering as the primary driver of the differences. And that could be the case here.

Others have also mentioned other condition issues, which is also a possibility.

Here’s my guess, which is a lot less about the cards, and a lot more about human nature:

When the bidders were checking out this auction, they made a decision about which of these two cards they liked the best, and they decided to chase that one. Once they had self selected into those silos, it was just a question of when the underbidder was going to drop out and stop bidding. And that happened earlier on the one that went for cheap.

It’s possible that some bidders decided to put in bids on both pieces, and shifted back and forth as price disparities grew. But level-headed bidders like that probably don’t possess the animal spirits necessary to really win a bidding war like we get these days on a lot of pieces.

As much as we like to think that there’s a rational explanation for everything, and centering and condition will always dictate outcomes, my experience suggests that it’s often just a question of who gets in and hangs on, and how long they decide to keep bidding.

Part of the magic with auctions like this one is also the closing mechanism, which might play into my suppositions. If people stop bidding on the cheaper one, then it closes and it’s done. There’s no going back later to bid more. It’s possible that they were a lot closer when extended bidding got started, and then one of them took off while the other one just closed. In this case, however, looking at the bidding history, it appears to not be the case.

Looking at the bidding detail, it looks like there was really just one bidder who went nuts on the more expensive one during extended bidding, and ran it up from $3,500 to $4,200 (before the juice) in the span of about 30 seconds. I’m interpreting the bidding to suggest that someone put in a very high max bid, and then went to bed, while someone else decided they couldn’t live without it and stayed up late to run up the price before finally deciding to bow out. And that doesn’t appear to have happened on the cheaper version, as there was only 1 bid during the extended period.

So my answer is that the difference is more about somewhat irrational human behavior and less about being cold calculating value determining machines who act with perfect reason and cool hands in the face of an auction closing when bidding on precious pieces that we’ve set our hearts on.

And that goes double these days, when the person willing to bid the most recklessly ends up determining auction prices on a lot of pieces.

Agree. The better centered one with newer flip will always outsell the other one, but the huge disparity here has as much to do with auction dynamics.

For individual cards the market can be incredibly inefficient. There's only a few people seriously bidding on these. If a couple of people fall in love with one of the cards and not the other, then this is the result.

But yeah also centering is better on the more expensive '8.' That said, I don't think either 8 is a particularly great example for the grade. The more expensive 8 has snow issues along with a scratch on Frank's sleeve.

Actually the more expensive 8 has a few more scratches (between Cincy and Redlegs and Redlegs and OF (maybe just a print line??), not to mention either another larger scratch (or surface blemish or something!!) just below and to the right of Frank's bottom shirt button.

Thanks for the responses. The $3K card laid an egg -- it was well below recent comparables; the $5K card was upper range, but unsurprising, particularly in an REA auction. Raulus' scenario makes sense where two committed bidders head to extended wanting the one card for some, possibly differing, reason, maybe without an opening bid on the other card. And nobody stays awake to arbitrage the other card and it goes low. I can see the better l-r centering, but beyond that, very close.

Sent from my motorola edge 5G UW (2021) using Tapatalk

One of the more interesting elements of auctions is how the interaction of rational people with differing rationales can lead to results that seem irrational or anomalous on the surface. Or to paraphrase George Carlin, never underestimate the stupidity of outcomes from independent actions of people in large groups.

I think of it like a Venn diagram of people with centering and registration considerations overlapping collectors who are bargain oriented. One group is composed of people who will not bid on a card that is off centered or has registration issues; the other group is composed of people who do not really care as much about those issues. The overlap are condition bugs who like a bargain and will bid on the lesser card to a point, and condition insensitive bidders who are willing to match bids on the 'nicer' card but really prefer to get the lesser card at a relatively low price. I am one of the latter; I always look for the slightly lesser example in the auction, but placeholder bid on both and chase the lesser one as long as it remains at a discount.

Using "comps" as a starting point
 

The last 8 sale was a well centered "new grade" and sold for $5564. The REA example that did $5k is close, but not as nice - so no surprise at $5K there.

The 2 sales prior to that were older grades and O/C similar to the $3K example at REA. Those 2 sold for $3960 and $3840 respectively. This leads me to believe that the one that sold for $3K sold considerably under market.

Why.....as mentioned earlier in the thread the market is very inefficient. There is no shortage of 1957 Frank Robinson rookies (high supply), where exceptional examples (think well centered high grade) have a better chance of seeing enough competition to maintain price levels, anything less just will not always see the demand. When cards like that are sold in an auction setting (to the highest bidder), they will certainly not be setting records, in fact with a card like that, the consignor could likely have gotten more selling to a reputable dealer in person.

imho, it is the low supply, high demand cards that do best at auction. "Average" high supply cards usually do not.

Centering, centering, centering
 

I think good centering carries the highest premium of any of the criteria that cards are graded on (surface, corners and edges being the others). Especially for issues that typically have poor centering (like '57 Topps).

For me color/registration/surface are most important. But for most, its centering.