Posted By:
Adam J. BaxterI would not for one moment try to pretend that I have even an iota of the experience handling and tracking vintage issues that many of you folks on the board do, however, I will say that in my experience I have noticed a substantial contradiction between book value and supply & demand, particularly when one is dealing with the N172 Old Judges on ebay.
Since I started collecting and researching these this year, I have acquired many of them at ebay auctions. I have found that these cards sell with little problem, so demand is certainly high, but I've also found that they attract huge interest from buyers in seemingly ANY grade. In the 15 or so years that I have collected baseball cards I have never seen cards that hold their value like N172s. A month or so ago an ebay seller whose id is sandiegowill sold a grouping of N172s with skinning and other flaws that many collectors would think were severe. He started them at I believe 24.99 a piece (which I felt was very reasonable) and damn if he didn't sell many of them. If these had been cards in the same condition from 1900 thru the 1940s, the might not have attracted as much attention. If they had been from the 40's on, the seller might not have been able to give them away unless they were all Mantles or something. I think the book values for these cards and 19th century issues in general is quite understated when you consider what lesser grade examples are selling for at auction. How can Beckett list an N172 of common player or semi-star in midgrade conditon at like $200 or $250, when Fair to Good examples that look as if they've gone through the business end of a horse are hovering between the $75 to $100 mark on ebay auctions with some regularity? I understand that Beckett and the others are only guides, But if market value is going to be a consideration within the hobby, whether we like it or not (I really don't care myself), I feel that accuracy in reporting values does have some relevance. That's just my 2 cents. 