Supply & Demand vs. BOOK price

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Posted By: ty_cobb

This year supply of vintage baseball cards is at
its lowest ebb ever. Book price is meaningless
for E card issues, and the tougher T card issues
like T213 abd T215. I thought the guys who picked
up the T215s for essentially double book value
(I think from TBob) got hosed at the time, but
when you look at availability you've got to say to
yourself 'how many years do I want to spend trying
to find it? Maybe they got a deal.

I'm getting to the point where I think the high prices
are justified. Especially on Ebay, when you bid on a card
someone has 'grubstaked' if you want to snipe it, the
current high bidder will make sure you have to shell out

at least an extra $100 to top him. I don't blame people
for wanting high prices.

If someone wants to cost me an extra $50 to $100
to 'win' an eBay card, thay can be damn sure I'll be tacking on the same amount when I sell it. Why not?

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Posted By: Hankron

Price guides are just that: guides. I find the Standard Catalog and Beckett Almanac to be excelent recources. Each guide is worth every penny, but not because of the accuracy of the pricing. They are excellent checklists, lists of accepted cards (useful in the Roy Huff age) and usually have nice set 'bios.' The pricing is useful as a guage of relative scarcity and popularity (which is important to the buyer or seller), but not as actual pricing.

I deal almost entirely with material where there are no price guides, which allows me to run like a fox in the woods. I am a firm beleiver that, as a dealer or collector, there are only two important numbers: your buy price and your sell price.

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Posted By: Brian H.

We can all think of numerous specific cards that defy the guides (e.g. T207 Weaver & Wood). The guides do a very good job in general -- especially with the stuff that most people buy them for (cards less than 50 years old).
However, vintage cards -- especially the more obscure ones -- generally are difficult to price. They don't pop up that much and when they do its not always in the same condition. Our little eccentric vintage portion of the guide is best used as a checklist and as a starting point for pricing.

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Posted By: Anonymous

(sorry I posted prematurly)
Ultimately the folks on this Board probably know the real going rate for stuff as well as any book. So this means that you (Ty) may have to start cashing in all of those Coca Cola shares to buy what you want if and when it becomes available.

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Posted By: leon

With all of the money, and people, coming into our vintage arena it has really driven up the prices of a lot of pre '33 cards. The supply just isn't there and the demand is high. Folks like myself just hang onto the really tough cards when we get them. Even though I am a type collector, and am going to be selling many items on ebay very soon, I still squirrel away the tough ones. I picked up a D303 Mothers Bread card (common) at the National and took it out last night to sit in my "sell" pile. After thinking about it a few minutes I put it back into my "squirrel away" pile. I now have 3 of them. I did the same thing with my Uncle Jack cards too (sorry about that Dan). The one really tough card I sold about 8 months ago was a Derby Cigar card. I still regret it...I feel the prices are still on the rise for the rare stuff....regards all

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Posted By: julie

but if you'll take a look at the Topps you used to collect, in 2003 they took a TERRIBLE beating (in the Castalogue). "But I paid twice that for it 15 years ago!"

When Clemens was traded to the Yankees, I decided it was about time I got his rookie card, before I could no longer count his Cy Young's on the fingers of one hand. A year ago, I thought I'd pick up a Puckett rookie to go with it (both cards are in the attractive and underproduced 1984 Fleer Update set). I looked Puckett up in the 2003 catalogue--$80! Why, he used to be $150. I called Dave's Dougout to enquire, and they said they'd get a small assortment for me to choose from (ungraded). It took them a while, but they did. "They're all $100," Dave said. "The Catalogue says $80." "Don't pay too much attention to that," he said.

It appears that Lemke thought the card market was taking the depression as seriously as the stock market--which we can all attest it isn't. The great cards just do a disappearing act, that's all.

I use old Becketts and not so old SCD Catalogue pages for checklists--as someone has already suggested. But when someone tells me the Diamond Gum Plank pin "only lists for $350," I think "That wouldn't be the first egregious error Lemke made."

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Posted By: dan

Not a problem Leon, they are your cards and that is your given right though I belive you said you would sell them, you have a right to change your mind. I won't start bugging you for them until I get much closer to the set. I am so far away now that it really doesn't matter. If you ever sell a mother's, keep me in mind, I may be back in the market for it. Thanks again for the trade! The Cobb arrives today! Dan.

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Posted By: TBob

that certain cards defy price guide values. I will buy M116 Woods all day at more than full book. I agree that you use the price guides as "guides."

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Posted By: leon

Check your Uncle Jack cards. If I have a double and you need it, and we can work a deal out, it's yours. I always try to practice what I preach. A man (or woman) is only as good as his word..... best regards

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Posted By: Tom Boblitt

but it also seems like the 'common' sets are too. I noticed that VGEX to EX T206 cards seemed to be priced well above last year's prices. Same for nice clean T205's. They have really shot up. Don't know if it's because of more entrants into the hobby or what.

Maybe those Topps 206 and Topps 205 sets have pulled in some other collectors with the 'buyback' cards they inserted. They listed that they bought back about 6-8,000 total cards between all 4 issues. Granted that's not a whole lot but I'm sure it does matter some.

One dealer had nearly a whole set of Cracker Jacks at what I would consider moderate to high prices and another dealer basically bought them all and I believe put them out at 20% or so higher. Just not too many people with large holdings of ANYTHING vintage (save Terry Knouse) at this year's National. I was very unimpressed (except with Leon's display).

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Posted By: Adam J. Baxter

I 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.

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Posted By: jay berhens

Julie, I'd be scared to death to buy a 1984 Fleer update card. The reason being is that Fleer tossed the printing plate into the trash and someone pulled it out and used these plates to produce another run, as it were. Id entifying these cards is almost impossible since they were produced form the original plates. The only way to absolutely sure that you have an original is to buy a complete set in the box since the all that was reprinted were the cards, not the box.

Jay

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Posted By: Julie

Then why haven't the prices come way. WAY down--like the Sports Illustrated issue number1, which SI thoughtfully reprinted, soup to nuts, with no ientifying marks. Well, yes, there is one: that little piece of cardboard that advertises new subscriptions that comes out of one of the page staples.

I'd never heard the story before, and never been offered a real cheap '84 Fleer Update. Is there more to the story? Were the people ever stopped? Or are Fleer Update sets still being reprodfuced?

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Posted By: Hankron

For the record, I can identify the original versus reprint 1984 Fleer Updates and SIs. I will also address the infamous Star Cards the day PSA, SGC or Mastro moves to Seattle and pays me a salary (in otherwords, not bloody likely).

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Posted By: julie

I'd think they'd be GLAD to have you (Struss doesn't live in Illinois, does he?) I know I'd be a lot happier bidding on some of Mastro's older lots if you were there at auctiontime.

I sent you an e-mail, asking about the Fleer Update set--I have an SI #1 with a cardboard ad for subscriptions--but I'd like to know about that as well.

In fact--I'm sure we'd all like to know aBOUT BOTH.

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Posted By: jay behrens

I used to know what to look for back int eh day when I buying lots of Puckett cards, but since I left the hobby, there was no need to really retain the info and thus got dumped from knowledge pool. As much as I like a number of todays current players, I ahve zero desire to own their cards.

Jay

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I don't pay attention at all to the price guides, and I helped write a (tiny) bit of 'em. A card is worth what you want to pay for it, to you. Period. Past performance simply is not an indicator of future performance. It all depends on finding a willing buyer and seller at a given rate. Example: I passed on a 1927-28 Exhibit Babe Ruth at $500 and picked up the same card with a Gehrig, a Foxx, a Grove, a Simmons and a Haas from the same set for $500 later on. Another example: I paid 2x book for a Joe Wood card because he was a major missing element from my pre WWII collection, and I paid way "over" book for a Zeenut Jimmy Reese for the same reason. I also bailed out of the bidding for a Zeenut Thorpe that was priced well but that I just did not feel comfortable with. It is all subjective. Some of my cards are things I would not sell for multiples of "book", simply because it took me so damned long to find them.

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Posted By: Hankron

Julie, I'm not looking for a job from MastroNet or anyone else. My fear is if they gave me a salary they'd expect me to work for it. While I like money, I'm not willing take the chance.

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Posted By: Eric Angyal

Joe Wood's name always seems to come up as far as people willing to pay way over "book" for his cards. Makes one think that those who set the "guide" prices are really clueless and lazy (or a combination of both) when it comes to reporting the market value of his cards. Any Wood card that I see for sale at anywhere near "book" sells immediately. I remember about 10 years ago when 1915 Cracker Jack Wood's were listing for about $175 in Nm when TiK & TiK broke up and auctioned a complete Cracker Jack set. I won the Wood in ex/mt - but it set me back $375 at the time. I didnt blink because I thought the card was worth every penny. Just my trouble making 2 cents.

angyale@att.net

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Posted By: julie

are a tad darker than those across the tops of common cards...don't have a black light yet--I bought one and it arrived broken.

Gee, they're such great looking cards!