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How was that a fake sale?

It's a 2.5, and in a Beckett slab, with 25 minutes left, and slightly over $9,000.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/292031533167...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

It's hard to tell, with 100% certainty, due to the many conditions of this card we see, if they are truly coming down, or down much at all, imo. (Of course I am not talking about summer prices)

I think this 2.5 was an outlier because of the creasing in the middle of it. It was a bit of a generous 2.5, imo.,
Mine sold 3-4 weeks ago for almost double that but it was in a PSA holder too. Beckett hasn't done a good job on marketing their vintage grading. It's too bad as they have at least one of the best graders in the hobby.

'but it was in a PSA holder' thats key information, plus yours was centered great and you got 19k

Look at this sharpe, well-centered beauty. Went for a song on PWCC today. This is an example of a card that was manipulated and has come back down to earth.

Yeah, put that one in the file misnamed "I don't know why anyone would consign with any company other than PWCC . . .they always get the best prices."

I think other sellers do OK as well. While I have used PWCC in the past, they are basically doing the exact same thing that I can do. Scan a card, write a description and throw it up on Ebay. My consignments with them haven't noticed any astronomical pricing jumps that others have experienced. So I'll just keep doing it myself, until there comes a time that I can get charged a lower commission than doing it myself (and the way Ebay is going, that will probably be in the not too distant future).

Seems to me that its much more difficulty to manipulate the prices of pre-war cards (especially very old one like T206 or Allen/Ginters) than post-war, based purely on scarcity; I am not talking bid shilling, that can happen on any auction.

According to the PSA registry, there are 188 (with half grades and qualifiers) PSA 8, 1955 Clementes. Contrast that to the T206 Red Cobb, which has only 24 examples at an 8. There are over 8 times as many Clemente 8's than Red Cobb 8's. It follows that there is less opportunity and motivation to manipulate the Red Cobb than the Clemente, bc there are fewer examples use for manipulation and fewer examples to sell and reap a windfall from.

I am not saying the value of old cards cannot be manipulated. But it seems to me their scarcity alone creates one safe guard against manipulation and may explain why these older cards seem to be retaining their value when all the stud 1950's rookies have come down so much in price.

Wouldn't it be much easier? You have a T206 red Cobb and you manipulate the market and then profit. With a 1955 Clemente your plan might be ruined if other cards are sold during your manipulation or if other cards come out for sale the same time. The older cards are just fewer in quantity so they might not have them in hand to profit from manipulation.

That's exactly my point! There 188 PSA 8 Clementes, making it much more likely that one person (or a group of people) has a bunch of 8's to profit from once a single 9 (or a few 8's) go for crazy prices. Inversely, with only 24 Red Cobb 8's out there, the odds are much less than someone has enough 8's or 7's, etc. to make it worth the while to attempt to manipulate. Plus, the sale of a single high-grade Cobb at normal prices during this process can much more easily derail a manipulation, than a series of repeated, rapid sales of a 1950 HOFer all at huge prices thus establishing an apparent value. I am not saying it cant be done (and isn't done) with the older/scarcer cards, I am just saying it seems much harder and much less opportunistic than a 1950's card, which has so many more high grade examples.

And Clemente vs Red Cobb is a gratuitous example in that Clemente is a relatively tough/rarer card as far as 19050's rookies go and the Red Cobb is likely the most commonly graded T206. Juxtapose this against other 19050's rookies that are believed to be manipulated -- over 320 PSA 8 Koufax, almost 500 PSA 8 Roses, and over 1000 PSA 8 Nolan Ryan RCs -- against a more rare T206 like the Green Cobb with only 10 PSA 8's, or Cy Young Portrait with only 14 PSA 8's (and very few 9's, if any, of either).

Perhaps its all in which cards you are watching.

3 cards I watched recently thru PWCC are as follows:

1970 Ryan PSA 8 - PWCC just ended at $483. The last 3 non-PWCC's went for $307., $315., and $320. respectively.

1966 Aaron PSA 8 - PWCC just ended at $798. The last 3 non-PWCC's went for $483., $499., and $499. respectively.

1962 Mays PSA 7 - PWCC just ended at $ 814. The last 2 non-PWCC's went for $350., and $305. respectively.

Most of the time, not always, PWCC gets higher prices. (for what I watch and am interested in). If I were to sell similar stuff, I would think sending to PWCC for sale would be a smart move.

providing they got to those levels honestly I would agree. I consigned 4 items with PWCC this past summer, assuming they would get blockbuster prices. Needless to say I did not shill, or pump the bids in any way. All four items did OK (right about what I could've gotten) but sold for significantly less than the identical items went for in both the auctions before and after the one mine were in. Coincidence?

Touche.....don't feel bad though. Honesty IS the best policy. It may not help your pocketbook, but....err......you know what I mean!!

i would never assume blockbuster prices....expectations way too high. Would depend on the cards you consigned...very few cards are 'identical' plus centering can be even a 50% bump in price depending so who knows. Not saying there was not shilling involved in other actions but could be legit reasons as well

Little over two weeks ago PSA 8 Clemente sold for $28K. Not even a year ago it sold for $150k. Almost two years ago, sold for.....$28K. Call if whatever you want, but manipulators need fools with money. And fools with money are begging to be shilled because they don't snipe. And AH's need the fools with money to believe that their anti-sniping software with endless bidding is unrelated to the massive shilling and non-payments. Gotta love this hobby.

Just got my plane tickets to the national with my son. It will be a blast.

Would love to know who paid 150k for that Clemente last year.

I really doubt money changed hands on that one. I guess can see when that Cert number shows up again..or maybe its in a PSA 9 holder and that guy got the last laugh..

I doubt it too, but then again I know of a lot of purchases that really happened that I have to shake my head at. People who fell for the manipulation, didn't listen, and panicked, apparently.

That card was off centered and wouldn't grade 8 today. Clemente RC is very hard to find to find centered, so you can't compare 8oc or off centered 8s to those that are well centered, which have brought as much as 45k this year. There is little doubt that the 150k or others that sold high last year never were paid for.

A PSA 2 t206 Wagner sold for 777k last year and 600k this year. Are prices on Wagners crashing or was the first in better condition that the second? All cards that receive the same grade aren't equal and no one should be surprised that when you find the worst one for the grade, that it is going to be the lowest sale.

i do agree that centering/condition of card matters more than the 'grade' Some PSA 8s are basically PSA 7.5 for the Clemente RC

Anyone that would pay that much for a card in the 50's is beyond me.

I don't have money like that to light on fire. Any idea how many of these are in the attic of a perfectly healthy 65 year old's house?

The guy that could care less if it is graded or tracked as part of a population of cards? Tens of thousands, and probably a few thousand with a condition 8.

I hope people are not planning on retiring on what they have in them, or anything else in that era. I am not sitting here thinking, "Damn, I have to have a Clemente rookie, because I have every other more important card in the hobby."

Not all of the Clemente 8s that sold for over 100K got paid for last year at the height of the market but some did and most that sold for 50K, 60K, 80K etc did get paid for as prices were being manipulated. This is true for many....,maybe most, of the rookie cards that had big run ups last year. What is true is that prices have come down and there are still many who are in complete denial about what took place last year.

So, I've got a noob question for you guys that follow the 50s RCs: Is now a good time to buy a Clemente or Aaron rookie in lower grade, or should I wait a little longer? I haven't been following the market at all lately because I wasn't going to pay the prices they were going for during the run up.

If anyone sees and t205's or babe ruth cards that have dropped in price please let me know... :D

Im not sure about any other cards buy just collecting those 2 types, i havnt seen a drop but a continued move up in price.

it's always a good time to buy low grade 50's hof'er rookie cards!

For whatever reason the high end game of RC''s, and their steep rise in value over the last few years, hasn't dribbled down to adding as much value to the lower end of the spectrum, so it seems to me.

I'm waiting for the next recession to buy high end cards. Patience is a Vertue, but it's super difficult when you love cards lol

9s and 10s have always had their own pricing structure and never really impacted the 1 to 8 pricing, in general. These always seemed to be two separate markets from my vantage point. It was not until the artificial market from last year that the 1 to 8 grades moved up in value together with the higher grades, which have now adjusted.

The lower grades are more plentiful so I could see how pricing would not hold on those cards as you go down in grade.