True, and I'll go you one more - how about a card from a best or key year in a player's career? To me this often a more important tie-in to baseball history than something just being a player's first card.

For example, I love the '61 Clemente, which I'm guessing for some is not the most popular choice. I like how it looks, but it's also from the first season he won a batting title - and actually, his first Gold Glove.

And I reserve the right to sneer and heap scorn upon them at every opportunity.

;)

Yes, & this was great.

You seem to see more of the "Why Mantle?" still being played out over in other forums like Blowout, where the vintage audience is ostensibly younger and still learning.

I think the '52 Topps does have a lot to do with it. Much like Burdick and other super early collectors anointed the T206 Wagner, probably in the 1930's - the same kind of run up was done for the #311 in the late 70's and early 80's by people like Alan Rosen.

The other thing with Mantle plus all the contributing factors just seems to be really good timing. He was at the perfect intersection of time and sport (MLB in NY in the 50's) - and then also at the perfect intersection of time and hobby when cards went from an underground nerdy thing in the 70's to a big business retail thing by the mid-80's. Those retail dealers saw to it that he became the hobby torchbearer for their generation pretty early, and never looked back.

I don't understand that mentality at all. If you're comfortable doing it your way why do you care if others do it a different way?

That's a point my card collecting buddy from the early 1960's raised some 35-40 years ago. My reply at the time was that since a player's rookie card was his oldest card, it also tended to be his scarcest. That's how I think this whole rookie card thing started anyway but these days it's just silly.

To me the aesthetics of a sports card is a combination of three things:

1. The player's pose. Head shots I hate.
2. The design of that year's cards. For example, I much prefer the 1959, 1960 and 1963 Topps Baseball cards to the 1961 Topps Baseball cards.
3. The team for which the athlete played although that's not as strong a factor as the first two.

:)

It's not just NY -- it's the YANKEES. Plus, as we've discussed many times, the switch hitter thing, the tape measure HRs, the playing through pain, the aw shucks folk hero personality, etc.

Agreed.

Adam's blog post mentions Mays being at best indifferent and at worst rude at least during his later show circuit years, and that seems to hold up for me. Mantle is an interesting case - as he was often less than sober at such events, and has if perhaps less - at least a few similar horror stories.

But Mantle for the most part was perceived as a happy drunk, and the media and popular culture bore out that image for him during the 1980's.

We curmudgeons look at the world "our" way. But keep in mind that I also acknowledge other people's right to snarl right back at me. I'm not one of those "Kumbaya" people. I'm quite comfortable in an environment where everybody is sneering at each other.

;)

Yep. I go back and forth on head shots. Certainly when more action oriented stuff came about in the early 70's, that was a departure and I'm sure was preferable to many. I do like if posed, at least more of a profile or bat included shot - the '58 Clemente is a good example of this.

But I don't hate head shots / Topps profiles. In some cases it was cool to get a glimpse of the player close up. The '58 Ted Williams is one I just love because of that; he looks pissed at the world. It's like "wow, this is what Ted really must be like."

As a kid, with no knowledge of hobby history or set rarity or anything, I gravitated towards the idea that the older the card was, the better. Thus by this logic, a 1952 Topps Duke Snider was worth much more than a 1956 Topps Duke Snider - even if I really liked 56's and would have maybe objectively come to the conclusion on my own that it was the better card. I don't think that way anymore, lol.

Welcome to a forum that's custom designed to your own specific needs and personality.

I agree. Both timing and promotion were key elements in Mickey Mantle cards becoming "the" grail.

:(

Glad to be here then!

;)

I agree with Eddie Collins...

Bobby Richardson is probably a favorite of many because he played on some great Yankee teams, and he did win five Gold Glove awards. And I think he is the only player to win a World Series MVP while playing on a losing team (1960).

But he is not in the Hall of Fame and his offensive numbers are not good: .266/.299/.335 for old school slash numbers and .634 OPS, 77 OPS+ new school.

The other choices seems like good ways to get a HOFer from a set without paying too much (although I feel like Banks is more expensive). There are several players from different eras where you can get a HOF type card without it being too costly: Wallace, Sewell, Bancroft, Averill, Haines, Ferrell, Slaughter, etc., etc.

I don't know if that means they are undervalued...but if you want a HOFer, they will cost less than many others.

Sometimes sneering and scorning seems quite fashionable on here, but no one can top the Judge Landis look of bitter disgust seen in this great photo of him.


Brian (everyone enjoy both investing and collecting...by investing time in your collections!)

I imagine Judge Landis, Queen Victoria and Hetty Green all scowling in unison over high tea, loudly complaining how everything is wrong with everything.

It reminds me of the joke about a waiter in the Catskills serving a table of, with no offense, old Jewish ladies. He asks, was anything OK?

I always wonder if Landis was just perpetually pissed at having literally been named after a land mass / battleground.

Carew, Spahn and F Robinson.

I recall reading that his father so named him because he had been wounded in that battle. Better than Sue. Did he go by Ken?

Negro leaguers
 

I still think that most negro leaguers are cheap when you consider the market caps.... I mean think about it... if all 40 Oscar Charleston cards were 100k (which they are not), the total value of all of his (playing career) cards would be $4 million... it is a long, long list of players who are "worth more"...

I included Richardson in my list despite that detail.

;)

Rod Carew is definitely underappreciated! He had a lifetime batting average of .328 with seven batting titles, plus 112 lifetime triples and 353 stolen bases.

:cool:

Eddie Yost, Bucky Walters, Johnny Bassler, and Bobby Grich are undervalued in my opinion, to name just a few.

Also, why are we talking about Bobby Richardson in a thread about undervalued players? Ron Hansen was better than Richardson. Bobby Knoop was better than Richardson. Jim Landis was better than Richardson. Mark Belanger was way better than Richardson

If anything, Richardson is overvalued because he's a Yankee whose stats are superficially impressive because post-Stengel Yankee managers batted him leadoff for some inexplicable reason. Richardson received MVP votes six different years, including a second place finish in 1962, as a mediocre player. He was a very good fielder, but so were the others I've mentioned, and they were much better hitters than him.

On the pitching tip, I'll throw Lefty Grove's name out there. He's one of the more anonymous 300 game winners despite winning an MVP, two Triple Crowns and leading the league in ERA and ERA+ 9 times in his career.

He's hurt by having fewer cards than most but even the cards considered to be his rookies (DeLong, Goudey, Diamond Stars) are typically affordable in even mid-grade.

Bill James rated Grove the third best pitcher behind Johnson and (yep) Paige. His US Caramel is before the cards you mentioned if you buy the 1932 date, but even then he has other cards dating back to 1921 IIRC. All that said, he doesn't get much love. Maybe because his raw numbers like ERA were high due to the nature of the game at that point.

I forgot about the caramel. I thought the only card from 1921 featured him as a minor leaguer. His first professional season was 1925.

Right the Tip Top is Baltimore, but he has lots of post 1925 and pre 1932 issues, even if not mainstream. Exhibits (tempted many times to buy one myself lol), playng cards, Star Player Candy, Kashin, Novelty Leader, many more.

I'm first and foremost a Yankee hater when it comes to baseball myself. The reason though that I mentioned Bobby Richardson is that I just looked through the list of Gold Glove winners and I saw Bobby Richardson's name five times from 1961 to 1965. And haven't we all been told since we were kids that fielding is half the game?

:confused:

Bobby Richardson CAREER WAR -- 8.0.
Next undervalued player please?

Another pitcher I've always been fascinated by is Dazzy Vance. He had such a strange career. Made his debut at 24 and went 0-4. Three years later he pitched in two games and then doesn't appear in the majors again until he's 31 years old, promptly winning seven strikeout titles in a row and a Triple Crown and MVP. He also won three ERA titles, all over the age 33.

Pretty incredible career.

Am I remembering correctly that Grove was really not terribly loved by the fans? I definitely remember that was the case among his colleagues. You have to wonder if that widespread unlikability factor plays a part in today's value/demand, silently carrying part of the blame for lack of value/interest in spite of nobody being alive to recall his unlikeable traits.

The same can definitely be said/asked in regards to Hornsby, although there are certainly a few very old-timers kicking around who played under him. I used to know some of his teammates and others who played under him. Absolutely none of them had a single kind word.

An interesting fact about Grove, though:

I sent out thousands of questionnaires as a kid, always seeking out the oldest surviving players first. The vast majority of these guys played from the 1900's-40's. The first question was, "Who was your favorite player while growing up?". There were the piles of obvious "Babe Ruth" and "Ty Cobb" (more so from the oldest crowd), but it was actually surprising to me how many men who grew up to be pitchers listed Grove as their favorite! Some were really informed, listing him as "Robert Moses Grove", so you know their fandom was true and remained into their golden years. Geographically, these players weren't only isloated to areas close to where Grove pitched, either. Just something I found interesting.

Arky Vaughan is one of my top 2 underrated players of all time. The other is Johnny Mize .312/.397/.562 OPS+ 158 and his numbers (and counting stats) would have been higher if he hadn't missed 3 prime years to WWII. His first full season back was his famous 51 HR / 42 strikeouts season. And Stan Musial cards are ridiculously undervalued for a top 10 all time player.

Mize's numbers were really crushed by losing those three prime years. Even so, it's criminal that he didn't make the HOF until 1981. Hard to figure why looking at the record.

Someone who is well under the radar given his stats is Billy Williams. Playing mostly in a pitchers era, he had 2700 hits, 426 homers, and a .290 batting average.

Not that I'm much interested in defending a New York Yankee, but I see now that not only was Bobby Richardson the MVP of the 1960 World Series (Yay Pirates!) but was a seven-time All-Star.

Moreover I can't find that WAR stat on the back of any of my Baseball cards which indicates it's some newfangled thing that wasn't around in his day. Do you really believe that some such newly hatched player valuation technique incorporating multiple subjective factors is a better gauge of Bobby Richardson as a player than the awards he was given during his actual career?

:confused:

Yes. Absolutely. Anyhow, he wasn't that good by many other more modern metrics too.

If he played in Kansas City or Baltimore you wouldn't have even heard of him.

Slightly above average player overall. Certainly not undervalued.

I wish he had. That way I could like him almost as much as Nellie Fox, Luis Aparicio and Brooks Robinson.

;)

Ha.

Nellie Fox 49.4 WAR (compared to 8.0).
Aparicio 55.9
Brooks 78.5

Even the much maligned Mazeroski at least hit 36.5.

BTW on Baseball Reference's ranking of second basemen, Richardson is .... 229.

Okay but you'll need something more credible than this WAR thingie to get me to accept this or that player ranking.

Hey c'mon Pete, no need to be so snarky with a newcomer! He is right though that there are a ton of threads on this.

I'm from Cincy and admittedly a homer, but really a lot of the Reds are undervalued. The fact that you can pick up a mid-grade raw Joe Morgan rookie for less than a blaster is a headscratcher to me. Frank Robinson has finally seen a little pickup with his key cards since COVID is great, but a lot of his other cards are still undervalued (e.g. that 61 you have).

The discrepancy between the Nolan Ryan and Johnny Bench rookies in the 68 set is shocking. Probably one of the greatest, albeit most overrated, pitchers of all time seems to go for 5x+ what the almost unanimously best catcher (I would actually throw Campanella and Berra in that conversation) is night and day from how breakers and wax-fiends price new product.

Perez, while not held in the same regards as the other "Franchise 4" has two very important SPs that imo are crazy cheap, his 65 RC and the 67 (which is one of the best looking cards of the 60's).

Davey Concepcion, while not a HOFer, was a very important piece of the BRM, a 9x AS, and was up to a few years ago, when he started doing a decent amount of private signings, a pretty tough signature. Yet his cards/autos are fairly cheap.

The only overvalued cards I see are with Pete Rose autos over the last few weeks since his death. The dude could probably add "most autographs ever signed" to his bio along with most AB's and Hits, yet his vintage auto cards spiked in value way more than Mays and Aaron, really wild imo. With that in mind both Mays and Aaron are undervalued outside of their rookies, and arguably those cards are undervalued too.

Some other undervalued ones... 49 Bowman Roy Campanella, 55 Killebrew, 52 Topps Doby (and really all of his cards besides the 49 Bowman), 60 Yaz rookie, and the 54 Topps Kaline and Banks.

The Old Fox
 

"Most undervalued? Edgar Charles "Sam" Rice, of course!!"

I agree Rice is undervalued after a great career, the start of which was delayed by personal tragedy and the end of which eschewed three thousand hits, which wasn't then viewed as important.

But I'd like to get an oar in the water regarding his manager/owner Clark Griffith:

Griff's SABR biography sums it up: Few individuals in the history of baseball can boast of a career to rival that of Clark Griffith’s. In terms of duration, as a player, manager, and executive, it was one of the longest ever, spanning nearly 70 years. Griffith is the only man in major league history to serve as player, manager, and owner for at least 20 years each. From his earliest days as a pitcher for money in Hoopeston, Illinois, to his last breath, the Old Fox, as he became fondly known, dedicated his life to baseball. A fiery competitor, he was outspoken, innovative, crafty and resourceful. He played with and against some of the pioneers of the game, was a star during its rowdiest era, managed for two decades, and was the face of baseball in the nation’s capital for over 40 years. Along the way he won 237 games as a major league pitcher, helped to establish the American League, brought Washington its only World Series title, and could name eight U.S. presidents among his many friends.

It wasn't intended as snarky, was trying to be helpful as there are numerous threads which have many people's thoughts on this very question.

Banks
 

Not so sure about Banks - Kaline compares favorably to him but most of his cards are considerably cheaper

Historically, Cubs fans have always shown more love with their wallets than Tigers fans, so that could have a bit to do with it.

To use the words "Baseball cards" and undervalued" together is an oxymoron anyway. I mean who would have anticipated that these cheap pieces of cardboard inserted as a premium to sell cigars and cigarettes, bread, bubble gum, breakfast cereal, etc. would some day fetch not just pouches but bags of silver (and even gold!) coins? Who would have predicted that such widespread daftness would take hold among baby boomers?

So let's turn the question around. Limiting ourselves to post-WWII cards since just about all of these are still in plentiful supply, which players are the most grotesquely overpriced? Should any names be added to those of Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron? Sandy Koufax maybe?

:confused:

Clemente. :eek: At least in terms of his numbers. Bill James, as of 20 years ago, ranked him only 70th or so, whereas everyone else has him significantly higher. We have had this discussion before and I suppose we may have it again. Only 240 HR, and he wasn't much of a HR hitter on the road either, so I think Forbes Field only gets one so far in downplaying his lack of HR power. Yes, incredible arm, but James makes a cogent argument that that whole thing is not as important overall as some make it out to be. There was a very interesting (and of course contentious) discussion about Clemente and Kaline being roughly equal not that long ago here.

That's true; Kaline is even cheaper. My point was that if someone wants a 1959 Topps Ernie Banks in nice shape, most of the time it's not going to break the bank. He doesn't have the pull of Aaron, Clemente, Mays or Koufax in that set.

I guess to me -- what started this thread -- is Mantle rules that top spot. But, like anything, he's worth whatever someone is willing to pay ... and apparently, that's a lot.

For F's sake!! Maybe some people have changed their mind on someone etc. So this adds another thread, who cares. But to reply "If you can figure out the search function", makes you sound like some kind of butt hurt Karen. Don't open the thread and don't read it.