I have not, but you are right that all this proves or shows is that you cannot extrapolate from one sale in this market. I still believe my original premise it true — while there are still people pushing prices on some cards to higher levels, I think there are fewer of them competing. Less demand. So depending on timing of similar sales and other events you can see pretty dramatic fluctuations even in pre war.

And as Howard pointed out, those fluctuations are prob more dramatic on the memorabilia side. That has certainly been my experience. Memorabilia prices all over the map.

Two bell-weather t206s: Demmitt and O'Hara Stl Louis. 2 very nice examples (psa2 and psa 1.5) ended sunday night on ebay for 12.8k and 7.3k. both records i believe. t206 hotter than ever in my experience.

I can’t speak to the Lundgren but I bet the person who overbid on the Cy Young had decided a week ago that they would go after that card due to the high eye appeal. I bet they had a target bid in mind that they thought would surely win. I’d also bet that after spending 5.5 hours in bumper to bumper traffic and then soothing that frustration with some strong IPA’s and then seeing their high bid not hold up they frantically hit the next bid increment with 1 second left because they wanted something to go right yesterday. Just a guess though.

That Cy Young was bought for the aesthetics, not the number. Same way a lot of us collect or buy. I always buy the card and not the slab. It's better in the long run.
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It 100% was. Thats why I put in that last frantic bid. It's an upgrade to my current Cy Young of the same grade.

You beat me to it Jim. I couldn't believe those prices, yet was shocked to see a very nice Green Cobb 2 go for only $7,600 with no bids at all in the last few minutes. T206 PSA 5's are still going very strong too.

When I bought mine it wasn't because it's a 2.5, that's for sure. It's getting to be very cliché but more people are buying the card, it seems, nowadays.
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Little confused
 

Hi Phil,

I never worked on a signed set? Am I missing something in my post?

I don't think market is going at all, to me it seems there are so many quality items all flooding the auctions so people are waiting for the item they really want then are ponying up for it. Where as before not as many options gave people the fomo to hurry and bid since it might be a while before hits market again. The past 6 months the amount of rare items and cards up for auction has to be at a high, and for those not rare say the 33 ruth something in grades 2-5 seems to be going higher every auction. Just my opinion but probably way off

Items might be flooding the market, but in our space especially, the cards all have unique attributes so they aren't common even when there are hundreds or thousands of examples. The Goudey Ruth 144 is actually quite common. Show me one for sale that has 50/50 centering though. Those are a needle in a haystack.

Great stuff is appreciating and the mid to lower stuff is staying the same or having a slight reduction, imo...
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the end is near...?
 

As far as photographs go, the market is a mile wide and two inches deep.
There are guys who will spend more for a photo than Babe Ruth got from the Red Sox. It's just that they are pretty discriminating and there aren't many of them.

And taste, which changes over time. In our prior century, when Martha Stewart ruled, you couldn't afford brown furniture or Depression glass. Now you can't give it away. Younger people don't associate with furnishing a house that looks like something their grandmother would have owned.

Question is: Will this happen to cards; will someone be left holding the bag.
lumberjack

This is the key. I don't think most collectors quite realize the extent to which this is true. I went through every single 1952 Topps Jackie Robinson card, one-by-one on VCP, and tallied up the number of cards that were dead 50/50 centered and the number that were fairly close, but just slightly off (say 48/52 one way and 50/50 the other). There were ~1,000 sales to comb through (note, I only looked at non-creased cards, mostly VG/VG-EX or better). Out of those ~1,000, there were 9 (yes NINE) dead-centered copies and only 22 that were close. Obviously, the Jackies don't have the exact same pop report as the Mantle, but it should be a directionally accurate approximation for it since the two cards were next to each other on the sheets, both being double printed.

As you said. Finding a 52T Mantle is easy. Finding a centered one? Good luck with that.

As far as the differences in hammer price between the SGC 5 Mantle that recently sold on REA for $306k and the one that sold on Goldin the other night for $146k, I think it's actually pretty straight-forward.

The $306k example looks like a true 5 condition-wise. It is in EX condition. And, most importantly, it is dead-centered left to right with no tilt. For centering-obsessed OCDers like me, that L/R centering is often far more important than top/bottom centering. Buyers will pay a significant premium for the centering on this Mantle.

Contrast that with the $146k Mantle, and you can clearly see an evil tilt to the image, most noticeable on the left edge. Image tilt is the spawn of Satan to centering OCD collectors. It's not enough for the image to be in or near the middle of the card. The lines need to be parallel and border widths equal. Sure, the one on the right I would still expect to outsell a comparably conditioned card with a more significant shift in centering, but this isn't a card that eye-appeal guys are going to be jumping up and down for, whereas the one on the left most definitely is.

However, there's one more factor that surely played into the hammer price here. That SGC "5" on the right from Goldin is NOT an EX card. Those bottom two corners would NEVER grade at a 5 today. Not from PSA or SGC. This card was graded back in 2014, when standards were quite a bit looser (whereas the one on the left was graded in 2019). High-end vintage buyers are getting smarter. They know the one on the left is EX and the one on the right is a VG-EX card wearing an SGC 5 tuxedo. They're bidding accordingly. It's the other side of the same coin for why I keep having to "overpay" when I find cards that are under-graded.

Here they are side-by-side. You can decide for yourselves whether or not the differences are worth an extra $160k, but the centering difference is worth a lot, and the fact that one is EX while the other is VG-EX is probably worth a lot more, in my opinion.

Also, the one on the left is a Type 1 Mantle, and the one on the right is the Type 2 (and supposedly less desireable). Though I think this matters less than people argue.

Wow those bottom corners on the card on the right (the one sold by Goldin) are BAD. Goes to show that just because you put it in a new slab does not mean people are going to pay (much) more money for it. You can't polish a turd.

Damn, that really shows you just how much grading has changed since 2014. Great side-by-side comparison.

Nice…lol

Yes, Greg Morris confirmed...

Thanks for reaching out to Greg Morris to confirm. Pretty sure the "set break" loophole is gone across the board.

Ya, they have moved the goalposts on us by quite a bit. It's a shame. The crazy thing is that there are even some graders at PSA today that would put that Mantle on the right in a PSA 3 holder (though I doubt they'd be the ones who actually get to grade it, surely that would be Reza). But they are definitely there, and I've gotten some cards recently that are nicer than this Mantle in PSA 3 holders (all of which I cracked out and got grade bumps from).

I'm not sure though which standard I prefer. I suppose it's somewhat arbitrary, but the lack of consistency is a major problem. Maybe the card on the right *should* be the 5 and the one on the left *should* be a 6? I don't know, but with today's standards, the one on the left is a 5 and the one on the right is a low-end 4 at best.

Yeah, goalposts keep moving. I agree that you could make the case the one on the left (sold by REA) should be a 6, even by today's standards. Would love to see any pics you have of cards you have cracked out of PSA slabs and gotten a bump from a different TPG. I think that could be its own thread.

I'm not convinced that it was the words "set break" in the title which caused it in the first place, though it's certainly possible. I think it's plausible that cards which are sold as "variations" within a listing, like when a seller creates a "set break" listing where you select cards from a drop-down menu, could have been immune from this feature as that would require eBay to come up with a way to determine how to handle different prices for different cards within the same listing (easier said than done, programmatically - insert eBay's dev team criticisms here). Or perhaps it could have been both. I don't know. But I do know that implementing a solution on eBay's end is surely more complicated than just making an exception for listings with the term "set break" in the title.

I don't know if anyone on this board ever provided any proof that having "set break" in your title was a way around the Authenticity Guarantee. I kind of assumed that people on this board may have attributed the fact the Greg Morris didn't have to get his cards authenticated to his using “set-break” in their titles. But I had assumed that Greg Morris' outstanding reputation may have allowed them to get a pass for a while. Either way, I don't think there is any way around the authenticity guarantee any more (which I am ok with). But please someone prove me wrong.

I can vouch that it was, but have not thought to keep documentary evidence and dated screen caps to prove it. A hobby pal was using the 'set break' trick to not have to do the authenticity guarantee on a few cards he sold, and it definitely worked then, a couple months ago.

My understanding was that Greg Morris and 1 or 2 other big movers had a separate deal with eBay to not do it for awhile; and that Morris uses 'set break' in all his listings is not related and long pre-dated this issue.

Presumably eBay has just improved their logic to break this workaround trick, as usually happens when users find a way around an undesired new 'feature'.

Yes, Greg Morris has been using "set-break" in titles long before the loophole.

I believe you that the "set break" in the title loophole was real though. I just hadn't seen any proof. I am also a little confused as to why someone would want to use the loophole, unless they are selling inauthentic cards. I mean, does the seller care that much that their card has to go somewhere to get authenticated? Sorry, there may already be a thread explaining why the seller cares that I missed....

I probably won't post them, unfortunately. The current landscape of social media and hobby heroes aiming to crucify people for the crime of "cracking a card out of it's holder" as if that were some sort of deceitful tactic or some such nonsense is just something I don't care to deal with. I could write a book on it though lol. Sometimes it's the same TPG in fact. I just depends on the card and what's "wrong" with it that determines who I decide to send it to (well, that and the cost). One thing I can tell you with 100% certainty though is that PSA is NOT using their Genamint "AI" tech to determine whether or not a card has been previously graded and to reassign that same grade when it shows up again. Or at least their computer vision algorithms are failing to detect them if so, because I've cracked out numerous under-graded cards and sent them in for grade bumps. Even cards that I submitted myself and resubmitted one month later using the same account. They are not consistent at all. I used to be able to predict my grades with a high degree of accuracy with each TPD, rarely being even 1 grade off. That's still true for me with SGC, but with PSA, I get cards back that are off by 2 full grades with at least some degree of regularity. In both directions even, though more often they are undergraded than they are overgraded (per their own standards that is).

I imagine it varies, of course. My friend was worried about 1) an item getting rejected because the graders don't know what to do with odd and esoteric stuff (cabinet cards, CDV's, rare items that aren't 'catalogued') that he sometimes sells, 2) buyers whining about shipping speeds with an extra few days delay and hurting his star ratings and 3), the clause that the item must not only be real but "as described"; though he described honestly what he might call "G-VG condition" CSG might call G, and thus could reject and nix a deal both parties wanted to complete. I think there was also a "this is stupid, so I want to opt out because it's dumb" element.

1) has been a concern for me as a buyer too, personally. Doesn't matter for T206's, Goudey and Topps, but if one is buying obscurities in non-Baseball sports that the grading firms don't know much or at all, it might be a problem. I have not heard of 3) being a real problem, but of course we didn't know that clause would have little to no enforcement back then.

That's interesting that their Genamint "AI" doesn't seem to work at detecting if a card has been previously graded. I thought that Kevin Lenane, PSA's current President founded/developed Genamint, and its "success" was one reason why he was elevated to President. Perhaps Genamint is being used in other ways besides determining if cards had been graded previously?

There was so much buzz around AI being used for grading for a while. And now again with the Brian Lee/ Derek Jeter sports card grading venture that is supposed to utilize blockchain/AI it is back in the news.

Has any company actually successfully utilized AI for grading yet?

I personally would not have a big problem with it if it could lead to more consistent grading.

I just confirmed that I had 3 sales which had the term "Set Break" in the title that all were shipped directly to the buyers and not the 3rd party authenticators. They were individual listings that all should have qualified for the authenticity program, I believe. One was an auction for a raw card that sold in August for about $450, one was raw that sold via 'Make Offer' for about $425, and the other was a graded card that sold in July via a private PM offer for about $1100. All three appear to have usurped the AG program.

I've had two cards "unable to be authenticated " but they were still sent to the buyer. Ebay sent a note "hopefully the buyer is still happy". For the buyers, they never returned the cards. I think I had an error in the category

If both were raw, side by side, I'd seriously consider the one on the right. Yes, the corners have more wear, but the light surface wear on the left one is more distracting to me than the right's bad corners.

Especially if you said the one on the right is 1/2 the price.

I could easily see the next nice centered sharp looking SGC 5 311 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle to sell for over $306,000 in the next major auction.

Type I or Type II

For now, the words set break in the title with no other characters will bypass the AG program for ungraded listings...maybe graded too. The example that you showed has parentheses which acts like the hyphen that Greg Morris now uses.

Why eBay has this loophole is beyond me. If they simply assigned the AG program to default to all listings in the item category for single trading cards cards, it would apply regardless of what the seller puts in the title.

I'm a data scientist and I write very similar AI code for work, although my work was more geared toward detecting anomalies in images due to things like cancer or genetic abnormalities in imaging scans. However, at the core, it's a very similar problem to detecting flaws in card scans. Somewhere around here, I made a (very lengthy) post or three about the challenges that any TPG would face when trying to use"AI" to grade cards. Cliff notes are that while I believe some tasks can be automated, ultimately I believe it is a fool's errand to attempt to truly automate grading through AI.

...found it. Here's a link to the first of 3 posts where I explain some of the intricacies of AI/machine learning and how those can present challenges for grading cards:

https://net54baseball.com/showpost.p...5&postcount=17

Not sure if Kevin was made President of PSA due to the alleged success of Genamint but both he and Nat did multiple interviews to let everyone know that initially it would be used to maintain grade integrity which is Nat's pet peeve. Not altered cards but that if the card was once graded a 5 that each time it is sent back in it would be a 5 every time. He cautioned the public to challenge his grading team.

I guess you are right, and the loophole lives on.
A simple search of ebay listings with "set break" in it sorted by highest price shows there are still many listings that are bypassing the authenticity guarantee. And yes, apparently "set-break" with a hyphen or (set break) with parenthesis does not succeed in avoiding authenticity guarantee.

Crazy.

I listened to those interviews, and while I wouldn't endorse your interpreation of what they said, I do agree with the overall sentiment. That said, I would love if sending a card to PSA multiple times resulted in it coming back in the same grade every time. But it has to be because the graders are better calibrated and more consistent, not because they don't want to admit the fact that they are human and therefore make mistakes. Nat seems to prefer the dictatorship approach by declaring/pretending that all PSA grades are accurate, and to question their authority by cracking a card out and resubmitting it is somehow tantamount to fraud or some such nonsense. This is, of course, absolutely ridiculous. The problem is that they are REMARKABLY inconsistent. Not that submitters are evil. If they undergrade my cards, I'm cracking them out. I pay for their opinion because the market dictates that I should. However, if I get a garbage opinion, I have zero obligation to keep my card in that holder. It's also why most of my cards go to SGC these days.

I'll post one card for the sake of this conversation. I sent this Gretzky RC to PSA about 2 months ago. It came back under-graded in a PSA 3.5 holder. There are no creases or wrinkles on the card or any other hidden flaws. It belongs in a 4.5 holder (and could even land itself in a 5 holder every now and then - note, BVG gave it a 5). Had this been graded back in 2014, it most certainly would have gotten a PSA 5. Anyhow, I decided to crack it out and resubmit it a couple of weeks ago. It came back in a 4 holder this time.

If PSA wants to make some improvements, maybe they should focus on grading cards right the first time instead of trying to find ways to punish collectors by trapping EX cards in VG holders due to what can only be explained by sheer hubris. In any other industry, a company providing a similar service would apologize for making a mistake the first time and give you a refund for the grading fees. PSA prefers the middle finger approach.

As you can see by the first few digits in the serial numbers, this card was very recently graded both times. Obviously, the bump from 3.5 to 4 isn't very significant, but the point is that this is proof that at least as of last week, and with this card, they either failed to detect that it was resubmitted or ignored that fact as they did not automatically assign it the same grade.

You should listen again. I would link it if I recalled which interview I was thinking of but it was pretty soon after the acquisition of Genamint. Nat made it very clear that he wanted to maintain grade integrity. He may have even called it grade integrity. He then went on to explain that if we break out a card and resubmit it the software is designed to identify the prior submission history and the card is going right back into the same holder.

Anyway, your earlier discussion on explaining AI limitations in grading were fascinating and very informative. I appreciated the time you took to explain it to us all.

As far as their use of Genamint, it has been mentioned to me that they are not even using the technology but not sure how the person who told me would have any knowledge of that but I know we all know someone who knows someone.

Ya, I recall him saying that as well, but I also seem to recall him saying something along the lines of that just being his personal preference but that for reasons outside of his control, it can't really be that way. And that others he respected felt differently.

Also, this simply wouldn't even be possible with ultra-modern cards unless they were serial numbered or had an auto on them.

No way to invisibly mark a card that would be identifiable later?

Peter I brought this up a few years earlier. I think this is what's done on PSA/DNA Authenticated items. I think it's called an invisible daub. IDK

Is there a way to do this? Of course there is. Imagine the uproar from vintage card collectors, though.

"...so, you're certifying my card as authentic and unaltered. Then, you go and alter it with your supposedly invisible..."

Sure, they could mark the cards. But I'd bet it would be the end of PSA as the market leader if that was the hill they chose to die on. They would be receiving zero of my cards, that's for sure.

I always enjoy reading your opinions :)

I agree with you that the REA Mantle is better than the Goldin Mantle. I just don't think it is double the price better. Maybe the one 5 is a reach at a 5, but the other higher grade 5, while nice, is still a 5.

Leland's sale prices on their auction ending tonight seemed to be down (at least on the lots I was watching).

15 CJ Jackson PSA 2 for under $30k
51B Mantle Rookie PSA 4 for $15k (recent comps between $18-23k)

Also...this boggled my mind:

86F Jordan Rookie PSA 10 $191k
86F Jordan Rookie SGC 10 $74k

$117k more for the same card/same grade with the PSA holder? Ouch.

In my opinion the Psa 2 1915 CJ Jax and Psa 4 1951 Bowman Mantle examples aren’t a reflection of much due to both having serious condition issues. I think their ending price was accurate.

The 15 CJ Jax was terribly faded due to God knows what with quite a bit of paper loss on the reverse and the 51 Mick had horrid centering with terrible registration.

The cards sold for what they are!

The final price discrepancy on the two Jordan rookies is absolutely ridiculous though! Just silly!

The 86 Fleer Jordan has been dropping pretty steadily in recent months. Leland's is the last place I would sell one. The basketball collectors just don't check Lelands like the vintage baseball guys do. It probably cost the seller 20k or more for that PSA 10 having it there. I bet it does $210-220 if it were on PWCC premier. Also, the basketball market HATES SGC slabs for some reason. They get no love at all. Much wider gaps than in other sports.

That Mantle RC price doesn't strike me as an outlier at all. It was about the worst-looking PSA 4 I've ever seen. I think it oversold its eye appeal, personally. It's so far OC that they'd have to mark it as a miscut if it were any further off. And the registration is difficult to look at without going cross-eyed. I feel like I need a pair of those red/blue 3D glasses to view it properly.

The Cracker Jack Joe Jackson is a bit surprising though. The 1915s don't get enough love, but still. $30k? Feels low to me, although I'm not well tuned in on CJ prices.

I am very well tuned in to CJ pricing and as I said this example wasn't going to meet or exceed any records due its condition and isn't a reflection of the current market for Cracker Jack blue chips such as Cobb and Jackson.

Not only did it have extensive back damage, but the front color is way off due to either being soaked incorrectly or color fade from excessive exposure to light. Color should be dark bold red. Its even more noticeable on the left and right sides as its almost pink in color.

Go look at other examples and compare the color and then you decide. That is what held this back from selling for more. Actually, $30K for this example is pretty hefty in my opinion and I'm also quite surprised it made its way into a 2 holder.

https://photos.imageevent.com/threet...landsfront.jpg https://photos.imageevent.com/threet...elandsback.jpg

Agreed with Tony, I'm actually surprised that washed out Jackson reached 30k.

If we get any Down Turn on these they should be bought And put away. When you’re talking about nicer grades centered examples are Ruth Cobb Jackson Mantle and Mays. The 50s and back to me to buy.

Prices on the Jackson and the Mantle reflect the quality to the cards, not the market. Most of the vintage I looked at had solid numbers. Market is still healthy enough.

The disparity in the Jordan prices is also expected.

Extremely healthy I agree. I think next year it’s only going higher. REA will probably have record numbers in their fall auction that starts in November bank on that.

REA had pretty solid numbers on stuff from tonight's auction. Maybe not on weaker examples of cards but on decent looking examples, prices were very respectable.

Someone asked for more than anecdotes. I can offer these year-over-year median price data for "true" T206 commons (not "premium" commons which are in shorter supply) sold in the last three months or so:

PSA 2: $82 v. $75 (+9.3%)
PSA 3: $125 v. $100 (+25.0%)
PSA 4: $190 v. $143 (+32.9%)
PSA 5: $280 v. $221 (+26.7%)
PSA 6: $510 v. $450 (+13.3%)
PSA 7: $2100 v. $1980 (+6.1%)

N for this data collection effort is around 1000.

T206 prices seem to be tracking right now about the same as they were three months ago -- maybe a slight increase -- after rising substantially earlier in the year. The midgrade market (PSA 3 - PSA 5) seems to be the strongest. This was not true last year when lower grades fared better on a percentage basis.

Scott, do you have similar data for SGC of the same type of commons group? Wondering if SGC tracks similar to psa in t206 especially. thanks!

Hi Jim,

I do not track SGC, mainly because the sample size is much smaller. I did a sampling several years ago and T206 SGC pricing tracked at about 75% of T206 PSA pricing overall.
Scot

Edited to add:

My T206 price check app is free! It doesn't catch all of the nuances of T206 front/back combos but is reasonably good. Did I mention it is free?

http://www.t206insider.com/store/c1/...r#price-check/

Will the hobby still be ominous this year? Not so sure now. Some prices up, but others down. I do think some collectors are more picky about picking up cards.

Scot, a 2022 update! Your Price Check is incredibly helpful as a tool for my collection value and insight into purchases. Thanks for this as I know you've been busy with relocating. All the best in your new home. Hope you now have the time to get back to collecting.

Thanks Bob. Enjoy! As a side note, I updated the grade multiplier for PSA 6.5 to PSA 10 again yesterday as I made a math (calculator) error in my original 2022 update (Doh!).

Prices have come down. Maybe only for lower grade, mid tier HOFers. I picked up a nice tinker 1.5 for $180 off a bid from hours earlier. That’s never happened- usually I have to stay up all night to win. A pair of SGC Jennings went for 120. Lajoie 1.5 polar bear 525. These are significantly down from just 2 months ago. These are cards I’ve followed closely for a long time and know the prices.

It’s good for me . Now I can buy the rest of the HOFers I need very easily