Or 1933 George C. Miller Andrews or 1933 Butter Cream Ruth or 1923 Maple Crispette Stengel or 1932 U.S. Caramel Lindstrom or 1948 Leaf Boxing Graziano, etc. etc.

The point is that the "manufactured scarcity" hand-wringing bandied about by so many vintage only collectors is a SIGNIFICANT part of hobby history, regardless of the contents of the final product.

The Brady I mentioned is at 190k with 7 days left. Am I the only one who had no idea this was such a valuable card?

Yes, rarely does a fraudster invent the wheel. You give great examples of times when a company may have manufactured scarcity on a particular card. This was often done so kids would have a tough time completing a set. But the problem is that the ENTIRE HOBBY now revolves around the manufactured rarity. The only real valuable cards are the ones that are intentionally rare. You cite the 32 caramel Lindstrom, but I would prefer the “base” Ruth.

I don't even disagree with your point about the modern hobby relying so heavily on manufactured scarcities as much as I disagree with what seems to be some posters looking down on what other people choose to collect.

I have written on here before that T206 Cobb cards or a 52T Mantle don't excite me at all because they can be purchased any day of the week on eBay, in various grades. But I understand why people choose to collect those cards. Some of the stuff that excites me might only be a $300 card, but only shows up once every 10 years or once in a lifetime. The Amelia Earhart card I use for my avatar right now was only a $300 card, but I love it because I have only ever seen one other Heinz Aviators Earhart at auction or for sale.

I love seeing some of the obscure cards Peter Spaeth posts on here that I have never seen before. I guess what I am really trying to say is that there is no wrong way to collect.

The whole point was vintage collectors, in this very thread, mocking the desirability of cards with manufactured scarcity. I was simply pointing out that the practice is not new, not uncommon but, hey, it was OK when it was done 80 years ago because reasons.

You aren’t wrong. Guys are vocal when it comes to bashing newer cards, but won’t bash other vintage collectors who collect stuff that they silently think is crap. Interesting phenomenon. Collect what you love. I think debate is fun though, and it drives this board.

I'm not sure the Brady you're referring to but yeah anything Brady from the year 2000, that's shiny is worth an a$$load of money.


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Idk. PMG green has turned out to be a Holy Grail set. It sometimes works that way in cards.

More crazy to me is $1000 for a Vlad Jr auto card . Could be in a semi star/common box like his dad in 5 yrs!!!


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I’d like to find that common box. Vlad sr didn’t have a major league rookie auto but his rookie Refractor rarely sells under $300.

Umm the modern bubble has popped more times than one can count. Honestly what the heck are you talking about?
On a side note, Let people collect or invest or whatever they want to call it, in what they want to buy. Worry about your collection and how you spend your money. For the record this price seems crazy to me but Jordan is popular world wide and there is a lot of foreign money (japan & China primarily)coming into the basketball card market. We can think it’s nits all we want but t looks to be a developing market wether we think it should be vintage only that goes for those types of prices or not.

Don't forget it's also altered.

Most of your post was spot on, but this one is not. To modern collectors, the Precious Metal Gems set definitely qualifies.

Previous sales:
Jordan Red /90 PSA AUTH: $21,500 sold by BBCE in 2016
Barkley Red /90 PSA 8: $3,250 sold by PWCC in 2018
Kobe Championship /50 PSA 7: $3400 by PWCC in 2017
Glenn Robinson Green /10 PSA 7: sold for $950 in 2017 and $1400 in 2018
Sean Elliott Green /10 PSA 8: sold for $1000 in 2017
Ron Mercer Green /10 PSA 7: sold for $600 twice
Kevin Willis Red /90 raw: sold for $200 on COMC
Grant Hill Red /90 raw: sold for $600 on COMC
Voshon Leonard Red /90 raw: sold for $120 on COMC
Antoine Walker Red /90 raw: sold for $210 on COMC
Jermaine O'Neal Red /90 raw: sold for $150 on COMC

As you can see, even the /90 red versions are highly sought after for common players. And the condition sensitivity isn't near as important due to the rarity. If you don't buy the card when it comes up for auction, no guarantee it comes around again.

It's the only altered one. Talk about rare!

Yeah, I may have spoken out of school on that particular line, since I don’t know modern cards. I appreciate the comment.

This was funny no matter what side of the aisle you are on.

I just read this entire thread. I don’t collect modern. I don’t even like modern-day baseball. I own two cards that are newer than 1921 (the infamous 33 Lajoie and a 35 Nagurski). I love old, I love rare, and I love it most if its 100+ years. I hate when I take my kids to shows and they want to spend $100 on some lottery box instead of buying a mid-grade Clemente or something similar (my kids are not into the 100+ year stuff). All that said, I am glad that New cards are popular and valuable. It’s good for all aspects/areas of the “hobby”/asset class.

So you modern guys, keep collecting, or playing the lottery, or whatever you do. You are good for us old-stick-in-the-mud vintage collectors. You are good for cards. You keep the hobby new and you help keep cards valuable. I don’t understand your taste, but I don’t need to understand. We are all on the same team, look at the same auctions, attend the same shows, search the Internet for like-minded friends on forums like these. Go Sports Cards!

Well said.

Indeed!

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https://www.buzzsprout.com/238508/96...5th-of-an-inch
People care so much about this card they just recorded a 2 hour, 40 minute podcast discussing it (and the rest of the set).

That wouldn't be quite as bad a sitting through Reds.

To each their own I say.

dont think I have the fortitude to listen to that!!!

It reminded me to go to COMC and check out the base cards for sale. I started looking for some GT players in the set and grabbed one of each. One of them had an error (originally all base cards were marked PMG next to the card number, then they put a black covering around the number to hide the printing error).
So I looked through the rest of the set, found about 5, bought them, and submitted to COMC that they should mark them as errors. Repriced them to attempt making a small profit.

say what????? COMC...GT...PMG...is this some other language?

Check Out My Cards
Georgia Tech

...I got 2/3

I think PMG refers to the insert - Precious Metal Gems

https://img.comc.com/i/Basketball/19...zoom&side=back
COMC: Check out my Cards website. 20 million cards for sale.
GT: Georgia Tech
PMG: Precious Metal Gems. What this thread is about.

2/3 have been in my signature here for years.

This sums up my feelings. When vintage cards were printed some hundred years ago, there was not one iota of thought by the manufacturer that one day these cards would be valuable. They were printed for one reason only: to help sell a product associated with it. It would take generations for collectors to discover that some were genuinely rare and worth a premium. It would take generations to determine that some were hard to find and in great demand, and that somebody would be willing to pay a lot of money to purchase them.

Modern cards are different. In the case of this Jordan, a bunch of guys in suits sat in a boardroom and came up with a strategy to manufacture a rarity that current collectors would pay a huge premium for. You can collect whatever you want and pay whatever you want, but a vintage card that became rare and expensive over time is a completely different animal than a modern card that was planned from the outset to be a chase card for collectors.

I don't acknowledge the latter, but apparently there are collectors who do. Chances are in the long run they will lose money on most of these manufactured rarities, but that is their choice and it is their money

well stated Barry!

+2

5 cents in 1933 is worth what today ? $1 or 95 cents ? $100 then is worth what?
$2667 or so ?

It may be a cult set, and that's cool for people who enjoy it, but to me it's just a base card painted green.

Modern, Vintage, Prewar and Pop Goes the Weasel

A modern card in an 8 or 9 holder is virtually the same as the same card in a 10 holder.

Similarly a prewar tobacco card in a 6 holder, is also quite similar to its higher graded brethren occupying 7 or 8 holders.

However Pop reports in all eras suggest that there is rarity at the extreme upper end of the grading scale regardless of the era or issue.

So what difference does it make anyway, suits in the Topps board room manufacture rarity, card doctors restore tobacco cards and by doing so "manufacture" rarity, or graders by their pyramid of grading "manufacture" rarity at the upper end of the scale. All are weasels.

Card grading enhances the ability of collectors to deal via the internet, but
card grading and Pop reports a secondary effect, to facilitate "cashing" in on that rarity whichever factor was involved in creating it. Different weasels to be sure, but the same results when viewed broadly.

Exponential cost differential relative to linear grading increments seems irrational.
Should a card absent one microscopic imperfection be worth 10, 20 or 30 times the card with that imperfection. Probably not, but it is. The necessary catalyst for this construct to flourish is the buyer's ego without which pricing would lose much of its ever increasing exponential steps and return to a more linear scale.

Nothing earth shattering hear but to try to explain the difference between a high grade tobacco card that spent 90 years in a book as a forgotten bookmark, a mint 52 Mantle rookie card of which a small finite number exist, and a Michael Jordan green metallic refractor numbered 1/2 seems like a fruitless exercise. All are rare. Their rarity was created by different circumstances, but each will attract a collector with a wallet compatible with his ego, for a place atop a Registry, bragging rights or perhaps only to profit from a resale knowing that with our current system there will always be a greater fool who will pay more for that special card than he did. Or will there?

Auction ended...again???

It's still open:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1997-Metal-...frcectupt=true

Sitting as a measly 121K. Mere bag of shells. Last time there was a $750,000 bid retraction, a $200,000 bid retraction, and a $176,000 bid retraction. From different bidders. And a $500,000 bid was cancelled from a seller with "0" feedback.

I don't know where you vintage guys get the idea this modern market for high end modern cards is anything less than being on the up and up. Perfectly normal bidding behavior. Nothing to see here. Move on.

LOL; because all the eBay bids on vintage items are authentic...

There are 2,484 watchers on this card.

Obviously plenty are just rubbing necking but that is a huge number and indicative of a very large number of people interested in this card.

The next closest card on EBAY using the search PSA is at 736 watchers and it is the Tim Duncan from this set.

To put this in better perspective the next highest is a Jordan PSA 10 rookie at 432.

If the buyer pays in the next few hours he gets $100 back in eBay bucks.

Auction ended with a high bid of $350,100.00. Quite amazing in my opinion.

That's a lot of beanie babies

And the Tim Duncan card from the same set went for almost 34k!

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can someone explain why this Jordan card is so popular?

Sold to Nat Turner, super high end collector.

Jdoggs, read the rest of this thread. It has already answered your question over and over again.

This is the beauty of capitalism. It spawns people successfull enough to drop 350k on a shiny Michael Jordan card from 1997 and not even flinch.

Awesome!

I looked him up, and found this:

https://www.psacard.com/articles/art...ard-collection

Of note:
“I just got PSA to add a set to the Registry and I am currently the only one working on the set because these cards are so rare. It is the 1997-98 Precious Metals Gems Green Basketball set. I have already completed the red set, of which 90 cards were produced of each player, and there are 123 cards in the set. There were only 10 serial-numbered examples of each green card produced, and I have 107 of them so far. I am missing 16 cards right now.”

He recently sold his company for 2.1 Billion dollars.

The Gem Mint grade was pure marketing genius.

One way to look at it. The other way of course is how ridiculous is it that folks in this country can't afford to go to the doctor or the dentist and this dude has 350K to drop on a shiny Michael Jordan card from 1997.

It is called capitalism. People who want to work hard can buy nice things for themselves. Those that are lazy will struggle to survive.

Yeah I guess that's it. Thanks for the education.

Are you not this same guy with less zeroes at the end?

Yes, I buy expensive cards. And I'm not knocking anyone who does. But if someone's going to say how great is capitalism that people can spend hundreds of thousands on a baseball card, I'll make the obviously point that if capitalism is so great why is it that some people (who work very hard) can't get by with the bare necessities. Read recently that over 50% of our fellow Americans can't come up with $900 for an emergency.

And that's my last comment on the subject before Leon gives me ring.