1939 Ted Williams Play Ball PSA 8 rookie Heritage auctions
 

The 1939 Ted Williams Play Ball PSA 8 rookie is at $21,510 currently in heritage auctions with a couple of days to go. I think this is the next card to explode upward in value as he is the greatest hitter of all time!

I agree that Ted could go up. That being said, that series lacked some aesthetic appeal that sometimes helps launch a card into the stratosphere. At least that's my opinion .


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agreed...I think Black and White issues are not as well liked.

I think Goudey Ruth's are starting to rise and will continue to do so. 54 Aarons in an 8 have been hot. Still probably a good buy. I could see the 48 leaf Robinson and Paige really take off next, but the Paige might be too rare to do so, same with the 25 Gehrig. The others are probably right about black and white cards not being as popular but I like my Williams and think it and the Gehrig are under valued and appreciated.

1939 Wiliams
 

It has already exploded. A friend sold a psa 9 privately for around 250k after the national last year.

Watch what the next strong 1952 Bowman Mickey Mantle goes for. It will widen eyes. Lots of auctions this season and barely any of those on the market. That's where my money is. His RC and almost all Topps issues are still exploding and always lead any market charge. The 1952 Bowman is on deck and has been kind of a sleeper because of how few ever hit market over grade 5 I would say.

Nolan Ryan RC in the PSA 8 grade. The gap to the PSA 9 grade price is so large and the 8s will narrow it.

PSA 9 Brett RC is also heading to 5k and up in a year. The 10 in Heritage is almost 40k and has really ugly look to it.

Goudey Ruth yellow. Any grade.

Ted is a legend but his RC is not as well known or liked as his many other issues. It will rise with all other key cards but if I can buy just one card I am buying the Mantle over the Williams in grade 6 and higher.

the Aaron 7s are also going up a ton ..in the 7000s now isnt uncommon for them

If the '52 Bowman Mickey takes off, then high grade Willies are soon to follow and maybe the old race issue for the valuation of Mantle cards over Mays cards is beginning, or already has begun, to change.

considering what the card is yes, it has room to move up in the mid grades. i think a little b&w in a colorful collection looks nice. Love the pose on the card as a young Ted. Love mine :D

Agree with you and I think the Ted Williams Play Ball rookie is undervalued.
Percentage wise the ted williams Play Ball rookie in PSA 8 could easily double or triple in value over the next year and match the 54 aaron PSA 8 in value or exceed it.

How do you spell manipulation? :eek:

The non sticker 86 Fleer Jordan went from 20k to 30k in less than a month it seems, and was in the 10-15k range not long ago, maybe 12-18 months.

The 55 Clemente went from 30 to 60 in less than a year in PSA 8 and was at 15 less than 2 years ago.

If it's the same group manipulating alot of the cards that have been run up it would be nice to know what's next.

What would be nicer is if it stopped. Price manipulation has massive repercussions to those who are not part of the group--which is 99.99999% of us. Everyone was up in arms over the isolated shill bidding at Mastro that they all claimed established new price points for those items shilled. This goes far beyond that.

🎼price line manipulators 🎼
 

But who are these baseball card price manipulators? And how is anybody sure they exist?cant it just be the card market rising?

I've heard the rumors but it seems difficult to prove or stop. Assuming that is what's going on is it illegal to bid your friend's card up only to have him do the same for you later? I know of there are laws against manipulation of stock prices but I don't think the SEC would have much interest in the price of Jordan RCs.

I don't have to look to guess that PWCC and Probstein are probably the named perpetrators.

To think there's some cabal out there manipulating all these key cards is really silly. Does it happen here and there, sure.

Guys want prices low when they buy, and then cry or cry foul when prices rise on things they want. Not so much when prices rise on a card they own. Pretty funny.

There is stiff competition for beautiful cards, plain and simple.

I hardly think the SEC is the only governmental body interested in fraud, if indeed that is what is happening here. There are at least two guys sitting in jail who could attest to that.

Not nearly as much as I hate knowing that.

definitely funny business going on there.

I read through the thread. It's pretty scary to think a couple of guys can impact the market that much in such a short period of time. If the ebay auctions are not being paid for I would hope something would be done about it. Wouldn't ebay look into a 30k unpaid auction?

Yes it is illegal to bid on your friends item in exchange for his bidding on yours. Bidding for any other purpose other than attempting to win the item, is shilling. Stopping it is an entirely other thing but with ebay being the middle man on much of this stuff, I would think the FBI would get more cooperation than they did with the Mastro case.

Just stiff competition for beautiful cards, no? ;)

And Trump and Clinton are going to join together on a unity ticket. :eek:

Im not familiar with the laws and am just asking. But what if they are bidding to win the cards and pay for them. If it was proven that the same guys were bidling on and paying for each other's cards a few times driving the market price up, has a crime been committed?

If it were only happening a few times with a few guys then it would likely not be noticed and it would not impact the market. That does not appear to be the case from my vantage point.

Thanks for the link Bob . Ok so the card shiller would have to be biding on every live auction and online auction. So if I listed a Jordan psa 10 on eBay right now the shiller bees will swarm all over it?

I was in a card shop about a year ago. And a guy walked in and asked the owner to bid on his cards for him. ( I was searching a dollar box and acted as if I was consumed by it) He said he didn't get the response he was hoping for. The owner said no problem when I get a chance. As the guy walked out he said " you know I'll look out for when you need it"

Here's a theory,
We know for a fact that there is new money in the hobby. As stated by others some wealthy new collectors have come to cards possibly for investments or partly collecting.
This fact may have triggered those who are manipulating/shilling prices to increase their gains by these artificial prices that only so few can afford to pay.
I know of one collector who is wealthy and is paying these high end record setting prices for these key cards that you guys speak of. He seems to feel that the trend will continue and prices will rise further so it is ok to pay these record $$$ amounts and hold till prices increase further.
As they say if there is blood in the water sharks will come :D
Again, just a theory and i may be way off.
I know collecting for me has become more difficult as i refuse to pay these record setting prices which are now even affecting even low to mid grade level cards.
Guess just seat back and watch till the dust settles. Only question is how dusty is the situation and how long till it settles.
Enjoy collecting

I might be alone, but $30,000. for a single 1986 Fleer basketball card is not right.

The price paid is for the flip not the card. Want proof? Crack out the card and see what it sells for. Or resubmit it 100 times and see how many times it gets a 10 again.

Wow thanks for the heads up on the Jordan stickers and rookie actually.
Back in 1993 my buddies and I were in Vegas and we played pack poker at $25 a pack for 1986 Fleer. I won 2 packs and pulled a Jordan rookie and sticker. 2 other Jordan rookies were pulled and kept. The rest of the cards and stickers weren't wanted so I took them all. All together I have 4 stickers.
Jordan rookie is a PSA 7 and the 2 stickers I graded are an 8 and a 9.
I hadn't looked at prices in years. Wow. Paid for my Vegas trip and then some.

and you can say that about any card graded 10 !

where

How about the 8 at over 100k on Heritage?

And a day to go. 121 8s FWIW.

Ted Williams play ball rookie PSA 8 currently at $26,290 in heritage auctions!

good luck with that as a real sale..so many 6s and 7s in POP

So many, but how many centered? The sophist looks solely at POP reports.

Pop Report has very little relevance right now. Got to get with the times.

I wouldn't be surprised if it is a real sale. Centering on this card is very hard to find. The 7 on pwcc went for 25k and the one at Heritage is at almost 22k. The 8 I mentioned earlier is over 130k. Crazy stuff going on right now.

.

There are indeed some very real, deep-pocketed buyers in the marketplace right now.

The existence of "real" buyers is not inconsistent with an effort to push market prices. PS There have always been deep-pocketed buyers in the marketplace.

....that are spending money.

Agreed. But again, that is not inconsistent with an effort to establish higher prices, if in fact that is happening which I have reason to believe.

So there's a group of deep-pocketed buyers who are spending large sums of money on key rookie cards, pushing prices higher, in order to establish higher prices? That's circular reasoning.

It's not circular at all. Higher prices greatly increase the worth of an existing portfolio of cards.

And if I had to guess, I would guess some of these sales involve people buying back their own cards, so they are only paying the fees.

Ok Peter.

Michael there is nobody I respect more in the hobby than you and I mean that seriously. I would defer to you virtually 100 percent of the time. I am pretty confident in this assessment though as I am basing it on direct reliable information not speculation. If I'm wrong, so be it, it won't be the last time.

But even without the direct information, it defies reason that the breathtaking rise in certain prices is just the result of some new buyers. We are talking prices that double in a month, quadruple in a year in some cases. And we are not talking about rare cards, we are talking about cards that are almost commodities. Anyhow, off my soapbox.

There is no doubt a little bit of everything goes on....investing, collecting, hoarding you name it. I think a lot, if not most of it, is speculation and investing. Many of the high grade cards being bought are being bought solely for their flips.
Its obvious when you see high grade cards (flips) that sell for crazy amounts, which don't come close to lesser graded ones that look better, but still sell for much more due to the number on the paper. Where did aesthetics go in collecting cards? As for the '39 Playball of Williams...I think he tags onto some of the rookie HOF hysteria.

Honestly doesn't seem that complicated to me. Stock market has had a very nice run for 8 years, which is a very long bull market, and it totally on fumes about to plotz. High end real estate in the big cities has gone parabolic because of foreign money and priced out even a lot of well heeled speculators. Hedge fundies and others have scooped up tons of depressed Florida, Las Vegas, etc. real estate and gotten all the juice out of that lemon. The places to make a quick buck are drying up in front of our eyes. (Forget about interest in banks. We may be paying them soon to hold our money.)

Then one day you settle down in front of your computer and read a Marketwatch.com article about some dude flipping a Mantle card and making 100K is how many months. Or one of the recently discovered troves. And the light bulb goes off. "Holy sht. . . . I can make real money in rare baseball cards. . . . how much fun will that be."

Maybe baseball cards are the new gold. No matter how crappy the economy gets there will only be so many 52 Mantle cards and another Billy Crystal around the corner who wants one.

My experience the last few major auctions, including HA last night, was depressing to say the least. If there are bargains out there beats me.

A Koufax 55 Topps rookie card is a $75,000 card PSA 8.5 but a stunning PSA 9 the following year is a $5,000 card? Utterly bizarre logic to me. As other have mentioned, there cards are not that rare population wise. Not sure how these stay parabolic.

If you stay away from or already own the high powered rookies, and don't need perfect centering on your star cards, I think there are still lots of very good cards to be had at prices that aren't that much different than they have been over recent years. And as has been mentioned elsewhere some great E cards even of the elite HOFers are way down.

Hi
 

Hey you basically read my story lol!

I came into the hobby with after hearing about the 1952 Mantle ROI.

I was a collector as a kid and very passionate about sports cards.

That passion was sparked again after doing a ton of research.

Honestly, collecting cards make me happier than anything else
I do in my life.. besides my family.

I live in Miami and I had a good run at the real estate but
that bubble is about to blow up.

Stocks will be up and down especially with the election happening...

Also real estate, stocks and many other forms of investing
really stress me out.

I came into the hobby around a year ago...

Have I made the best investments with ALL of my cards? NO

Early on I was excited and I bought over priced cards because
to me that amount of money didn't seem like a lot...

Once I started to learn and connected with more collectors
in the hobby I soon was able to narrow in on how I wanted
my collection to be.

I like to collect vintage RC HOF at the highest grade possible.

Now that is my goal...

and so yes I have to compete with whatever shilling is going
on as I am a legit investor/collector.

It use to be easy for me to win cards at auction as I would
just outbid everyone.

But now I am losing auctions left and right because
the prices are going so high.

I do see some concern here.

I did get the Topps 53 mantle last night on HA
and the Wilt SGC Mint 9.. Both I thought were very
nice cards and worth what I spent.

At first I was just going to hold on to all my cards
for years and years.

But now seeing what is happening with a massive spike
in the value of some key cards.

I can't help but look now to flip some or at least that be an option
since now maybe the collecting bubble might burst sooner than later..

and if it does who knows how long if I don't flip some
I will have to wait before the market recovers.

Again I'm new to the hobby but this is my 2 cents.

I just wanted to post because I wanted everyone to know
there are true legit investors like myself in the hobby as suggested.

That came in for the exact reason mentioned above.

Which in my opinion is the natural way a market should grow.

With that big money also comes big ego and so that means
most likely some shilling is happening which is sad.

So like any commodities market this will be one wild wave!

best of luck to you all!

Congrats on the wilt and 53 mantle!
Ted Williams play ball PSA 8 rookie sold for about $29k in heritage auctions!

That Wilt should cross over to PSA 9 I bet... One
of the nicer Wilts Ive seen.. And the Mantle centering
was good enough for me to pull the trigger! Thanks!

Congrats on the 1953 Topps Mantle last night. Serious card.

Centered nice copies of that Mantle rarely surface.

I agree! Thank you :)