Is this really a buyer’s market?
 

If you are one of those who watch YouTube content regularly, you have surely heard just about every channel lately touting what a great time it is to buy sports cards with prices being so far below levels of a year or two ago. Well, today I did some exploring on eBay, searching for the GOAT vintage basketball cards that have come down the most over the past couple of years. As a buyer looking for good deals on ‘61 Fleer Wilts, Oscars, Jerrys and ‘69 Kareems, I came up empty handed. Beginning with the lowest PSA priced of each one of those cards, all I found was every single card with roughly 90/10 centering one way or the other or both with basically zero exhibiting what I would describe as superior eye appeal for the grade. I went up to around PSA 5 levels for each without being able to find a single example that I would be looking to jump on if I had the excess funds to make a purchase right now. As just a small sampling, I didn’t do any football, hockey or baseball but would expect to find similar results.

So, my conclusion is that no sellers or extremely few sellers are willing to part with their high eye appeal cards in this market and if they could possibly just hold on to all of them without selling, they absolutely will do that. Thus, where does that leave the astute buyer looking to take advantage of the down market as everyone is promoting? Take what you can get? This doesn’t seem like an ideal buying strategy to me.

I have a long post about why I am waiting a while to purchase a card. But I will tell you that looking on eBay is about the worst thing to do if you want to buy a card. It is mostly all just show and tell now.

I think the biggest flaw in your strategy is probably your venue. Expecting to get screaming deals on eBay (particularly for BIN stuff or high starting bids) is a bit optimistic, aside from an occasional lucky strike.

I suspect if you look to the average auction house, particularly for mid grade stuff that is readily available, you’ll find some prices that are more enticing. Some stuff will still go nuts. But your odds of success should be a bit better, particularly if you’re willing to be disciplined and bow out when you hit your limit for any given piece.

Buy-it-nows for cards like those are rarely priced attractively or in line with recent auction results from what I observe. Have to go the auction route to find the right deal a lot of times...both on and off ebay. I follow the Wilt and Kareem RCs a bit and definitely see some softening, but gotta hunt them down and battle it out in the auction space.

Ebay sellers may be slow to react to market. Auction results show the market in real time. The cards you mentioned are definitely selling for less now.

All true. However, when prices were following Superman (up, up and away) there were all kinds of high eye appeal cards in every grade on eBay, sellers couldn’t make them available fast enough for the “going rate” and capitalize on the 100%, 500%, 1,000% increase over a couple of years earlier. I should know, it seems that I bought most of them, at least as many as I could afford. :)

Market is just fine

I'd like to see the people who are always opining on where the market is and where it's going actually keep track of their predictions and do it over a period of a few years so we can see just how right or wrong they were.

Sounds like we have a volunteer to keep score!

100% agree.

When a card is listed in an auction, the owner has already decided he is selling the card and will let the market determine the card's value. Once the card is consigned to the auction house, it will be sold and the owner has lost control over its ultimate disposition. Ebay is a store, where the proprietors are setting their prices and determining when and on what terms they will sell. Thus, many people listing cards listed on Ebay are not "sellers" unless they get what they want.

Maybe cards are selling for solid prices at auction houses, but at least the market is determining the value on items that will be sold once at least one bid is placed.

Is it easier to buy a card on eBay or via AH?

I nominate parkplace (Drew), he seems endlessly fascinated with the market and prices. :)

I'm slightly paranoid that this is a joke, and you're not really asking. But at the risk of looking like a tool for stating a lot of obvious stuff, the answer probably depends on what you mean by "easy".

Also probably depends on how you weigh various elements.

eBay is often pretty quick. For BIN stuff, you can buy it on the spot, and often it gets shipped within a few days. If it's going through the authentication guarantee, then that can add a week (give or take) to your turnaround. Most eBay auctions last for 7-10 days, so it tends to be pretty quick. Also don't have to worry about a buyer's premium. The closing process for eBay auctions is also pretty easy - when the time comes, whoever has the highest bid wins. No extended bidding. At the same time, if you're dealing with a seller who's not well known, then there's always the possibility that they might play their own games, which is no fun. eBay also has the advantage that there's really no registration requirement. Anyone can sign up and bid. While there are some drawbacks there, for a buyer it makes the process a little easier. eBay also tends to have pretty small bid increments, which is nice.

eBay also tends to have pretty simple saved search features that make it easy to check if anything new has come online since the last time you checked. Although certainly some will tell you that those searches aren't perfect.

For most AHs, the process can take longer. Most sizeable auctions last for a few weeks (except for the smaller weeklies). Usually they have a registration requirement, which can take a few days or longer. They will want references, and some may even require that you submit documentation about your ability to pay. Some have an exciting closing process that can drag on for a while as long as people keep bidding, which can often last well into the night, particularly if you're on the east coast. Some AHs limit the forms of payment, as many don't accept credit cards, so that can add another layer of fun. And if you're paying by personal check, then it will add to the turnaround time to get your item. Most auction houses also have exciting minimum bid increments that can get pretty wide as an item rises in price, which not everyone loves, as you might be forced to increase your bid by $1k, when you really only wanted to go up by $500.

Most AHs also don't have a real easy way to save searches. So you're usually left to do manual online searches. And even then, sometimes exciting stuff doesn't get picked up and so I often find myself working through the entire online catalog just to be safe.

Ultimately, I buy from anywhere that will sell me stuff, and that has the stuff that I want, which is becoming harder to find these days. So personally, I'd focus less on ease of use, and focus more on finding the stuff that you want at a price that works for you. The rest is just details and process.

I am not looking to buy anything now. My point is that it’s a lot more of a hassle to buy specific cards from AH’s than eBay. When prices were sky high, you could find everything that you wanted on eBay so no need to go the AH route. Now that prices are way down, it’s a major struggle to find anything appealing on eBay and requires more resorting to the AH’s. That is my point.

A lot more hassle seems like an overstatement to me. I do think if you've never registered, then it can seem like a hassle. But my experience is that it's not that difficult.

Maybe I've just grown accustomed to buying from AHs, so it doesn't seem like a hassle to me. The various elements that seem more painful than just going to eBay aren't really that bad. And if it keeps someone from bidding against me, then I'm all for it. Stay away from the AHs and don't give me any competition for my stuff!

I’m not sure it’s the state of the market that has sapped eBay of quality items. There was a large consignment shop on eBay trading a huge amount of cards. They created their own marketplace and took the inventory off eBay.

I do agree there is less pre-war material on eBay now. Again I don’t know that it’s the market but I was used to seeing stuff like Cobb T206s up for auction pretty regularly. They seem to trickle out now. Most of the good stuff is locked away in BIN purgatory.

Yes but a lot of those consignments moved to Probstein. Not sure how much to attribute to PWCC .

How many items have you been watching that flew under the radar? My guess is probably less than 1%. Great many eyeballs watching every venue. Still a sellers market. You think the Baltimore ruth would come out in a down market? This marlet is akin to ipos during the tech run up. People buying anything and everything on hype, or fomo prices will increase.

A lot of AH’s have adopted the weekly auction too. That must be eating into what might have been eBay inventory in the past.

Good point regarding the weekly/monthly auctions at AH’s these days.

The hassle with the auction houses, I’m looking for a 1961 Fleer Oscar Robertson for under $1K, the best eye appeal example that I can find. First, I have to go to my AH list and search REA, then search Heritage, then Memory Lane, etc. endlessly. I would expect that very few would have one of these in their auction. If they do, every auction ends on different weeks/months, etc. With ebay, I can jump on there and buy one BIN in five minutes. So, the AH hassle seems real to me. Believe me, I did the stay up all night thing to bid on AH items countless times over the years until a massive heart attack eventually. While I certainly do not blame that as the main reason why this happened to me, I’m sure all of the sleepless nights certainly weren’t a plus for my long-term health.

Peter, true. I enjoy bringing up interesting topics on this board (as shown by the replies to my posts :))

:)

Seems to me the same people are gloom and doom "the bottom is going to fall out tomorrow" are that way regardless of what's actually happening, and the same people who are "marketing is going to the moon, up up and away" are that way regardless of the facts. Maybe just how people are. Find the facts that support the ideas you already had. Sort of like . . . well a subject we are not supported to talk about here.

eBay's fee structure and payment service have taken the cost of sale on that platform closer to an AH every year. If you fall under the dreaded "below average" designation, the financial penalty actually makes it more expensive to sell on eBay than to consign to most AHs. eBay has lost five figures of my sales since April as a result. And there is the hassle of fulfillment, the occasional lost item, the thieving SOBs who infect eBay, etc.

Some people have gone over to whatnot, which has a BIN function now and charges substantially less than eBay does.

Others can handle the wild west of selling on facebook or through other social media platforms.

But I digress...

It is a buyer's market if you are peddling mainstream stuff in mainstream condition. Otherwise, not so much. It cycles, like everything else. When things are hopping and sales are strong, I try to squirrel away a few bucks for the downturns to see if I can snap up some bargains.

I think the cards you were looking for are an exception though. I consider myself an expert on 61 Fleer basketball. It's probably the set I know more about than any other set in any sport. It's a very special set. I am also a centering obsessed collector with clinically diagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder. I'd wager good money that there isn't a single person on the planet who is more anal about their 61 Fleer set than I am. I upgrade every card in the set to a better-centered copy every chance I get. Pics of my set are below because YAY PICS!

Here are some fun facts:

1) I have never in my life encountered a truly 50/50 centered 1961 Fleer Jerry West RC. It just so happens to align on the sheet at the intersection of the most commonly miscut row and the 2nd most commonly miscut column. I have searched for years for one of these. I saw two that were close. I lost out on one and the other was overgraded and way overpriced (5x "comps"). Mine is centered L/R but off T/B.

2) A centered Wilt RC pops up maybe once every year or two. They're also super rare. A centered Elgin Baylor RC usually gets rejected by PSA. And I've only seen maybe 3 centered Oscar Robertson RCs ever. Mind you, I've searched this set weekly for years.

3) The entire set is hands down the most wildly miscut set that I'm aware of (perhaps there is some random obscure issue set that could be worse, but I doubt it). Finding any card in this set that is truly centered is like finding a needle in a haystack. Even in high grade. Nearly every 8, 9, and 10 I've seen is still too OC for me.

4) PSA graders have no clue how to grade these cards. They are CONSTANTLY rejected as "minsize" due to ignorance on PSA's part. The factory cuts on these are often narrow, and the factory heights vary by more than 3/4"!! Especially card numbers 1-6, which make up the rightmost column of the uncut sheet. Every single copy of cards 1-6 (which includes 4 HOF RCs: Elgin Baylor RC, Attles RC, Bellamy RC, and Arizin RC) measures narrow. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Every copy that has ever been slabbed by PSA, and every copy they reject. That's just how the sheets were cut. Cards from the rightmost column are narrower than every other card in the set. Getting one through grading at PSA is simply a matter of luck. Did the grader measure it that day or not? I have a centered Arizin that PSA refuses to grade despite the fact that it was in a PSA 7 holder when I bought it (it deserves an 8.5).

Cliff notes: I wouldn't use 1961 Fleer basketball as a proxy for the rest of the market. It has its own set of rules.


These are the cards in my set (a few have been upgraded since the pics were taken).

...

It's probably also worth pointing out that the only cards I've seen sliding in price are cards with lower eye appeal. Dead-centered high-eye appeal cards that are difficult to find are still setting records nearly every time they hit an auction block.

As another recent example, I just won this 1963 Topps Mantle at auction on Sunday night. I had to pay $1600 to get it. "Comps" for a PSA 5 are ~$550. Set a new all-time high for the grade. You just can't find cards like this very often. There are plenty of 8s and 9s that surface, but almost none of them look as good as this one. Collectors who care about what their cards know this, and they are still willing to bid whatever it takes to get their cards.

.

It is no hassle. I bet once you start buying from Auction houses your interest in eBay will go down. But the best part is you can do both! LOTG and REA start soon. Try signing up for both. Familiarize yourself with the terms and conditions - emphasis on bidding increments and closing procedures - and bid on what interests you. If you have any questions, PM me or just ask. There is a whole world outside of eBay and BST

I just read your post that you are familiar with AHs and they gave you a heart attack. Stick with EBay!!!’

This is a great point. I don’t sell on eBay (when I sell, it’s private or I consign to an auction house), but my understanding is that eBay has made it very difficult and expensive for sellers, such that for an extra few percentage points it’s just easier to send to an AH and know you will get paid, not disputed, nor have to worry about mail, etc. So I bet eBay has lost sellers to the weekly and other auctions

The majority of my purchases are now auction houses followed by net54 member trades/bst, and occasionally EBay which has become a wasteland.

I never get tired of searching multiple auction houses for cards, even if I can't afford the big boys there's always something in my price range, and it's just plain fun looking at all the eye candy.

Me too Phil. It’s fun to browse.

eBay is still great for post-war vintage. I find cards I love there every week. But I also buy from all the major AHs.

That’s an awesome basketball set, Travis!

Rest assured that I am not looking for anything close to the centered cards that you have. Just hoping to be able to see at least a smidge of white borders on all four sides of the card, that shouldn’t be too much to ask for, should it? Check eBay though…..

If the ‘61 Fleer basketball cards are an anomaly, try to find a PSA 10 Fleer Jordan on eBay (spoiler alert, there aren’t any). There were plenty to be had in March of 2021 though.

Certainly Not a supply issue

Those are phenominal. I am a centering nut too. I probably paid 1.5x - 2x comps for this Musial...and I love it. It's now in a CSG 1.5 holder, which I feel is the correct grade for it.

And of course I agree with the thought that great visual-appeal cards continue to do very well!

maybe not 50/50 but damn close

https://thecollectorconnection.com/i...89_1_43380.jpg

Buyers market
 

As an eBay seller, I haven't noticed any decrease in sales in the last year. Sales have been pretty steady. I am not a big dealer, but I average between 60 to 80 sales per week. Almost all are vintage cards. I only sell buy-it-now and 60% of my sales are repeat buyers. I actually love the eBay platform. It is a safe and easy place to buy and sell cards.

This is a really spectacular West RC. It might be the best one I've seen.

In my experience with this set, I suspect the only thing that probably held it back from an even higher grade is probably the tone of the white background. Some cards in this set get a more beige-ish look to them (which my West also has). It happens when they get soaked (warning, this set does not soak well!). It can also happen if they've been stored in a humid climate for a long time. Mine was the result of soaking it because I wanted to flatten it out. It's not a big difference, but it's noticeable when two cards are side-by-side.

I love cards like this. Low grade, nice centering. I did the exact same thing you did when I acquired my Musial. Bought one that has great eye appeal and a low technical grade due to a small pinhole on the top border. I think I paid about 1.75x comps or so. It was in an SGC 1.5 holder when I bought it.

..

I would like to inquire about more information if you have the time to PM me any info on this misunderstood disease...

Sure, feel free to PM me. Happy to share my experiences with it. It manifests itself in all sorts of different ways in different people though.

A funny example for me is that when I was a teenager, I couldn't go to sleep without getting out of bed, walking over to the light switch, and flipping the lights on and off 3 times. Every night. For years. lol

One of the reasons dealers will mark up a card's price and hold steady because they did all that work for you.

Travis - Hell of a 1961 Fleer set !!! Rakosi would be proud of you. :D

Some of the search engines on AH have me spending less time hunting around in their offerings and simply doing exact searches for highly desired stuff then exiting.

They're slow, they spit out way too many results, the searches actively choke on results because they're trying to return results in real-time as I'm typing letter-by-letter, the search results seem to be optimized for phones rather than computers creating too many pages of returns...etc.

Compound that with the sheer amount of weekly/monthly auctions and the my interest drops even more...

Ebay and especially BIN's on nice vintage is usually a museum on a good day, and it's even worse now with the lag of the down market. I would agree that nicely centered cards at all grade levels continue to command a respectable premium. It's kind of like the economy as a whole lately - we've had some ups and downs but still haven't technically hit a recession. The market has softened in that lower grade raw or uglier for the grade graded might be reaching bargain status - but the really nice stuff continues to stay strong.

I'm lucky in that mild to moderate OC has never really bothered me, and I can pickup some deals because of that. (75/25 one way is fine, 90/10 probably not).

Down market from 2020, yes - but it would be almost impossible for it not to be. The fact that it's technically "down" doesn't suggest to me that it's in anyway unhealthy yet.

Super nice Mantle, congrats. I have an SGC 5 that on paper would be comparable to that, but of course it's OC top to bottom. It also probably cost about 30% of what you paid...;)

Not to derail this thread, but the OCD thing is very interesting to me. While I do consider myself to be OCD it's not about centering but rather image quality, registration in particular. The Musial is a great example and is a particular favorite of mine (I have both variations) - but both the beautifully centered cards shown here would absolutely drive me crazy. Here is one of mine:

I haven’t noticed a dip in my pre- or post-war vintage (pre-1980) sales over the past few years honestly. In fact those sales have increased (but i have been listing more often but the sell through rate is pretty much identical). I do not sell my higher end stuff via eBay though and I only really do BIN there. My target price range for ebay has always been $10-200 as that what moves.

Conversely, Ultra Modern has been significantly hurt.

Is this really a buyer’s market?
 

Bravo, you beat me to this exact post. I'd much rather have an OC card with close to perfect print, color, and image quality than I would have a 50/50 dead nuts centered card with those problems. To me the image is the most important thing about a card, and the fact that it's not even expressly cared for in a universal grading system that only looks at corners, surface, edges and centering is increasingly ludicrous in a hobby that is supposed to be about visual appeal.



Beautiful Musial, btw. Some of my wins in the same vein which got me gorgeous print and picture despite other flaws include a '57 Mays, a '63 Mantle, a less than fantastically centered '73 Schmidt RC (I traded a better centered one with print snow for it...) - and this '59 Mantle which sorry, the grade on the flip might not be noteworthy - but I would challenge you to find even some PSA 7's or 8's with print as clean as this one has. Even high grade copies often have something with print going on in the red background, or print messed up in some way in the stands behind his head. Extremely pleased w/ this one...

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...a238c29dbf.jpg

John, I agree 100%. Image quality -color, registration, lack of print defects - above all else. My Willie Mays rookie may be off-center, but it is extremely hard to find a copy with printing this clean:

I know that vintage prices have faltered some at the big AHs lately, but I don't get these arguments of ebay being so stagnant now. Have been looking to fill a few holes in the vintage collection for awhile (stuff like a Bart Starr rookie around grade 4, low-mid grade Maravich rookie, basically stuff in the $100-$800 range), and there have been about ten '57 T Starr rookies sold at around comps in just the last two weeks. Some auction and some BIN.

Similar story with the other '50s-'70s vintage I watch.

I hate to share my secrets. but since we are all cardboard cousins, I'll let you know how I can immediately spot a good buy on the B/S/T board.

As soon as I see the listing it says SOLD.

I guess it depends on what you collect. There are far less pre-war cards on eBay than ever before. I just searched "Ty Cobb T206" and there were 22 results for auctions (not buy it now). Of those results, only 2 cards have bids. The rest have high opening bids that people aren't interested in placing.

But five years ago I feel like you would have found 10 or 12 competitive Cobb auctions at any given time, all starting at $1.

Similar to what everybody else has mentioned here, my eBay vintage card sales are also up the last couple of years. But, I am picking and choosing which cards are for sale there, this week, I sold a Norm Van Brockton RC in a PSA 3 holder, a 1986 Donruss The Rookies Barry Bonds in a BGS 9.5 holder and a Mickey Cochrane RC in an SGC 3 holder. At the same time, I have opted to hold on to my 39 PB Ted Williams, 07 Cobb RC, etc. you get the idea. I think we are losing track of the purpose of this thread, whether or not buyers are fully able to take advantage of down market prices as numerous content creators are portraying on YouTube. I say not because eBay selection is nothing close to what it was a couple of years ago. You can settle for what’s out there, mostly low-end appeal for the grade or overpay for high eye appeal and there is no bargain being had that way. So again, I ask where is the buyer’s market that is being promoted so highly.

Let’s just call it like we see it, market was overheated and corrected and things are very tough in the hobby these days for most (except maybe the 6 and 7 figure buyers).

Ha! Now that's some insider knowledge right there...

Again, I think it depends on what you're buying. If you're into modern basketball, then it truly is a buyer's market. Mainstream rookies of modern players like Lebron have come WAY down.

Here's an article from 2021 that captured the trend even then:

https://www.one37pm.com/popular-cult...rts-cards-2021

You are absolutely right there, nobody knows the down modern (and vintage almost equally) basketball market like I do. Back in 2021, I bought one card each, every one was a rookie patch/jersey auto graded 8 or higher (except one 2001 Jordan that ended up grading an SGC 5 of the following players: Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Luka, Joker, Giannis, Harden, Lillard, Kyrie, A Davis, Trae, 4 Ja’s, along with non-autos of: LeBron, Kobe, Jordan, Hakeem, Barkley, Duncan, Dirk, K Malone. Let’s say I spent $56K for all of those, which is pretty accurate, I sold everything this year as prices continued to plummet all year long before they got down to zero and grossed roughly $19K. That’s close to a 70% loss on everything mentioned there. Does anyone think I made the wrong player choices on who to buy? And, this is not including the Wilt, Oscar, West, Kareem, Dr J and Bird/Magic that are all down roughly the same percentage but I have decided to hang on to those thus far.

Nothing has taken a beating like the basketball card market as that was the most overinflated to begin with and most manipulated by particular influencers, auction houses, players, sneaker heads, and fractional share companies. That’s why I started a separate thread a week or two ago looking to name names of who was responsible for this.

I wasn't immune either, but to a lesser extent. I paid up for this Jordan but not so much that I'm too upset about it. My thoughts at the time were "what if this is like my chance to buy a 52 Topps Mantle before it takes off and I don't take it?" I guess I also have the luxury of being able to hold onto it long enough to make out in the end too:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...cf91e12fc4.jpg

I think this has more to do with the relative value of the cards themselves than anything else. Once a card eclipses a certain threshold, eBay often loses its appeal as a selling platform for a lot of sellers. 5 years ago, those cards were quite a bit cheaper, and thus eBay was a more attractive option for them as a seller. Today, more of them are being sent to the bigger auction houses where they typically fetch stronger hammer prices. But in my experience, for cards below the $1,000 level or so, eBay still flourishes.

That said, I wish more higher end transactions occurred on eBay. Because the selling fees are SO much lower there. It only costs me about $500 to sell a $15k card on eBay. Whereas it's about $1500 to $3k in fees at the big AHs.

How are you paying only 3 percent?

Interesting tidbit re modern-ish cards. I say "ish" because modern to me and modern to a collector who started in 2020 are entirely different things. I have quite a nice stack of 1996-1999 baseball stars and numbered parallels and I was pricing them for sale at shows using recent eBay pricing. Prices are not down across the board for modern-ish baseball parallel and limited cards. Most prices are down but some players and some issues are doing just fine, particularly non-RC Jeter and Griffey, many of which have gone up since I last checked them about 15 months ago. A few of the limited and popular late 1990s cards are actually going up. Modern boxing is up; it never really caught the COVID wave.

My sample is limited, just a few shows, but the 1980s-1990s cards are popular with younger collectors and collectors of modest means. One thing that bodes well for vintage is that I see kids excited to get modern cards reproducing the classics that they cannot afford (Topps and Bowman golden age) and commons from older and obscure sets.

I am talking raw cards, not slabs, BTW.

Phil - I had forgotten about your misadventures in modern basketball. Probably just repressed the memory as a coping mechanism. That is a kick to the shorts for sure.

Hopefully not many of us have to endure this level of economic punishment.

Late 1990s #'d Barry Larkin are still strong. A Fleer Brilliants 24 Karat with printing line, not graded, went for more than $1k on ebay this month. 64 bids.

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It's a buyers market if you think about the amount of material available for sale.

If you're basing "buyer's market" on price, then I think it's got a way to drop before it's that kind of "buyer's market".

Agreed, that kind of buyers market needs a capitulation cycle and that hasn't happened yet.

Yes, I feel you out-bidding me all the time.

Nice Mantle, and very nice 61F's!

I think there are people like you that are very picky, and buying what they want regardless of the price. However, there seem to be less buyers right now for the stuff that is not special.

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Yup. As far as I am concerned, the only time it is a buyers market is after the prices have dropped, and that won't happen as long as shows are overrun with customers and dealers line up to be wait-listed. I am really, really curious what will happen next week in Pasadena. it is a new show from a promoter with extensive experience in Vegas and Phoenix. We haven't had a decent show in the LA metro area in years, other than the Burbank Show, so there is a ton of pent-up demand.

You just need to pay for an ebay store. Which is $21.95 per month. Once you have a store, you get 1,000 listings per month with no insertion fees and your selling fees are 12.35% on the first $2500 and just 2.35% on anything after that to cover the payment processing fees. It's a great deal. I sold one of my 48 Leaf Jackies there for $15k and my total fees came to $602.50.

A lot of people don't know this. I have buyers trying to negotiate with me on other platforms and they always assume I'm paying 10-15% in ebay fees until I tell them otherwise. They're always surprised. Ebay should market their fee structure to this hobby. I bet it would get a lot of nice high end cards back to their platform. Many of the large AHs are basically just stealing money from us, IMO. The smaller auction houses that deal with mostly lower value cards, it makes sense. But with the big ones who won't even return your phone call for less than $25k, those guys are just robbing everyone blind.

Print registration and print defects are absolutely taken into account during the grading process at every TPG. I had a 52 Bowman Mantle that had poor registration but was otherwise in EX-MT condition and it received a 3 because of the print flaws.

I would say that when it comes to eye appeal, everything matters. The registration, the color, print flaws like fisheyes and print lines, creases, centering, and even corners & edges. Everyone has their own hierarchy of which flaws matter most and how much. But for the majority of collectors, the centering is what jumps out at them first, at least for bordered cards, and in particular when they're extremely OC. You just can't miss it. Same is true for registration which is wildly off. Again, you just can't miss it.

That said, the degree of difficulty with respect to how difficult it is to find cards that are well registered vs how difficult it is to find cards that are truly centered is night and day. The vast majority of vintage cards are well-registered, with the exception of a few sets with known issues like 48 Leaf. However, finding a card that has 50/50 centering both ways is borderline impossible for so many cards and at least extremely difficult for the rest. Less than 5% of all vintage cards are truly centered, and for many key cards, that number is less than 1%.

People here often talk about how common the 52 Topps Mantle is and the fact that there are multiple copies of it available in every major auction. That's certainly true, but good luck finding one that's dead-centered. I can count on both hands the number of dead-centered copies that have ever surfaced on any major auction platform in VCP's entire history. The same is true of the 52 Topps Jackie Robinson. I went through every single sold copy on VCP, one by one (there are over 1,000 in grades 3 or higher with no creases) and there were 9, yes NINE, total copies that were 50/50 both ways in over 1,000 sales, and only 23 that were close, but just a little off in one direction. Yet out of those 1,000+ copies, nearly all of them are well registered. There are a few here and there with some other print quality issues, but for the most part, at least 80% of mid to high-grade copies have excellent registration and no major print defects. This is why centering commands such a higher premium than registration. It's just immensely more difficult to find.

I would agree that print and focus are considerations, and maybe more so for iconic / expensive cards - but the way that standard is applied is pretty erratic. For cards that are not Bowman Mantles, I have seen focus issues treated in various ways, but the majority of the time - if a card is NM otherwise with poor focus, that card is apt to get a higher grade than an EX card with no focus problems. I get it, and am not saying the grade is wrong per se, I'm just saying there is no hard standard; focus is one of those subjective things (what is badly OF to me might be slightly OF to you...) and the grading standards as with so many things aren't really clear here. I don't think I'm a true OCD candidate, but if I do have a touch of it - mine runs much more towards noticing print and focus problems than it does centering - so that's just what I'm inclined to point out first. I do think it would be nice if print and focus as a grading criteria could be seperated out just from "Surface" - which is ostensibly the physical condition of the cardboard stock and more concerned just with wrinkles, creases, dents, dings, tears, etc.

I would agree with you on the whole that for vintage it's far easier to find a well printed and focused card than it is a perfectly centered one. Don't get me wrong, I get the concern and don't fault you and others in the centering camp. I realize that I'm able to get cards that I still find appealing at a discount due to moderate centering problems, and that to a large degree the centering hysteria over the last 20 years or so is responsible for that. So thanks. :D

If you have cards to sell worth substantially more than $2500 each, the store makes sense. If not, you are paying 13.25% on the entire amount paid including taxes and shipping plus $0.30 per order.

Another good option for cards above $1,000 is to send them to Probstein. He only charges 5% total fees for anything above that threshold. But ya, if you're selling cheaper cards, then you're going to be paying high fees pretty much anywhere, except for MySlabs, which is about 5%. But buyers expect a discount there, so you'll pay for it one way or another. Sorta like selling at shows.

Well, you can sell them on Net54 and pay nothing


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Yep, always a great option as well

Traditionally, they are known to "know the market" better than most ;)

Adam,

How big do you think the show in Pasadena will be? Do you know if there are going to be a lot of "vintage" dealers?

The promoter told me there are, but I guess we will see. Web site says 180 tables.

https://frontrowcardshow.com/cdn/sho...5853&width=750

I'm putting out a Chandy Greenholt style table: no showcases, just a ton of picking.

What would be nice is if there was a list of card dealers and what they were bringing to sell. It would be a long drive for me and it'd be disappointing to see one or two actual vintage dealers and the rest Pokemon or bright and shiny stuff from the past few years. On the other hand, it would be good to say hello to you and any other N54 people that might attend.