Who are the most "over-valued" players
 

Over-priced would have been a wrong word since price is determined by demand. But in that vein, what pre-war players generally come with a higher value than their actual accomplishments on the field.

Not saying they're bad player, but they cost more to acquire than similar talent players. I'm not talking about a single card either. This applies to all cards of that player.

My first thought is Hank Greenberg. He brings a significant premium over players like Charlie Gehringer or even Mel Ott. He legend as a Jewish player certainly aids demand. But based on skills alone he shouldn't be that much higher.

Notoriety always helps too. Moe Berg is valued high because of his "off the playing field" notoriety.

What other players bring an excess of premium to their cards?

The Black Sox players come to mind.

Personally I think Greenberg is extremely undervalued. He has a career OPS over 1.000 and a career OPS+ of 159 while missing his monster prime years.

I think the 19th century HOFers in the Old Judge set are over valued. The OJ set will always have a wow factor because of its age and size, but the players just weren't very good all things considered. I can believe that Hoss Radbourn was the elite pitcher of his time, but anyone winning 60 games in a season isn't playing a game we would recognize.

The obvious answer has to start with the 2 most notorious and expensive cards in the hobby:

Wagner
Mantle

Allow me to run away now while everyone starts throwing stuff at me.

Roger Maris.
Tinker Evers Chance.
George Sisler.

Prewar HOFers who shouldn't be in the HOF. Lyons and Maranville come to mind.

Mickey Mantle. His cards are multiples the price of those of his contemporaries yet his talent was not.

Sherry Mcgee.

Name means absolutely nothing to any baseball fan who is not on this board or a member the SABR Sherry Mcgee subcommittee, assuming there is such a thing.

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Every thread needs a card.
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Of course, part of the reason his name means nothing is because it is Sherry Magee.:D

Sisler
 

I agree on the first four, but for Sisler I think the market is probably right. There just aren't many Sislers, falling between the T & CJ eras and the Goudey cards. I only have one (below)

Attachment 647424

Who are the most "over-valued" players
 

Assuming you know this, but his valuation has a lot more to do with hobby and time and place than it necessarily does with his stats or rank purely on the field in comparison with his contempoararies.

Mantle was the golden boy of 1950’s Americana. His phiz was constantly on TV due to the Yankees multiple WS appearances. For at least a bit, he was arguably the greatest player in the game. (I wouldn’t argue he was better than Mays). When the kids of the 1950’s took the hobby public in the early 1980’s, Mantle was their guy over Mays, Aaron, Williams, Musial, - or anyone else. Having a high numbered ‘52 Topps RC that was at least for a large part of its history perceived to be rare didn’t hurt either.

The rest is history.


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Agreed, and from a Cubs fan.

They are in because of the Franklin Adams poem. I mean Chance probably deserves it; good career and then was a manager as well - but the other two guys didn’t help turn more double plays necessarily than anyone else of their era. Tinker’s career batting average is .260 something?


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Oh. That explains it! The correct spelling guy is a household name.

Ha! Actually, Magee was a really good player...one of those people like Dahlen who might be in the HOF if the various veteran's committees ever seriously considered early players. If you believe WAR, he is the 14th best right fielder ever (ahead of Stargell, Wheat, Medwick, Kiner, Manush, and several other HOFers).

Are his cards overvalued? If so, is it because of the Magie error? Or because people think he may get in the Hall one day? I couldn't say. I have one.

Being a Yankee gave him a huge leg up over anyone else in terms of popularity. Playing hurt added to his mystique. The tape measure home runs did too, and the switch hitting power. The folk hero personality, the blond crewcut, the muscular build. All the World Series. And, especially if you count the astonishing on base percentage, a very great player too. If PURELY as a player he is overrated, it isn't by much.

Magee definitely was not a bad player. Just had the misfortune of playing for a lot of bad Phillies teams for most of his career.

And he certainly had one of the best poses in the E92 set!

Seditious, perhaps, but I'll say Jackie Robinson. I think he's overvalued, especially when compared to Hank Aaron.

Dizzy Dean. Admittedly a what-if with his injury and I get his broadcasting career helped but he should be in the same tier as Vance/Grimes/Lyons/Gomez et al

Agreed. In the career OPS+ rankings for non-juicers with at least 7,500 plate appearances, he is 5th, behind only Ruth, Williams, Gehrig, and Hornsby.

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I think Dizzy and Sisler get extra love becuase of how truly great they were before career altering injury. A bit like Koufax or Gale Sayers. Sisler's War 7 is essentially the same as Greenberg's. For the 6-7 year stretches they were healthy Sisler and Dean were as good as anyone.

Joe Wood is well collected too, probably for similar reasons.

I love Jackie Robinson, but I have to agree. Although a 54 Topps Hank Aaron kind of brings these two to parity, at least somewhat.

But as stated above, Mantle and Wagner have to be at the top of overvalued.

And dare I even mention Babe Ruth? There is no real shortage of Babe Ruth's cards or memorabilia. I guess it's just that he was Babe Ruth.

As a player perhaps, but he's only just now starting to realize the value he should have been accorded as an American historical figure.

Cards perhaps (I'm not going to say the T206 Wagner is overvalued given it's lore and enduring myth presence), but just in terms of garden variety fandom Cobb seems to be way more popular than Wagner. And that to me seems a bit messed up.

Totally agree about Jackie Robinson's place in American history. This said, I'd argue that Hank Aaron may have had it worse -- and for longer -- than Jackie Robinson did.

All correct and I agree. But I was answering the precise question posted:

For one, Mickey Mantle wasn't as good as Willie Mays. And arguably Mantle wasn't as good as Ted Williams and Hank Aaron or even Roberto Clemente and Stan Musial.

:(

But are Honus Wagner cards that much more expensive across the board? Because there are very real scarcity issues when it comes to his infamous T206 card so that dramatically skews the average price comparison.

:confused:

Are Roger Maris cards that much more expensive than those of comparable stars? Keep in mind that it did take 61 years for his single season home run mark to be legitimately broken.

:confused:

Sure seems like it, particularly for Wagner’s portrait cards.

Any player the majority of adult average baseball fans don’t know.

I agree.

:)

But those players are not the ones whose cards command nose-bleed prices. It's the very well known players whose "walk" didn't match the talk that want mention in this thread.

:(

Yes, and it's a decent argument that is also why even common T206's in decent shape are as expensive as they are today.

You may not be completely wrong, but it will never be viewed that way. It's because of the story and him being first. It's hard to imagine a worse situation than what Jackie faced in Philadelphia with Ben Chapman though. But to your point, there are likely other stories that may never be fully known.

As the original question was posed, yes I would agree with you.

Absolutely. Look at his rookie card, for example. Compare his cards to Hank Sauer and Bob Allison, whose stats are similar to his according to Baseball Reference. He's basically valued as a high mid tier hall of famer, if not higher.

All of the players who are famous for being infamous -- the Black Sox and Hal Chase come to mind.
Also there are a lot of low end HOFers (the guys who on the merits probably shouldn't be in the HOF in the first place) who are highpriced because they are HOFers. Thinking of the Frankie Frisch/Veteran's Committee inductees (e.g High Pockets Kelly). Also Tommy McCarthy, Rick Ferrell, Ray Schalk, and Lloyd Waner.
You've also got players who are famous for their off-the-field exploits like Moe Berg.
Roger Maris, Joe Wood, Jack Chesbro, and Hack Wilson are valued largely for single-season excellence.
Addie Joss is probably overpriced relative to the merits of his sadly truncated career too.
More recently there are the beloved great players who carry such a high premium that they are still overpriced relative to their merits -- Mantle and Clemente can be challenged on this basis.

Ten Million.

Art Whitney's dog.

Maris' rookie card is a really nice looking card though:

https://hosting.photobucket.com/imag...27060RepFr.jpg (Not mine.)

A full body shot against a gorgeous orange background, well let's just say it puts a smile on my face every time!

:cool:

Willie Mays = 1 ring
Ted Williams = 0 rings
Hank Aaron = 1 ring
Roberto Clemente = 2 rings
Stan Musial = 3 rings

Mickey Mantle = 7 rings

So, all those guys combined have the same number of rings as Mantle.

That Mays was a real terror in the World Series he was in. People just love to drool and slobber over the catch which was about the only thing he did in 3 of them.
Exactly zero homers.

I go back and forth arguing with myself about how important rings are for a baseball player's legacy. Baseball is, at once, both more individualistic and more team-dependent than, say, football and basketball. Someone needs to come up with an advanced statistic for "World Series or playoff wins above replacement value".

To me rings mean less than nothing. Look at all the nobodies on the Yankees with many rings, are they somehow better than Ted Williams because they have some silly rings?

Besides guys with error cards like Bill Ripken or Randy Johnson in my opinion Mickey Mantle is in a league of his own for cards being overvalued.

Agree, but if a player appears in enough post season games, I think their performance can make a bit of a difference in how you assess their career, in either direction. For example Kershaw's post-season horror show clearly has some downward impact on his overall rating. Mantle's WS Home Run records obviously added a bit to his status.
s

And Frankie Crosetti has 8 rings as a player and 9 more as a coach, so I suppose his cards should be ranked as most UNDER valued?

Harry Heilmann was at least as good as Joe Jackson. Basically, same average, but Harry had better power numbers. Both hit over .400 once. Harry played longer, compiled 2,499 hits, and had a noteworthy career as an announcer once his playing days were over.

Relative to each other, Jackson is way over-valued, and/or Heilmann is way undervalued.

Uhhh...Make that 17 rings, as a player and a coach. He was in 23 World Series, total. He had so many rings, they started giving him engraved shotguns instead.

You wonder if he'd just been just Joe Jackson, and not Shoeless Joe Jackson, if he would have been quite so wildly popular in the hobby. I don't want to say he's overrated, but on the other hand,for whatever reason Heilmann never seems to have captured anyone's imagination.

With a nickname of "Fully Outfitted", Harry "Fully Outfitted" Heilmann never had a chance against "Barefooted" Joe Jackson when it came to popularity.


Brian (not Harry's nickname, and I believe Joe Jackson might have been wearing socks in that one game that ended up making him "Shoeless")

Better to have the "silly rings" than NO rings! Ha! The whole purpose of competing is to win, no ?? :confused::confused: When people tell me that "baseball is mostly about the stats," then I tell them "why not get rid of the World Series then?" :D Why even have a championship ?? Oh wait, that's my point!! You play to win and Mantle did that better than anybody else !!

Zero you say ?? Ouch !! Imagine if that had been the Mick in his spot ??

If you replaced Ted Williams with Mantle on all the Red Sox teams Williams was on, how many rings would Mantle have gotten? My guess is, maybe one, in 1946 when the WS went 7 games and Williams didn't hit for much.

If we're ranking by rings, Mickey was not even the best player on his team.

Put #7 on the Senators and how many rings does he win?

Isn't Thurman Munson a bit overrated by card collectors? I'm someone who thinks he probably belongs in the Hall of Fame, but his card values seem to equate to the upper echelon of the Hall of Fame. And I don't think he belongs there.

Agreed. Munson’s tragic death was horrible and in many ways elevated him to a status above where he belongs. See the same thing of course with singers and other entertainers.

I respectfully disagree. His value is where it should be. I don't believe he was showing signs of decline, and had he played a couple of more years there would be no doubt of his HoF eligibility. The Dodgers would have lost the 1981 Series. He probably would have managed. Just my opinion here; I don't have WAR or any other stats to try to prove a point.

As a proponent of a (limited more) "larger" Hall, I think that Maris belongs in. The record he broke in 1961 was practically bigger than the game itself, and it was a historic event that was celebrated bigly for decades afterwards.

I know that's not how the Hall traditionally works, and I know there will be plenty who disagree with me and that's fine - but I think Maris belongs in for his contributions to the game. There are many arguing the same right now for Curt Flood and his contributions to the game, which if that holds any water at all - then surely the same would be true of Maris. Clearly, neither have "traditional" HOF numbers for the positions they played.

I know this runs counter to the prevailing wisdom on this, but I actually think Bill James made a very interesting argument about this. Essentially he said that the point of playing baseball is to win the game. Which team won the most games in a season? The 1906 Chicago Cubs. Two seasons? 06-07 Cubs. Three seasons? 06-08 Cubs. All the way out to ten seasons, it's the 1904-1913 Chicago Cubs (I actually checked this - they won one more regular season game than the 1934-1943 Yankees). So no team in baseball history was better at winning games (in the regular season, at least). If you don't put in Tinker, Evers, and Chance, then the only HOFer from that team is Three Finger Brown. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So who do you put in? Tinker, Evers, and Chance were actually all really good players, both offensively and defensively. Maybe even better than the numbers show, because so much of their value was defensive. Their peak was at a time where the league ERA was about 3 and teams averaged about 1 unearned run per game. So if the Cubs only averaged .5 unearned runs per game, that is an enormous difference - far bigger than the impact defense has as a differentiator in today's game. And yes, they didn't turn an exceptional number of double plays, but with steals, bunts, and hit-and-runs, double plays just weren't as important a part of defense as they became later. So Tinker, Evers, and Chance may not be Tier 1 HOFers, but they are far from the weakest candidates, and they are not just in because of a poem.

Joe Jackson .356/.423/.517 OPS+ 170
Harry Heilmann .342/.410/.520 OPS+ 148

Those numbers aren't close. Heilmann having 3 points more in slugging doesn't mean he had more power than Jackson, he didn't. It means he played 10 years (1921-1930) in the "live ball era" after Jackson was banned from baseball.

Heilmann is undervalued, but Jackson is properly valued in my opinion.

Valid viewpoint. They probably aren't in solely because of the poem, but the poem certainly didn't hurt. I've been a Cubs fan for 35+ years - it doesn't bother me in the least that they are in, LOL.

In 1978 his OPS+ was 101. In 1979 his OPS+ was 95. Here is how he ranks against modern catchers.

Piazza OPS+ 143
Posey OPS+ 129
Bench OPS+ 126
Mauer OPS+ 124
Simmons OPS+ 118
Fisk OPS+ 117
Munson OPS+ 116
Carter OPS+ 115
I Rodriguez OPS+ 106

The only two guys below him as hitters were much better defensively. Munson was clearly in decline and if he had finished his career, his OPS+ would have ended up much worse and below Carter too.

Munson was not as good as any of the modern day HOF catchers. As to his HOF eligibility, if Simmons couldn't get elected by the BBWWA, I'm not sure that Munson would have either.

Pete Rose and Nolan Ryan. Neither was an inner-circle all-time great player. (ducks to avoid flying projectiles)

agree 🙂 .. Not enough hits or no hitters to be inner circle

While the projectiles are already flying anyway, I'll add one more: Derek Jeter

"He had simply fallen from an elite catcher to an above aveage one. He still had a long way to go. In 1978, Munson had accumulated 3.1 WAR. In 1979 (the year he died), Munson had earned 2.2 WAR through 97 games."

Greenberg- NOT overrated. Remember he lost his prime years to WW2 and still posted crazy numbers in a relatively short career.

Jeter and Henderson get my votes as most overrated. Especially Henderson's ultra-common rookie card. Many of the 7s look as good/better than the 9s and 10s. People are paying stupid money for a random number on a flip, and not the very common card itself.

They both were great at one thing for a very long time, but had significant weaknesses that prevented them from providing the overall value of some of their contemporaries.

It depends on who you ask.

Fangraphs WAR leaders
1. Clemens 133.7
2. Cy Young 131.5
3. Maddux 116.7
4. Walter Johnson 116.4
5. Randy Johnson 110.5
6. Nolan Ryan 106.7
10. Alexander 95.7
11. Seaver 92.4
12. Mathewson 90.0
13. Grove 87.4

Huh. Interesting - I didn't know there was such a discrepancy between FG and BBRef on him.

One could observe Ryan was pretty similar in value to Gaylord Perry.

There are some seriously overvalued players in the Hall of Fame, But I agree with another poster that Hank Greenberg is undervalued. In my view, the most overvalued players are hitters who played between 1920 and 1930, when batting averages were at their highest point. The ball was seriously juiced in 1929-20. The list includes George Sisler, Ross Youngs, Fred Lindstrom, Bill Terry, George Kelly, Travis Jackson, Chick Haley, Chuck Klein and a couple others. Lefty O'Doul would be on the list if he was inducted. A lot of these guys would have all hit .260 or .270 in 1914, or 1944, or 1964. Most were teammates of Frankie Frisch, who helped elect them.

I would say
greenberg
gehringer
ott
Hornsby
Foxx
all undervalued

Speaking of catchers I'll then nominate Yogi Berra. His cards trade as if he was the best catcher of all time and he certainly wasn't. Not even close.

:(

I don't think you can take anything away from Yogi. He won three MVPs and is in pretty rare company. Only three other catchers have more home runs than he does, no catchers have more RBIs, and only six catchers have more hits.

Maybe not the greatest all time but hard to say he doesn't have a seat at the table.

Heads Up ! Projectiles thrown !

The knocks on both Berra & Ryan, not gonna say much, just shake my head.

Agreed.

Are Yogi cards overvalued? Compared to what?

https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball-c...ription-071515

Mantle was a great player but when you compare him to Mays or Aaron, he turns into a star, but most players would. I think Mantle was one of the best and interesting personalities from baseball, but that doesn't mean the value of his cards should overshadow some of his contemporaries. I can understand, he was a Yankee, a New York player that was adored by America.

Looking forward to the thread that asks for opinions on players that are felt to be undervalued.

You're saying that most players would turn into stars compared with Mays or Aaron. :eek: I disagree.

:(

Speaking of WAR, Mantle's WAR 7 is top 10 all time among hitters. He had two 11 plus WAR seasons. Mays also had two. Other than Ruth and Bonds no one else has done that. Mick had 4 seasons of 9.5 or higher. Aaron's highest was 9.4. Mantle is easily one of the best players of all time. Add to that being in NY, being the biggest star during the boomer era and his post season success and of course he's one of the most widely collected. Should be.

I'd nominate everyone who has donned a Yankee uniform - they carry a premium for The Pinstripes that is above and beyond their statistical value.

I've been slowly working on a '53T set and believe you me, all the Yankee players have a ++$$ on their cards. In general, I'd guess double what any comparable player on another team would bring. There also seems to be a somewhat lesser plus up on Red Sox and Brooklyn Dodger players.