Vintage Undervalued Roookies
 

Are there any left at this point? I always thought Mays 51 Bowman was undervalued but just checked eBay and my god!! I can only come up with the list below and would love to see if you guys can add to the list or disagree with my picks.

1948(49?) Leaf Stan Musial
1949 Bowman Roy Campanella (I think almost all of his cards are undervalued)
1955 Topps Sandy Koufax (Very surprised his mid grade cards aren't higher)
1957 Topps Frank Robinson (Will it always be cheap?)
1965 Topps Joe Morgan
1968 Topps Johnny Bench

I have most of these cards and I'm a Reds fan, so I may be biased. What are your guys thoughts about others out there?

Bench is certainly a good buy at todays prices. I can only see his rookie card going up in the future. As Leon in known to say "every thread needs a card".

https://www.collectorfocus.com/image...nch-psa-8.5-he

1960 topps Carl Yastrzemski in psa/sgc/bvg 8, criminally undervalue

Musial, Bench and Schmidt would be my top 3. Brooks Robinson, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal and Steve Carlton are also pretty cheap.

We've been saying these same cards are undervalued ever since I can remember. There's probably a reason. That said, my vote would be for Seaver. High number, very tough card to find without one thing or another wrong, vastly underrated pitcher, arguably top 5 of all time.

Frank Robinson

Ken Griffey Jr

I think the multiplayer cards like Bench and Seaver suffer a bit because there is someone else featured. I also think that all 57 Topps suffer a bit because they are less appealing (IMO) than many of the other cards from this era.

I will also add Reggie Jackson to the list, though maybe he isn't considered undervalued.

57 is undervalued and it shouldn't be. First year of the standard card size and many great cards in the set.

I agree. I think 57 from a design perspective is great.

With collectors spending $1M on certain modern cards, or even several hundred grand, they're all under valued. Bump this thread in a year and post some recent sales prices. My prediction they will all look like bargains.

If you're looking for the next card to 10x no idea. My guess would be something like a CJ or e90-1 Jackson. Mantle is just getting warmed up too. I'd be looking for a 51 if I didnt already have one.

For my money, the 1955 Topps Harmon Killebrew RC is very underrated.

A HOF RC from a beautiful set and you can probably get a PSA 6 for under $500.

Johnson, Lajoie, Collins.

It is probably too late on Mantle. Heritage has a PSA 8. Last sale was 125k with other recent sales 110-135k. It is already at 200k before BP. Even lower graded ones have doubled or more the last month or two.

spahn
clemente
carlton
greenberg

Any and all Hornsby cards.

Spahn for sure seems undervalued.

Ted Williams play ball RC still seems low to me! But definitely agree on Musial, Spahn and most of the others mentioned.

Pete Rose RC

Right Now These Guys are Smoking Hot. Aaron, Mays, Mantle and Jackie.

He had a major jump a few years back; Mine would be the......1955 Topps Roberto Clemente RC

It's a much harder card to get nice then the 54 Aaron Rookie IMO

60's I would have to say the Seaver Rookie

all HOF rookies from 1961 Topps

Another vote for Teddy
 

+1 on the ‘39 Teddy Ballgame. That card has been way undervalued compared to those of his peers (of which he has very few). Nothing has changed, even during this period of “crazy” cardflation (I just coined that one).

I still think the 55 Clemente is undervalued. I also think the 26-29 Exhibits Foxx is "relatively" cheap. The Seaver Carlton and Schmidt rookies seem undervalued as well.

T204 Walter Johnson has yet to have a price breakout, probably since so few are offered. And I realize there are postcards issued prior to the Ramly set, just not of interest to all collectors.

Clemente rookie card? I bought a topps 1955 Clemente PSA 5 two years ago bv (before virus).It’s been selling for 3500 to 3900 the last few months.I checked last night and there are 2 for sale - $6,400 and $8,300! Also a 5(mc) for $3,800! Could not believe it!

With the surge in American cards, I have largely sat out of late (with the exception of a nice near 1952 Bowman set, which I admit is hardly sitting out). I have picked up four collector grade Sadaharu Oh Menko rookies (1959) in collector grade for $100 or less.

We are in complete agreement on this issue. Although there are several players whose cards are generally undervalued, Warren Spahn and Rogers Hornsby receive my top two votes. Spahn is arguably a top 10 all-time greatest pitcher (definitely top 15), and Hornsby is arguably a top 10 all-time great player, including pitchers.

Based on pure numbers, Spahn’s rookie is criminally undervalued. He is the all-time winningest left-handed pitcher, the all-time winningest modern day pitcher, and has the sixth most wins of all time. He is just 10 wins behind absolute legends, such as Mathewson and Alexander. His records will stand forever. He was also a WWII hero. Yet, his rookie cards can be had for a song?

Hornsby is in this same category. He is listed around 10th in most serious all-time greatest baseball player rankings. Hornsby has the highest all-time career batting average for a right hander, and the second highest all-time career batting average for all players (.358 – only behind Cobb). He was a two-time triple-crown winner, and a two-time MVP. Hornsby batted over .400 three times. He is twelfth in all-time WAR.

The problem with Spahn and Hornsby is they are almost forgotten and just don’t get the exposure that their contemporary stars receive. This has kept their cards’ demand and price down. Frank Robinson falls into this same trap. Earlier in his career, Mantle, Mays, Aaron, and Clemente stole his spotlight.

Eddie Collins belongs on that list too.

I am jealous, all I can find are the ones on ebay nearly all of which are priced high and from the same seller. :eek:

The 51 Bowman Mantle. Might be a centerpiece card for a lot of people but the value lags so far behind the Topps that it's difficult to understand the pricing. Even when it comes to DiMaggio, whose most popular "rookie" is the 1939 Play Ball, when the 1936 Goudey does come up it always outsells it's later issued and more mainstream counterpart. Not sure why the same isn't true for the 51 Mantle, even if it's not Topps.

"Hmmm, that's a very interesting idea," I thought after reading this post.

Headed over to eBay and searched...

Cheapest one is now $430 + $15 shipping from Japan. It's like the whole world has become Dean's.

EDIT: Ha - Coke to Peter.

There are more 51 Bowmans than 52 Topps despite the Topps being a DP. 52 Topps is Mantle's rarest regular issue card. I also think the difficulty of completing a 52 Topps set because of the high numbers is a major factor. 52 Topps is the t206 set of post war collecting. That contributes to the demand.

To me there has been a major swing from The collector base to the Investor Base of card owners.

It looks like this decade the same will repeat itself driving this hobby to further highs.

But so what? We're talking about a true rookie card of a folk hero. There's no reason for it to lag like it does. PSA 1 Bowman will run you what, somewhere around 5K? A 52 missing a border sold for 11K in a recent Heritage auction.

All you can expect is for the 51 Bowman to be worth more than other post war rookie cards. It is never going to catch the 52 Topps. Supply is more and demand is less. They are starting to move up in price. It will be interesting to see what they do in this months Heritage auction.

Same doesn't seem to be true for the Mays though.

We've all been conditioned to think the 311 is the most iconic card on earth. There's a self-fulfilling prophecy aspect to it.

Yes, It will never catch the 52 topps. However, i think at the end it will get closer to 52 topps
psa 1 52 topps, clean sweep one, i would say a middle one, not too bad, not great. now is at 38k(after buyer fee) will see how it goes
psa 1 bowman cleansweep i think maybe a little above average 1 is at 9k now, take the same condition maybe 8k
so 38k vs 8k. I would think eventually might catch up to the ratio of 38k to 20-25k in the future , still the 51 bowman is his true rookie

The 51 Bowman is also a high number in its own right.

52 Topps Mays is not a high number and there are more 52 Topps than 51 Bowman Mays. I think the 51 Bowman Mantle is under valued compared to 52 Topps but it always has been. I have a PSA 7 Mantle RC so I am hoping it closes the gap. It is just that there are a lot of people with unlimited funds that are drawn to the 52. It is no different that someone paying 732k for a Jordan RC or 3.9 million for a Trout superfractor. These guys want a card to show off and it needs to be something a non collector would recognize. That is 52T not 51B.

That is just the Yankees fans. Everyone knows the Wagner is the most iconic card. It has been for 90 years and I don't see it ever changing.

Compared to the increase in Mays and Mantle rookies, it's still a steal! Oh and I still think the Ruth rookie is undervalued!!

Right, but (until recently?) the Mantle while pricey was far more accessible than the Wagner. I'll qualify my statement to say the most iconic accessible (sort of) card.

1939 Play Ball Ted Williams RC I think has been undervalued for years, even with today's prices.

Clean Sweep Auction ending tonight has both a PSA 1 1951 Bowman Mantle and 1952 Topps Mantle. Right now, the Topps is at $31,800 and the Bowman is at $9317 (current bids without b.p.). They are both decent looking 1's although the centering on the Bowman is much worse than the Topps. It will be interesting to see where they both end.

$11,000+ for a PSA 1 o/c 1951 Mantle? :confused::eek:

39 Play Ball DiMaggio seems very undervalued. First Joe D card other than the '38 mini-me Goudey nonsense and an absolutely classic photo. Yet the '41 Playball trades at multiples more. Hey I love '41 playball but the '39 DiMaggio is a much better card IMO.

I think the '52 Topps Mays is off-the-charts iconic and a very good investment although it has doubled in the past 2 months so I guess it's half as good an investment as it was two months ago lol.

I think the '41 PlayBall Peewee Reese is a good buy. He was a great man and a pretty darn good ballplayer too.

1989 Topps Traded Randy Kutcher cards are also criminally undervalued.

Taking off. Get it before it's too late. Price ratio between 52 topps and 51 bowman is just too great. Ppl finally realize it's undervalued

Babe Ruth rookie.

Unfortunately not a rookie, but this is in our current auction:

There is a raw one on here for a couple hundred. Check the bst

So is the 39PB Ted still on the list after the old label SGC2 just went for 3900 on eBay?

I finished in 5th place in the bidding woohoo!

It was a great looking card with some paper loss. Not a bad price given that!

What about his 1936 World Wide Gum card or his 1937 OPC?

Anyone say Monte Irvin yet?

How about Aaron's 1954 Johnston Cookies? It's an absolute bargain compared to the current '54 Topps prices.

How about the ‘52 Topps Eddie Mathews? It has not seen near the price jumps of the ‘52 Maya and Jackie.
When I bought mine both the others were well under #407 in price, but not any longer.

All aaron had a jump but i don't think the demands are there, everyone wanted the topps.

1965 Topps Carlton...


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Agreed. This has always been a pricey card. (I finally just landed one myself after wanting it literally for decades...) But the price range on them to me seems to always be tight. For example a PSA 8 may "only" be a $3k card, but even beat up ones and you are hard pressed to find them cheaper than $4-500 bucks. With that kind of activity on the lower end of the scale, it seems to me like the higher grade ones are artificially low. But I could be wrong.

Agree it had great eye appeal.

My bad. I still think the '39 Joe D is undervalued though.

I would tend to agree with you, but cards like that have seemingly been stuck in the mud for decades. '65 Carlton and Joe Morgan. '57 F. Robby and the '60 Yaz rookie. Just because a player is great doesn't always translate to card values. Stan Musial remains grossly undervalued for the player he was for virtually all of his cards that were produced after the 1940's. It's difficult to understand.

On the flip side, there is no purely baseball reason for Mantle to dwarf everyone else in value; obviously there are many intangibles involved in why some players are relatively underappreciated card-wise. But I don't expect after all this time much will change for Musial, Spahn, Foxx, E Collins, etc.

True, but Mantle is virtually a unique situation unto himself, owing to how the hobby evolved in the late 1970's and early 80's. When things went from underground hotel shows to retail and multiple card shops in many towns by 1985 and later, many of the target baby boomer customers had all grown up idolizing Mickey Mantle. That's what I attribute it to, anyway. From a pure baseball perspective, he wasn't as good as Williams, Musial, Mays, Aaron, and possibly others.

I've operated on this theory for a while, but the only players who really move the needle are all-time stars. Eventually everyone else fades into obscurity.
If you're not dealing with the players who were regarded as the top 1-2 players in the world during their career, their cards don't (and shouldn't) appreciate at the same rate as the all time greats.

There's no disrespect intended for these remarkable careers, but I don't look at these secondary stars as underpriced. I think their value reflects the fact that they aren't going to be the first names mentioned in a discussion of baseball history (Cobb, Ruth, Robinson, Mays, Aaron, etc.)

Not totally unique. Maris values are utterly disproportionate. Same, honestly, with Koufax (150 wins). Munson. Purely statistically speaking, Jackie.

Not anymore there's not. Jarrod is rapidly becoming my nemesis - apparently we like the same type of cards, but he's quicker on the draw. [shakes fist at sky] JARROD!!!

This seems right to me - it's not about all-time stats. The players whose cards skyrocket are the ones who transcend the baseball fan/hobby demographic and have some level of broader pop cultural significance. Which makes perfect sense, in that having, say, a Warren Spahn rookie card doesn't allow you to show off, because you first have to educate 99% of people on who Warren Spahn was. Then maybe they'll be a little bit impressed. Whereas a lot more people will be instantly impressed by your Mickey or Jackie.

I would agree, but in proportion. Maris isn't valued anywhere near Mantle, of course.

You said that better than I did. I will add that I think there may be some extra boost that comes when a player starred for a behemoth like the Yankees rather than a smaller market like Milwaukee. The Yankees bring an automatic boost to pop cultural appeal (my wife knows the Yankees, she's go no idea where the Braves play/played). It's not fair, but I do think that if Stan Musial played in NYC, he would be mentioned in the same echelon as Willie Mays. Likewise, Mickey Mantle as a St. Louis Brown becomes just another name.

You just shut your Dodger hating mouth. :p

Seriously though, while the mystique of what might have been (and the unprecedented run of dominance) definitely lift Koufax over what his career numbers would lead you to expect. I think Jackie is underrated as an actual player.

Jackie - all the percentage numbers are among the all time greats at the position OPS+ of 132 if 6th all time among 2b in the 20th century. Since the brevity of his career wasn't even injury, but rather societally created I don't think you can look at counting stats the same way you can even with someone like Koufax.

Make me a list of 2b with a career slash of .311/.409/.474 it's a damn short list! Not a lot of nearly .900 Career OPS guys at 2b.

162 Game average of 111 Runs 178 Hits 32 Doubles 6 Triples 16 Home Runs 86 RBI 23 Steals 87 BB and only 34 K's is pretty stellar.

So yeah the counting numbers might not be there, but he was never mediocre, his career wasn't shortened by injury. The stats he was able to put up in the time he had are pretty astonishing.

That's been a prevalent theory in the hobby for a long time but interestingly enough it doesn't apply to modern cards in the least. Trout's cards can't be touched by anyone and he plays for a perennial loser and always will.

But it wasn't always that way. Ted Williams and Musial used to be priced in higher tiers. Some of these rookie cards were priced much higher relative to where they are today. 1938 Goudey DiMaggio and 1939 Ted Williams for Prewar. 1948 Bowman Musial, 1957 Brooks Robinson, 1960 Yaz, 1965 Carlton, 1967 Seaver and 1973 Schmidt for postwar. The 1968 Bench was always the same as the 1968 Ryan until ~1989-91 when Ryan got hot. Mantle wasn't priced above other top tier HOFs until a few dealers decided to buy up Mantles to sell to non collectors. So, I wouldn't absolutely say that some of these couldn't turn around.

There are several potential factors that explain the disproportionate value gaps between Mantle, Mays, and Aaron cards, considering their careers essentially began around the same time.

First, there is the Yankee factor. Mantle was a life-long Yankee, and played for the sporting world’s most well-known franchise. People collect the best player on the best team. Second, there is New York City factor. Although Mays partially played his career in NYC, Mantle played his entire career in it. Mantle received more exposure during his playing days.

Third, there is the winning factor. Mays and Aaron only have one title each. Mantle was a seven-time world series champion. Again, more exposure. Fourth, Mantle has the most iconic post-war card, which is arguably the second all-time most iconic card only behind the T-206 Wagner. There is a trickle-down effect to other cards. You see this with Wagner’s other cards as well.

Finally, I’m not trying to start any political debates, but there is the race factor. The 1950s and 1960s was obviously an entirely different era. White kids from this era grew up idolizing and pretending to be Mantle, while African American kids grew up idolizing and pretending to be Mays/Aaron at the plate in their sandlots.

This simply carried over to collecting. There are more white collectors than African American ones (at least based solely on my unscientific observations from attending shows for over 30 years), and these baby boomers are simply collecting their childhood hero more than Mays/Aaron. I think all these factors are at play.

On a side note, has anyone else observed the Mays explosion since January? You simply cannot find a decently priced Mays card anymore. Wow!

Yeah but the Mantle price points relative to other HOF'ers have been basically the same for 40 years now. It could change, but I would be surprised if it changes dramatically.

Totally. The fact that he played his whole career in NY, was constantly showing his phiz on TV in October of every year, etc. etc. played heavily into WHY he was the idol of so many baby boomers who got into the hobby again in the 1980's.

I really don't see Mantle being replaced at the top. However, some of those cards could be more in line. Collecting in the 60s, Ted Williams was #1 followed by Musial, Mays, Koufax and then Mantle. Mays and Aaron seem to be closing the gap and in the past Jackie and Clemente have made big jumps. I can see Ted and Stan being guys poised for good run ups with their RCs leading the way.

I think the Speaker T206 could be on the list, which is considered his rookie by some (I'm sure that topic could be a whole other post).
Overall, I'm not sure that ANY cards these days are being undervalued. Some of the prices are just jaw-dropping. I don't think this is a bubble, per say, but I think that it's very likely that many cards will drop back down some when the pandemic really slows down and people get back to "normal" lives (some cards certainly much more than others). We'll see how many of the new collector/investors stay active, how many sell to collect the profits and how many shove their cards in the back of the closet.

All due respect to Tris Speaker and Eddie Collins but why exactly are they due for a bump? Outside of this board specifically, I think it would be tough to find any casual fan who is familiar with either player. The images on their T206's aren't very inspiring either. I know people like the Collins portrait but it doesn't catch my eye like say, the Lajoie with bat does.

I think when it comes to T206's card image is always going to play a major role in value. That's why Shag and Titus are where they are. And why the Lajoie with bat is where it is. Not sure I see any reason to pay more for Speaker or Collins.