Trade: 1951 Bowman Mantle PSA4 for 1933 Ruth #53
 

Was thinking of selling this one to fund my search for a #53 Ruth. Why not just trade and keep the money between collectors rather than give a % to auction house or ebay.

I live in SoCal in case I am ultra-fortunate and the trader is near enough to do a handoff.

I live in socal and am interested in purchasing the card so you can buy the 33 Ruth. I do not have one to trade. How much are you asking?

clarification
 

Hi All,

Just wanted to clarify that I am only looking for a trade at the moment. Apologies as I did not make this position 100% clear in the initial posting.

If I fail to find a trade, I will likely be back for a straight sale. I just have no clue what a fair price is as I know the Mantle RC is one of the few cards going up, up up in value while the Ruth is flat.

Really? To say Babe Ruth cards are flat is just not true...and there is certainly enough data to price a 51 bowman mantle.

yeah that post was sketchy..babe ruth #53 cards are not flat..and it really not hard to price a 51 mantle.....no way you can find a fair trade with that opinion..

Mantle
 

A quick search of eBay showed 4 sold non qualifier mantles. 2 for $4000ish and 2 for $5000. That's a start.

Its just not exactly a large sample. Not like seeing 8 sales in which case I feel more confident. 2 going for 4k and 2 going for 5k makes me wonder if it should be a hard 5k i should look for as the prices seem to be going up or more like 3.5k which those that note its slightly off center are offering.

In short, 3.5k - 5.0k is a heck of a range. I'm guessing 4.5k is not out of the question, but am not sure.

Flat in the short term gains. Of course Babe always goes up over the course of time. It is just that the Mantle has lept by over $1,000 in a couple months and the Babe has not.

Just looking for a straight trade chief. Nothing sketchy about that. #53 hasn't gone up near as much as Mantle recently.

Would dig hearing your opinion on pricing the Mantle, since I am only seeing a range of 3.5 - 5k rather than a stable price.

doesn't matter about how they got to a price , all that matters are what they are worth now.....a babe ruth 53 psa 4 I believe is on par with a centered mantle psa 4...you looking for a psa 4 ruth to trade even up?

as far as selling prices go..remember at auction the seller is not netting all the money in most cases...

I would say yours would sell at the lower end of the range due to print lines and centering and back staining, but it's certainly better than many 4s I have seen and somewhere north of 4k isn't out of the question in this market. It's going to be hard to find someone who wants to trade the precise card in the precise grade you are looking for, for this precise card. If you really want a Ruth, sell this one and use the cash.

I agree.....people will always trade their cards for cash....so why not just get the cash..

Here's some stats...

Using data from VCP on sales since early 2006, I created two models for the two cards in question. I won't extrapolate the data, so we only have about 9 years to work with. I only used PSA 3,4, and 5 grades for simplicity, since the grade is such an important factor and looking at 4's vs 8's is a whole different ball game. Close grades should follow a closer regression fit. It's a pretty good set of data and a pretty good model fit in the end. I used a "curved" quadratic equation with dates and grades as my predictors (and the squared terms which end up having p-values of <0.001). R-sq for both cards are at 70%+. No signs the lead me to believe the model has errors (it is normally distributed, as expected)


Here's some stats on the 51 Mantle RC sales of PSA 3,4,5 via VCP.

Expected cost of PSA 4 in 2006: ~$2500
Expected cost of PSA 4 in 2015: ~$3900
9 year ROI: 56%
1 year ROI: 5.1%

Here's some stats on the '33 #53 Ruth sales of PSA 3,4,5 via VCP.

Expected cost in 2006: ~$3100
Expected cost in 2015: ~$4250
9 year ROI: 37%
1 year ROI: 3.6%

*I have a degree in mathematics and statistics, so I have a decent idea of what I'm talking about here...

While the Mantle is going up in price a bit faster, the Ruth has pretty good investment power as well and is in no way stagnant. To give value on something based on the future would be unwise.

*I watch Shark Tank every week and Kevin O'Leary reminds me every week not to invest in future forecasts and "what-ifs" :p

Thanks for letting me "nerd-out" on my lunch break.

You can always use CardTarget.com. Its free to use and get price dats from past several years and also pics of the card that sold as well.
Here is data in the graded 4 ranges, apparently they had no updates for this year i guess.


Auction ID Qty Variation Grade Seller Buyer Price Bids End Date
331043091270 1 Standard PSA 4 buddysbaseball e***t $3,750.00 2013-10-25 19:04:48
350858780184 1 Standard PSA 4 garrettnelson 6***h $3,900.00 2013-10-13 03:45:40
350853797663 1 Standard PSA 4.5 barkusd a***t $3,800.00 2013-08-16 17:01:50
300928668682 1 Standard PSA 4 fouder2a0c 2***a $2,639.00 21 2013-07-08 14:09:53
360675721374 1 Standard PSA 4 probstein123 a***b $3,129.00 35 2013-06-19 22:30:20
130929355809 1 Standard PSA 4 tovin311 a***s $2,500.00 2013-06-17 19:43:03
190851360739 1 Standard PSA 4 peterockdelicious g***g $3,250.00 30 2013-06-11 20:42:39
400493214876 1 Standard PSA 4 cap91 e***y $3,743.00 39 2013-05-27 22:18:39
MemoryLane 28066 1 Standard PSA 4 memorylane unknown $2,738.19 5 2013-05-11 00:00:00
HugginsScott 55694 1 Standard SGC 50 hugginsandscott unknown $2,820.00 17 2013-04-11 00:00:00
390545474671 1 Standard BVG 4.5 webhead3333 n***2 $3,499.99 2013-03-09 15:41:01
200894212349 1 Standard PSA 4 jhook i***r $3,500.00 2013-02-23 19:15:23
Goodwin 26563 1 Standard PSA 4 goodwinandco unknown $3,660.44 17 2013-01-25 00:00:00

last couple months the SMR shows a big jump in Mantle pricing....Babe Ruth #53 is unchanged.....i hate to say i told ya'll so, but here we are LOL :D

Brilliant analysis! And of course Ruth is moving upward. As the seller, I have to angle things as best I can and saying the recent data for Ruth (few months) is relatively flat is true....though going back in time it is clearly a constant riser....O'Leary is right....but that has to be balanced against risk.....an investor doesnt pay for tomorrow's price b/c he is taking on risk.....but every investor is 100% betting on futures forecasts....hence the term"futures"....we are just paying today's prices.....the flex in today's sell prices should vary based on the assumption of futures....meaning, Mantle RCs often go slightly higher than market average as they are on the rise.....cards on the decline will go for under market value as folks suspect those trends will continue....all that being said, theres some black swan factors in the card market that historically sway prices harder than any forecast metric know to man (economy trend impact, shifting desires of the key investment demo as the old collectors age out and the new guys choose to buy different things to recapture their childhood).....we all just have to pray there will not come a day when no one cares about prewar cards anymore and they are relegated to basic antiques and nostalgia rather than investment grade items.....if baseball were to fall out of favor permanently, we'd all have a lot of tiny cardboard problems on our hands....luckily baseball has a good track record of surviving the long haul

i love talking investment

Checkout the colors and centering on this beauty! I don't know about you guys, but this one really takes me back to youth, when baseball was everything.

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/x...psb7bkjxtt.png

It's a little OC t/b. I would expect better from you Matt.

Fair enough, Greg. But it's in a PSA 10 slab and its 52 day pricing average is on the rise, along with a killer yield ratio dividend-- so I don't care what your eyes (or mine) say.

When I shop for cards I usually go for centering first, yield ratio dividend is a close second though. Can't argue if it's in a 10 slab though, especially if it has a PWCC High End cert too.

Hey, Randolph,

I just got tomorrow's VCP data today from this guy...

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/x...psivjbtmxm.jpg

We're gonna make a KILLING!

Sincerely,

Mortimer

Nevermind.

Scans of the cards......Attachment 193161

Attachment 193162

I think they are on par too. So yessir - straight trade. I'm just guessing that the Mantle has more upside potential than the Ruth for the short term. One man's opinion.

.I think your best bet is just sell the card then buy the ruth.......weird thing about trading cards is if you send a card and the other guys doesn't send his card..tougher to be made whole versus sending money with a credit card.

"Beef jerky time! Would you some beef jerky?"

Ahh..this takes me back to the late 1980's - early 1990's when things were simpler and I first ran into this trade. :D