1973 card auction prices
 

Tonight I was going through early issues of Sports Collectors Digest from the 1970s, going back to the first issue from October 12, 1973. One feature they tried briefly in the earliest issues was reporting auction prices realized. This was introduced with great fanfare in issue #5 (December 14, 1973), but only appeared a few times before petering out. The first listing only had results from three auctions: auctions of bakery cards and hot dog cards by Rich Egan, and a small auction of programs. But in issue #6 (December 28, 1973), there was a two-page spread of results, including an autograph auction by Jack Smalling, several more auctions of regional cards by Rich Egan, and an auction of E and W cards by Egan that's probably of more interest to this board. The results listed in issue #7 (January 11, 1974) included no pre-war cards, but issue #8 (January 25, 1974) included the results of Irv Lerner's big year-end auction, including T202s, T206s (with tough backs), and 1930s gum cards.

I took pictures of the relevant pages from the December 28, 1973 and January 25, 1974 issues and have posted them below for everybody's enjoyment. The pages were too big for my scanner, so I took the pictures with my phone, which isn't ideal but is good enough that you can read it. In the T206s in the Lerner auction, note that a Demmitt St. Louis (f-g) went for $38.01, and that an O'Hara St. Louis ("very good but with heavy crease") went for $52.60. That was a lot of money when T206 commons went for 50 cents and the Wagner was around $1000. He also had more than half of the T206 Southern Leaguers, which went for $2.50 to $4.95 except for the one Hindu SLer (Foster), which went for $5.80. The lots of 50 different National Leaguers and 50 different American Leaguers (all vg-ex) went for $36.00 each. There was also a Sovereign for $1.55, a Tolstoi (with cut corners) for $2.01, an Old Mill for $1.50, and six EPDGs for $1.10 to $2.50, the latter price being for Jimmy Collins (a HOFer) in ex-mt condition.

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Thanks David...a little before my collecting time, but fun to see the wealth of auction results. A few card results that stick out just a wee bit for me:

E90-1 Jackson g 3.05
E90-2 Wagner p 3.40
E90-3 Gandil ex 7.80

and even a couple of bulk lots of T206's

50 diff. American League Vg-Ex $36.00
50 diff. National League Vg-Ex $36.00

Another thing that I noticed early in my vintage collecting, and what seems apparent here, is that the 1930's pricing definitely seems strong versus the 1910 prices. I guess there were middle aged guys chasing after the cards from their youth.

Brian

I didn't even notice the E90-1 Jackson or the E90-3 Gandil. They were treated as commons. One thing I've definitely noticed about collecting in the 1970s vs. today is that there was much less of a premium for star players. One of the T202 Cobbs in Lerner's auction went for $9.51, the highest price of the group, but another one went for $5.55, about the same as several commons and not much more than the median for the whole group. I know that for many old-time collectors, it was considered gauche to pay more for for a star player if the card wasn't rare; all that mattered was whether you needed that card for your set, and whether it was hard to find relative to other cards in the siet. Among 1930s cards, there was no significant premium for HOFers except for the really big names, like Ruth and Gehrig, but even they would only go for maybe two or three times the price of a common. In Lerner's auction here, a 1939 Play Ball Ted Williams went for $11.35, less than twice what the commons went for. Today that is considered Williams's rookie card, and thus gets even more of a premium, but in the 1970s the concept of a "rookie card" was unknown. In the mid-70s, the 1952 Topps Mantle was going for maybe $15-$20 max, sometimes less; not until 1980 or so did it really start to take off, and that drove up prices for other star players, especially rookie cards.

Another thing that stands out in hobby publications from that era is how much advanced collectors sought out regional issues. In the first group of auction results above, note Rich Egan's auction of 1954 Dan-Dee potato chip cards, in which many commons went for over $10, more than almost any postwar Topps or Bowman card was going for at the time. Sets like Stahl-Meyer Franks were even more expensive by the standards of the time, sometimes going for $15-$20 a card, but I don't think very many people care about them today.

O'Hara St. Louis ("very good but with heavy crease") went for $52.60

I bet there aren't too many like this. Could someone here or a recent auction shown on VCP have this exact card?

Thanks for posting. Coolest thing for me personally is that even in the early 70's less common T206 backs -- not even rare, just less common (e.g. Sovereign, Tolstoi, EPDG, Hindu, etc.) -- carried a decent premium.