What explains this?
 

Last night a well known ebay consignor and seller of set breaks had a 72 topps set ending. The Bench card was self described as "NR MT OR BETTER" by the seller (and to this seller's credit, he is usually conservative in self-grades). The card sold for 490.

Now, you can find slabbed PSA 8s of this card for over 100$ less. What explains this phenomenon? I personally believe, just as people buy clearly fake cards on the off chance 1/100 is legit, they are buying these in hopes that it grades a 10? I don't know how you see a "10" from an ebay scan.

That's all I can think of but would love to hear thoughts.

On any given day the exact same card can grade anywhere from a 8 to a 10.
There are several reasons why one seller will get more than others would selling the exact same card.

Been going on awhile now--note my reference to a '66 common that sold raw for $115, about twice the price of a PSA 9 Mint at the time.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...ighlight=frank

I think the OP’s rationale is correct. It’s like a lottery ticket or a calculated gamble and in the case of the 72 Bench a bad one. It’s a beautiful card but has a slight Diamond tilt and a small ink mark near his name. Unlikely to grade better than an 8.

Actually makes a lot of sense when you compare this to the kind of odds people that buy Breaks face that are looking for those high dollar hits. In this case, the buyer knows exactly what card/player they're getting, and they can at least see a scan of the card's condition so they know pretty well up front if there is a decent chance the card can get the grade they're hoping for. Breaks are simply PDBL (Pure Dumb Blind Luck).

Good point. I think people buying a break can at least get a solid # on their expected value. If you buy ten spots in a break you can add the value of the entire set and what your EV is (hint: it's always negative if the seller knows what they're doing).

I would argue the EV on hoping for a PSA10 is somewhat less quantifiable. There are qualities about the cards you can't identify. Also, you cannot get inside the black box of grading (difference between 8/9/10) that is PSA/SGC.


And this partly explains the explosion in prices if you ask me. What do people do when they try to decide how much to bid? They look at comps. Comps of people basically "irrationally betting" pushes them up even higher. Exact definition of a bubble.

TLDR: It just seems nuts.

I noticed the same defects! The ink mark for sure makes this 8 at best. SMH

Here are snips of the card in question that sold for $490 raw. If you took this card and then paid the $100 grading fee and got a PSA 9, I guess you're still ahead. But we all know that's a gamble.

I agree with most of what has been said, but I still fail to understand how this seller's ungraded cards from the 1960s, beautiful as they may appear, go for more than 8s on a regular basis and sometimes 9s. That is, unless the buyers expect the value of those 8's and 9s to increase generally, so that even if they submit and it comes back lower the cards still will appreciate.

For me, I was trying to assemble some nice raw sets from the 60's in the solid nm or better range. A slabbed set would take up far too much space and is cumbersome to store and/or enjoy, plus I hate the registry mentality. That being said, I often found it better to just pay for a nice 7 or 8 slabbed and crack it open than to engage in this insanity. Less worry about a hard to see wrinkle or surface flaw, although GM's scans are high quality.

That makes zero sense though...why not just buy a slabbed card? Or are you saying that if they pay more than the slabbed 8, they have a shot at a ten and don't worry about paying too much because at least they got a "shot" at a ten?

And yes, his scans are A+

I agree it makes little sense, but yes, they may figure they will pay more than a slabbed 8 because they are only out grading fees if it comes back an 8, and they have a chance at a better grade and thus a possible payday.

His scans are top notch, but I have a pretty good eye for grading, at least to my satisfaction, and I generally see slight corner touches, edge wear or other slight issues that make me shake my head when I see his sold prices and think someone believes they had a good shot at a 9 (or even 8 oftentimes).

My theory has always been in situations such as this that the winner (and underbidders) are regular winners and subsequent submitters. In other words, through experience they have confidence this card will grade high enough to yield a profit as they have repeatably completed this process successfully.

Personally, I don't feel the card will come back as a 9, certainly not a 10. A 9 would yield a few hundred dollars in profit though.

It doesn't matter how much we theorize about the possible motivations behind overpaying so much for that card, because in the end we are always left with the same simple conclusion. No one has a frickin' clue why anybody does anything. :rolleyes:

Unless they say so. In law school I took a class on appellate law with former CA Supreme Court Justice Sullivan. The hands-down best aspect of the class was that he would tell us exactly what the thinking was behind the scenes at the time when the opinions we studied were written. He'd often answer questions about an opinion from his tenure on the court with: "when Chief Justice Traynor and I were discussing the case..."

But I digress...

There are a lot of buyers who bake a grading premium into a raw card price even though the chance of getting that grade are slim.

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...ricktop_1.jpeg

And I would often wonder when studying the "attractive nuisance" cases whether Justice Traynor was related to Pie Traynor.

...kind of explains my class standing...and also why I am on these boards

And we had a beautiful Annette Traynor in my law class--she was attractive and I was a nuisance.

Ha!

Well there are some that will correct those issues.

is it me or is the card blurry? If blurry no shot at a ten...

Between around 2012-2017 I took on building a 1960 Topps set in ExMt average condition, with the goal of no card worse than 70/30 centering. I already had several of the star players as I had been buying random tpg HOF cheap when I saw them. Right off I got lucky with a Greg Morris action that was under viewed and picked up around 80 commons and semi stars for chump change.

From then on it was a slow build. I’d mostly watch Greg Morris and Zorbacca auctions but there are other set breakers too. In some of these auctions, the bids went way higher than they ought to have. Why pay psa 8 prices for a raw card advertised as nrmt-mt? Just buy the psa graded copy. But that’s what happened. I actually posted about it on the psa forums at the time. One response was the guy had utter faith in GM’s grading snd said GM frequently over graded. I personally disagree and believe GM is generally accurate but can have a tendency to slightly undergrade and also discounts centering. But that is what the poster said was his belief. Another poster said he uses a shotgun approach and simply places his high bid early on all the auctions and those he wins cheap bring down the overall cost of the lot. Short sighted IMO, but great for sellers and the guy will get his cards.

In a few instance, and I’m not talking about already known hard to find commons, I suspect that one person was attempting to create additional short prints by buying up all available supply of raw commons in certain grades. It’s a habit I find bizarre, and fully motivated by OCD and/or likely autism, but there’s known instances out there of this occurring.

Interesting stuff John. You ever finish that set?

I had one heck of a time getting what I wanted from his t206 set breaks this January. People were paying more for raw. Granted, I found his grading very conservative and a couple I got were closer to 7s than the “VG-EX” he described.

Lets try again. I did a grab from a different place. Are these clearer?

Better pic but I think the print defect under Y in Johnny on front and the fish eye keep it from a ten... I can see a 9 though now...

Edit: Just pulled out a Bench that I have. Has the same fish eye and same "L" shaped defect under the Y in Johnny on the front. So now I guess its not impossible if they are all like that...

....or a grader is buying it and already has committed to it being encapsulated. GM has a generous return policy so if it doesn't make the "grade" it gets returned for a full refund.

Crack out some nice 7s and consign. Note your results

I did and still have it. I wound up paying a total of around $2200 which was more than the set would have sold for in 2017, but prices have climbed substantially since then. I think that Frank Robinson is the worst centered cardi in the set.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...957114afc5.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...792882b24d.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...2e6b29978d.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...14695369b0.jpg

Beautiful!! If that’s the worst centered then you’re doing pretty well. Nice work