Memory Lane on the brain
 

Auction appears to be iover...seems I did bid higher than anyone else on an item. Did I overpay???????:eek:

Observations?

I have some:

-babe ruth items/autographs are still hot...especially autographs on toiletry publications!

-beat up mantle 2nd year topps cards autographed sell for vg unautographed money.

-psa 10 jordan fleer "rookies" have lost 75% of their "appeal" since the peak. I'm shocked!

-Registry set collectory are...still...crazy!!!!

I agree with your quotes---Ruth is certainly hot---Mantle there too---I won one big item--nothing else--prices were strong.

I was watching a handful of items
 

52 Mantle 2.5 was strong, but thought it might go stronger.

53 Mays was breathtaking, but not surprising

CSG has no "market respect" - 1967 CSG 7.5 Clemente $240 (incl juice), PSA $400-$500, SGC ~$350

The sky is definitely NOT falling, but economic supply/demand factors are definitely leading the market

They had tons of '52 Topps autographed, many also with card itself graded, usually PSA 3 or 4. I have no clue on value and if, say, $400 for a commons or, say, $1000 for a star/HOFer (with auto and card graded) is a bargain of not long term. I have read that autog cards are now "hot" bu really have no idea.

Things I was watching:

--A pair of Jim Brown publicity photos from 1958 and 1963 sold for $2510.40. I collect Jim Brown team-issued and publicity photos and this is a stunning price.

--1921 Exhibit Ruth PSA 4 $27,631.20. Last 4 in PSA's database sold for $21,283 last year. Still going up. Pete is right about Ruth in general. The prices on the obscure Ruth cards are really up there. Most any career-issued Ruth card in halfway decent shape is a $5,000-$10,000+ card now.

--1961 Fleer Wilt Chamberlain IA $1089.60, PSA 7 Bill Russell $3212.40, 1972 Topps Erving RC PSA 8 $3212.40. Vintage basketball in general peaked in 2021 and has come down since then, but the big names are still around 3x what they cost before the surge. Now, that is not really a surprise to long-time collectors because they were so undervalued before that they looked like bargains, relatively speaking. Just a few years ago you could pick up a Dr. J RC in PSA 8 for under $1,000. It peaked at over $9,000 but has settled in at about $3,000-$3500.

--If you want a nice 1950s-1960s Mantle at a modest price, look at Exhibit cards. There were three PSA 6-7 Mantles that went for very reasonable prices $360 $480 $600. Prices on these have gone up relatively modestly.

--

In general, it seemed like "highest graded examples" did quite well, but some non-highest graded examples retreated slightly.

E.g. 1955 Topps Ted Williams PSA 9 (highest graded) sold for over $70K, which is almost $50K more than the last one sold in 2020.

1970 Ernie Banks PSA 10 went for $63K, which is more than $10K than one sold by REA in April.

1975 Gary Carter PSA 10 Rookie sold for $56K, which is $8K more than one sold for in a Memory Lane auction in February.

1957 Frank Robinson PSA 9 (highest graded) Rookie sold for $55K, which is more than $10K than the last two sold a month ago in REA and in April via Goldin in May, but not the record of $69K earlier in May via Heritage.

(Hard to believe the highest graded F. Robinson can't outsell Gary Carter)

Even some cards that weren't the highest graded ever, such as the '52 Bowman PSA 8 Mantle and '56 Koufax PSA 9 broke records.

But some that weren't "the highest graded" such as '33 Ruth #144 PSA 4.5, '34 Goudey Gehrig #37 PSA 7, Koufax PSA 8 Rookie and PSA 9 Koufax 2nd year did not break records, but were still much higher than 2 years ago.

All in all, prices continue to be very strong. (Note, I don't have VCP, so I am just using the PSA website, which may be incomplete/inaccurate).

Hi Greg, that was my set. I have no idea what the value will be in the long term. The HOF cards seemed to be very strong, the difficult commons were average to weak. The sheer saturation of collectors trying to spread funds may have contributed to lower commons pricing

If I had to name one player from the second half of the 20th century who is criminally underappreciated by baseball fans and collectors it would prob be Frank Robinson.

Agreed. Frank gets no love.

Also, it doesn't help that there was a weird white thing on his face near his eyebrow on the card.

Yes Robinson is underated--he played during the era of Mantle-Mays-Aaron-Clemente--and he just didnt get to those 4 players prices--also played in small market cities and was a low key in his personality .

I believe this is trimmed, even REA thought so back in 2008.

https://memorylaneinc.com/site/bids/...e?itemid=71867

https://robertedwardauctions.com/auc...f-460-back-psa

https://i.imgur.com/MX4u49c.png
https://i.imgur.com/5iPfN6j.png

1953 Topps
 

I am continuously amazed at the prices of high grade/low pop cards now. Congrats to both side of these transactions.

1953 Topps PSA 9s:

#93 Rice $21,611
#201 LaPalme $20,432
#9 Collins $13,956
#95 Marshall $13,324
#269 Pillette $9,533
#31 Blackwell $8,333
#142 Wertz $8,065

Indubitably

That's a great example of REA's honesty and Memory Lane's just pumping everything up.

I love it when auction houses are honest. Scott at Collector Connection is great like that.

I am not sure I'd love the brutal honesty if I was the consignor though.

Warren Spahn.

With 363 career wins, Spahn holds the major league record for a left-handed pitcher, and has the most by a pitcher who played his entire career in the post-1920 live-ball era. He was a 17-time All-Star who won 20 games or more in 13 seasons, won the 1957 Cy Young Award, and was a three-time runner-up during the period when only one award was given for both leagues. At the time of his retirement in 1965, Spahn held the MLB record for career strikeouts by a left-handed pitcher. The Warren Spahn Award, given annually to the major leagues' best left-handed pitcher, is named in his honor.

You had some great signed cards, Ted! I was interested in the signed Wilhelm RC which did over $10k......I know there's not a lot of them out there, but wowzers! Great for you!

Yeah we've had these discussions and postwar it inevitably comes down to Spahn, Frank Robinson, and to an extent Musial; prewar Collins and Speaker.

I am blown away by these prices. Memory Lane does it again.

Spahn is the most accomplished, under appreciated, player of his time. I agree 100%.

Not a name a lot of people recognize, but Bobby Avila is also an often over looked player. Bobby was the Mexican version of Jackie Robinson.

Frank Robinson never endeared himself to the public or press, i.e. Maris - Bonds - etc.

It was wow amazing. I can’t wait for REA’s big auction in the fall. I’ll be expecting more new record numbers from that auction.

I appreciate that. I always let a consignor know when we have to offer a negative opinion on a piece and let them decide what to do. I do also explain that it makes people generally more accepting when we talk up a card, so overall it's a positive even for the consignors.

Some hot takes based on a few hours of digging around:

(Disclosure: I didn't bid on anything, nor did I win anything, so for the first time in a while, I'm not personally invested here). Also, all of my notes about prices below include the juice, so I won't bother to specify that every time.

I'm a Mays guy, so I'll focus on him and ignore everyone else. It's helpful that he's generally well represented in most auctions, which generally means that there's a decent population to consider, including decent historical activity to compare against. I'm also focused on PSA graded pieces, since they are the most plentiful, and on his mainline cards, which seems to be where the action is.

At present, it seems like his secondary cards (for example, the 1959 Topps ##317, 464, and 563) are all about double what they were pre-pandemic, give or take. Many of those cards still sell relatively affordably even in high grades like PSA 8 or 9, coming in at $1k or less. So a bit of action there, but nowhere really close to the results on the mainline cards.

I also think that the 53T PSA 8 in this auction is probably a bit of a special story. To my knowledge, one hasn't come onto the market since 2019, so between the 3-year gap and the pandemic driving everyone nuts and everyone having too much cash burning a hole in their pockets, it was going to go for a lot. Pre-pandemic, they routinely sold for right around $30k, give or take. This one at $194k was certainly strong, coming in at about 6.5x the pre-pandemic average price. It will definitely be interesting to see where they land if a few more come onto the market over the next year or so and some of the pent-up demand gets satisfied a bit more.

I decided to look at everything that was included in this auction and try to figure out if I could learn a few things based on looking at the whole, rather than just concentrating on any one item. I looked at basically all of his mainline pieces and compared the closing prices here to the pandemic highs, and then comparing to the average selling price pre-pandemic, just to get a better sense as to where the market is relative to those data points.

Sorting through the data, some interesting trends emerged (again, ignoring the 53T PSA 8):

1) The ratio of pandemic high to the pre-pandemic average was pretty consistently about 4.5 or 5x. I think most of us would guess at this ratio in general, just based on what we're generally seeing in the market.

2) The ratio of prices in this auction to the pre-pandemic average varied a bit more. For a lot of issues, the ratio was about 2.5x to 3.5x. The big outlier was the 66T PSA 9, which landed at about 9x.

3) Only 2 cards reached all-time highs - 66T PSA 9 and 62T PSA 8. At the same time, the fact that they reached all-time highs that are even higher than 2021 highs suggests that there's still plenty of demand.

4) Comparing the prices from this auction to the pandemic highs (other than the 2 cards that reached all-time highs), the current prices are about 65% to 75% of the pandemic highs. At the same time, I was surprised in some cases to see the pandemic highs were relatively recent - sometimes just in the last few months or even just last month (and in some cases as noted above, this auction was the high).

5) I was also somewhat surprised on one point - I expected that the 51-53 issues would show stronger results in terms of spiking higher all around. While they are slightly on the higher end of the ranges, they were still "only" at 3.5x to 4.5x when comparing this auction to pre-pandemic prices, and about 4.5x to 5.5x when comparing pandemic highs to pre-pandemic prices.

It does seem like overall, 51-53 remain very loved, and the highest possible grade for any given year (even in later years) ends up getting lots of love.

We'll see what happens in large auctions going forward, and maybe I'll take the time to do a similar analysis, but if this is any indication, the party definitely isn't over, although for the most part, we're coming off of those pandemic highs a bit.

Heh, we may have the only soft landing in economic history.

Mays
 

One Willie Mays sale from last night that you failed to mention was his PSA 3.5 signed 1952 Topps subject that sold for an extraordinary $93K! That figure more than doubled the previous $39.9K record realized in Heritage earlier this year. Deviating from Mays for a moment, can’t help mentioning the $75K record sale of a PSA 4 VG-EX 1927 E126 Babe Ruth - beyond amazing & further substantiating the meteoric-like pricing increase of pre-1930 Ruth cards. They simply go higher & higher……

Yeah…I stay away from autographed items myself, and the market for autographed items recently seems to have gone completely bonkers. There’s also an issue with not very many pieces out there, and not much sales data. All of these reasons are why I stayed away from attempting to do any analysis. Plus, my sense is that the autographed market doesn’t really have a huge bearing on the non-autographed market, so the opportunity for crossover lessons was likely to be limited.

Thank you for the Mays info. I collect/follow Cobb, Ruth, Wagner and Jackson (among some other players of that era). In my experience, each new auction generally brings records. I think these guys did not spike as much as the Mantles, Mays, Jackson’s, Aaron’s during the pandemic, they just remain on a steady, upward trend. Maybe they will go down, but they have just kept going up (at least since 2015) - before, during, and after pandemic. It’s great for the stuff I already own, but very annoying for things I want to own.

If the winner of the e126 ruth is here...I certainly dont mean to offend but this card seems way overgraded? Jay pointed out some paper loss on front. Do I see areas of water damage or something around the top 2 corners...looks like maybe the card was adhered to something and removed??? It's not as noticable on the bottom.

Total guess here but that maybe what we call in the comic business newton rings when the plastic inner sleeve pushes up against the outer plastic it leaves an oily water type look. I think that is what you may see any staining to the top corners🤷🏻

James G

Memory Lane
 

So true James. It happens with many PSA Encapsulated Photos as well. In fact, several of my photos have that same issue going on.

The first (only) PSA slabbed photo I ever got has that exact thing. It looks kind of scary when you first see it and think there is some sort of damage to the item but it is, as you say, when two pieces of plastic are in contact.

Low pop and big name hall of famers Ruth, Mantle, Williams, Cobb aren't seeing any slowdown imo

It does seem some of the secondary hall of famers are starting to level with certain sets still seeming hot, T206, Exhibits, Goudey

I limit my collection to Cubs only but I found a loophole last night. This is definitely my most valuable Grover Alexander card now, which is saying something since I have a 1914 CJ. I overpaid, but issues that feature both Grover Alexander and Babe Ruth don't pop up too often.

Does anyone know if PSA would authenticate a complete strip like this? Size is 13 1/2” x 2 1/4”.

https://allthecubs.com/wp-content/up...1_186652-m.jpg

That’s a really cool strip, congrats! Best loophole ever. I don’t think PSA has a holder long enough for that. I had this Gretzky panel I submitted, it was 11” long but filled up what I think is their biggest holder. Plus, you get really terrible Newton’s Rings effect with the clear space around. I really disliked how it looked. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...784e3f1863.jpg


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yep. 11 inches is the max.

I figured as much. But that Gretzky strip is pretty awesome regardless.

Last night I could have really made a stretch and called this a Gabby Hartnett card:

https://memorylaneinc.com/site/image...3_1_183441.jpg

"A great moment in masculinity": classic.

Stephen, that complete strip card is really awesome. Congrats

I'm with you, but careful Adam, you'll get the statisticians/data scientists coming out of the woodwork to tell you how Byung-Hyun Kim is so much better than Spahn. LOL

And Spahn lost 3+ full seasons at the start of his career to the war. He very easily could have been a 400 game winning pitcher. He's currently number six on the all-time wins list, but the three pitchers right in front of him, Pud Galvin (365), Christy Mathewson (373), and Grover Cleveland Alexander (373), are all within 10 games of Spahn in career wins. I think it would be a forgone conclusion that given those 3+ seasons he missed, Spahn would have easily won at least 11 games over those missing years, and ended up as number three on the all-time wins list as a result, trailing only Walter Johnson (417) and Cy Young (511). And depending on how good he was in those years, he could have ended up challenging Johnson for the number two spot as well.

Too bad wins don't mean much of anything, and Spahn has to look up to Kim though. :rolleyes: