Auctions I lost - 10 years later
 

I was showing a new T206 collector one of my cards yesterday (a Moose Grimshaw T206!) and he asked me how much I'd paid for it. I couldn't recall off the top of my head as I'd bought it ten years ago, so I searched my email for the receipt and in the process saw some messages from eBay on auctions I lost on around that time. That got me thinking of price spikes, and this morning I searched my email account for all messages with the phrase "Sorry you didn't win this time" from 2013.

Below are some I lost out on along with similar recent sales for those cards on eBay (all within the last 90 days, and all from auctions). You'd expect (or at least hope) the prices would go up in ten years, but this really drives home for me by how much they've increased. I'm in my mid-40s, make six figures, own my home (mortgage is done!!), but I have my bills and two kids in elementary school who'll need some tuition paid at some point, and I see more and more than the cards like the 1933 Ruth that used to be within my grasp are just gone now. Even seeing a Steamer Flanagan PSA 4 go for $160 brings up issues about who's going to even casually get into collecting.

Wow

Thanks for sharing interesting stuff

And you a right regardless of your income and budget what we could afford are now more Difficult to afford and we either save longer to buy the 1, save longer and by a lower grade of that 1, or change our collection to now what is in our budget.

Wish I would have save emails and the lines.

Although Heritage has a great feature where you can look at the close items you bid on it it only goes back 2 years(at least based on what and how many items I bid on)

It's interesting to see the spike on even the commons, but once you get to HOFers it's crazy, but then when you get to the "gold tier" guys like Cobb or Ruth the percentage increase is really off the charts.

And yes, you bring up an interesting point on how we have to re-aim now. For me, instead of looking for something like a quality T206 portrait of Three Finger Brown each month do I now go for a Bob Bescher or some other common player? Do I scale down and go for Brown's card as a 1.5? Do I scale down the volume instead and try for just something like Brown's card once every 5-6 months now? Do I sell my house and buy a bunch of Goudey Ruths? Not in this housing market!

Around 1999-2001’ish I sold fifteen or sixteen T206’s graded PSA 8. This group included three Southern Leaguers. All were originally bought for quality with nice full borders and near perfect centering. When I sold them they all sold in the $450-$650 range. This was probably the dumbest thing I ever did hobby wise considering what nice 8’s sell for today.

I wonder how these increases compare, percentage-wise, to a dozen eggs...

I'm a chicken tender, so I'd say "overall similar, but far less volatile".

Most of the egg price increase has been in the last 18-24 months...before that, eggs might have actually been selling for LESS than they were in 2013.

I note that the increase to HOFers is consistently very large compared to the sale in 2013, like 4x minimum. Commons have increased, but not nearly as much as HOFers

Yes, if these numbers are right, 10 years ago a 33G Ruth was worth 50 times a common card, now it is 120 times. What that implies is there are more buyers now that are not hard-core collectors, and therefore not interested in commons. If that is true, we can expect more volatility in Ruth and other stars, as those buyers are more likely to be "investors", and not as attached to their cards.

What is driving the price of eggs?

Answer: avian flu, combined with high cost of feed, etc.

Ouch. You at least got some nice cash for it, and that was 20 years ago, too, and who knew which was the market would go. My biggest bonehead move when it comes to collecting goes back to when I was in 5th grade.

When I was 10 my K-5 elementary school had a contest to guess how many jelly beans were in a huge glass jar they had on a table outside of the cafeteria. The closest guess would get the whole jar and all 600+ students were asked to submit a guess during homeroom one day.

Just like many other students, I eyeballed that thing and did some calculations and ultimately wrote down 1,946 (I still remember that number 36 years later). On a Friday afternoon they announced over the P.A. that I not only had won, but had done so with the exact number. I was asked to go to the principal's office to pick up my 1,946 jelly beans.

When I returned with my prize to my classroom I was swarmed and the teacher basically decided to just give up and ended teaching for the last 15 minutes before dismissal. In fact, even she was excited by my win. Several kids asked me to give them the jar. Hell no! Then kids started offering me money. One kid named Seth tried to trade me for it. He had a 3 ring binder sheet of 9 pocket protectors with cards in them and he offered me the whole sheet. I thought about it, but everyone told me to reject it, and I said no. He then tried to sweeten the deal by also offering me either a $10 or $20 bill. I don't recall all of the cards, but I remember two of them were 1983 Topps rookies of Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs.

This huge glass jar was such a hit I wanted to bring it home and show it off to my parents and explain how I won it with an exact guess. The pride of a 5th grader!!

At one point I did ask him if I could take it home and then trade him on Monday and he said no. I think probably the teacher would have stopped us anyway if she saw Seth leaving with the jar (we rode different buses home so no chance to leave the school grounds and then swap). Also, all my friends were telling me not to do it. Though I was tempted, I turned Seth down.

That day I rode home with the huge jar and was a rock star on the bus, and a swarm of kids followed me as I walked to my house with it. After I got inside and showed my parents I realized, "I don't even like jelly beans. Even if I did, what the hell am I gonna do with 2,000 of them?". FAIL!!!

I doubt those Boggs and Gwynn rookies were PSA 10s so I probably didn't lose a fortune, but I wish I had those 9 cards and could say, "I traded some beans for them."

Don't forget runaway hens.

I would respectfully disagree with your premise. I consider myself a diehard collector (being mindful of the investment side), but I’ve only ever focused on HOFers. I just wanted to collect the guys I could read books about. I don’t believe you have to be a set builder to be considered a hard core collector. The investment only guys are certainly driving that discrepancy in prices, no doubt, but probably not exclusively.

+1

+1. I've built a number of classic sets, but my real interest lies in the HOFers and I focus almost exclusively on them now

When it comes to pre-war you don't have to be a set builder to be a hard core collector, but you have to be a hard core collector to be a set builder.

Ha. Yes. Well put. This sounds like an SAT logic question. :)

Sam, good to see you post, it’s been a while.

I take the higher multiples on HOFers to means what it shows - HOFers are more desirable than commons. I expect the multiple will continue, since only set builders want commons but HOFers appeal to everyone

When I think of all the auctions lots I was underbidder on or near the top (but lost) from over 10 years ago, I kind of laugh and figure it would have put me closer to retirement if I did pull the trigger, but then I look at the cards/memorabilia I did come away with and don't feel so bad.

If you've been in this hobby for a few decades, you've probably scored so much good stuff at comparably low prices when considering the recent valuations. I feel sorry for people that are just getting into vintage card collecting now because the dollars today just don't go near as far as they did a decade or more ago.

Yeah Ryan, with all due respect, that's not quite right. I doubt very much the increase in relative multiples is across all HOFers. It is only a small subset of the Tier 1 HOF players. So it is not the OG HOF collectors that is driving this. It's not even an influx of new HOF collectors. It is more likely that new money is coming into the market and it is mostly buying at the top.

$1000 put into the stock market in 2013 is worth $3000 today so aside from the Ruth the cards have performed just like equities.

I don’t consider M Brown a Tier 1 HOFer, and your chart indicates his cards are up 3.5x - 4x since 2013. That is an awesome return. Looking on VCP at some other t206s of players I consider in the same general tier as M Brown (like tier 3), I get the following - trying to use similar month 2022 and 2013 and using PSA 5 unless there is no 2022 comp:

T206 Joss Portrait PSA 5: 6/13 @ $412 vs 12/22 @ $1,476 - 3.58x multiple
T206 Keeler Port PSA 5: 9/13 @ $592 vs 9/22 @ $2,520 - 4.25x multiple
T206 Evers Portrait PSA 4: 2/13 @ $385 vs 11/22 @ $2,520 - 6.5x multiple
T206 Walsh Portrait PSA 5: 10/13 @ $495 vs 10/23 @ $3,330 - 6.7x multiple
T206 Waddell Port PSA 5: 3/13 @ $416 vs 5/22 @ $1,830 - 4.4x multiple

This is decent evidence that less than tier 1 HOFers have seen great multiples; not Cobb or Ruthian results, but “out of the ballpark” returns nonetheless. Everyone wants HOFers. Only set builders and player collectors want commons. They are common. HOFers are extraordinary. The latter attracts everyone.

Regardless, I fully agree with your larger point - you would be in great shape today had you won all those cards in 2013!!

I saw this thread and wondered if I had some emails from around the same time frame. I found one from February of 2012 that I received from another Net54 member where he was offering the following:

'34 Goudey Gehrig #37 PSA 6 = $3400
'33 Goudey Ruth #181 SGC Auth = $750
N172 Old Judge Cap Anson SGC 50 (4) = $3900
N28 Allen & Ginter Cap Anson PSA Auth = $1500
M116 Sporting Life Ty Cobb PSA 4 = $1690
T205 Walter Johnson PSA Auth = $390
T205 Cobb PSA 4.5 = $2300
T3 Turkey Red Eddie Collins PSA 3 = $525
Ty Cobb Signed Check GAI = $1750
'33 Goudey Bengough #1 = $210
'54 Bowman Williams PSA 5 = $1100
'54 Topps Williams PSA 5.5 = $355
'40 Play Ball Dimaggio PSA 3 = $585
'86 Fleer Jordan SGC 92 = $875
T202 Mcbride / Milan PSA 6 = $240

I only bought one card off the list...unfortunately.

Ryan, it is not only set builders who want commons. There are many collectors who collect certain teams. I collect cards of all the players, HOFers and commons, who were on the 1924 Washington Senators WS Championship team.

My wording may have been a little muddy. The point I was trying to make is that when a Babe Ruth card goes from being worth 2 Ted Willams cards to 5 Ted Williams cards, (or from 50 commom cards to 120 common cards) there is something going on in the market, and it is not being driven by hard-core collectors, whether you are a set builder or a HOF collector.

As Ryan pointed out, a lot of HOF cards have gone up 4x or 5x in the last 10 years.

Commons that I used to pay $1 each for are now $5, so those have gone up 5x too. I bet Ryan can confirm that common T206 cards have increased by about the same.

But Ruth's mid-grade 33G cards have gone up 20x since 2013, while Williams' 39PB has increased only 6x. Why is that?



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This is a sales list from Lew Lipset from around 1985 or so. I am proud to say that I resisted the temptation to purchase any of these overpriced pieces of cardboard.

Brian

T prices
 

Yea, good for you. Highway robbery on those ! LOL

add 20 years, rinse, repeat.

You never know. I remember when my wife and I bought our first home. Prices were running away with crazy bidding auctions in the town we wanted to live in. Like 27 people bid for the house and we bid $125,000 over the asking price and got it. Of course I was convinced I had made a life altering error in judgment. The day we were moving in a neighbor stood in front of his house clapping like a jackass and thanking us for paying such an extravagent amount for our house and raising his home value. Sort of dick move but I played along.

Fast forward 20 years later, the house is easily worth 2.5x what we paid for it. Maybe more.

Moral of the story is you never know. Today's absurd price might not look so absurd someday. Or I guess it could.

I also remember not buying Amazon at $50 because I was sure I had muissed the boat.

I'd have to take a deeper dive but from some numbers in this thread and my own experiences it feels like the T206 portraits have really increased in value (even for commons) more than other cards in the set.

All HOFers have spiked but the elite among the HOFers (Cobb, Ruth, Johnson, Young) have done so at insane rates. This makes T206 HOFer portraits nuts and elite HOFer portraits really isane from that set.

And yes, a decade ago and longer I did come away with some good purchases but I never won a 1933 Goudey Ruth!!! Back then I would only buy a card if it had the eye appeal of at least a 3 to me (even if ungraded) but now I wish I'd lowered my standards - or raised my bids.

Vintage prices
 

Darn, that is me. Too bad my childhood 90’s junk wax didn’t pay off!

It has been hard getting into the hobby in 2021, with prices skyrocketing.

I wished I started before I had a wife, kids, and now we are house hunting. Not a good time for me, but one of the upsides is savoring each card I get a lot more now. My banged up t206 Matty portrait means a whole lot more to me now than if I had bought it way earlier.

Other bright side (at least I tell myself), is that ignorance is bliss and all I know are current market prices!

Who among us doesn’t regret having sold some of the cards we sold?

Or not having purchased cards 5-25 years ago that were thought to be overpriced at the time?

I might be the poster child for that thought :).... Not just on my collection. Almost everything before that too!

ps..Brian, great Lipset sales list above.
.

John, you are made of sterner stuff than me. Any time I look back on cards I underbid 10-20-30 years ago, I throw up in my mouth just a little.

Casey:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...20yeah%202.png

I am about as hard-core a collector as there is. I have been collecting since the 1970s (first show in 1976), dealt, ran shows, and I never gave a rat's ass about set building. Commons just don't appeal to me unless the player has a very special back story, like being in The Glory of Their Times or Baseball When The Grass Was Real. My HOFers far outnumber my commons and the only prewar set I can remember completing was the Salutations Exhibits, which I broke up and sold off, except the HOFers, a few years later, because commons bore me.