Prices discussion
 

It seems most of the easy signing HOFers especially those who are recently deceased but even most of the living ones- if you want to purchase an autograph of the in the secondary market on a 195s or 1960's card you can pay anywhere from $30 to many hundreds or thousands even if just a few years ago they were $10 and then rookies of guys like Koufax have tripled in just a few years. Does anyone think either of these trends will reverse or are the days of $10 playing day kaline and Snider cards etc long gone???

I think that the answer to your last question is pretty straightforward. Maybe not $10, but any HOFer who was around to see the signed card explosion will remain mostly affordable on the cards that were already fairly affordable to buy unsigned. We're talking about the guys like Brooksie, Herzog and the like, who did (or still do) sign through the mail for $5-10 and have done lots of cheaply priced signings. Snider and Kaline may creep up a little bit, as many of their cards are from earlier times, but their later career-era cards will always be more plentiful and affordable than those nice, early career issues.

Koufax has always been in his own special little world, from his exorbitant signing fees and the willingness of people with a lot of disposable income to pay them. I used to understand to a point, but the dollar amounts associated with it separated themselves from my idea of logic a long time ago.

It's the logic of supply and demand. Wait til he's gone!

I don't think we will see prices like 5-10 years ago, but demand from the market will have a significant impact on fees. Remember, when your purchasing the autograph on a vintage card from the 50s, a significant amount of the value is for the card, and the autograph is just added value. PSA caught on a few years back, and when you send them, for example, a 51 Whitey Ford. Unless you pay for having the card authenticated and graded, they will only put Trading Card on the label and certify the autograph. This leaves a lot of potential buyers wondering if the card is an authentic 51, or a reprint that was signed. I am awaiting the arrival of the attached example PSA just finished grading. It is an authentic 51 Bowman autographed rookie of Ford. I payed the extra fees and had the card authenticated and graded in addition to the autograph authentication. With that, it will leave no doubt in the prospective buyer's mind that the card is an authentic 51 Bowman.

If the card is a vintage autographed card, the player is a Hall of Fame caliber player, and the player is deceased - it will demand a premium and is very likely not to go down in price. There are still some very good bargains out there if you're looking long term. An example, in my opinion, is Tony Gwynn. Still relatively affordable - there will never be any increase in quantities signed - he meets all the criteria (except for maybe the vintage).

I don't really know if the current price demand for signers equates to current market value of the signed item. Take Pete Rose who basically made his living from signings for the last few decades. You can easily buy a signed item of his much cheaper than paying his autograph fees - this makes no sense but it's true. All you have to do is shop around.

In today's market where Mike Schmidt is charging 500-800 dollars to sign his rookie card is crazy. He does it because people are willing to pay it.

I have several hundred hard signed cards that have just come to me through the years. At the time I acquired them, they didn't have much value above the value of a raw card. In some case's I believe it may have diminished the value of the card!

If I was a young collector (30-40 years old), I would invest in some of the Hall of Fame signed cards and just hold them for another 20-30 years and sell them at what I believe would be a significant increase. At my current age, that's not possible.

A few years ago I sold an autographed rookie card of Koufax, PSA certified, for $600. I was happy to get it at the time. Those years are unfortunately gone.

Also remember that a lot of those autographs on vintage cards (such as the Koufax I sold), were autographed for free! Most of the players were happy to autograph just about anything and was appreciative of just being asked. You mentioned Snider - he was a class gentleman and would willingly autograph items for anyone that would nicely ask.

As with any autograph you're considering, be skeptical. If buying raw, unseen, through the internet - I would recommend purchasing either graded versions or at such a price you could live with it turns out being fake.

There will be a correction at some point because prices got stupid the last few years. I doubt it will go back to where it was but the days of a 10 dollar signed snider are probably long gone.

Koufax really has gone up. Willie Mays too. Even 70s Hank Aaron is pricey now. Not sure it'll go back down for those guys. I'm just glad I bought early.

I do think Musial and Feller will stay relatively affordable for a long time. And those are two nice HOFers to be able to collect easily.

With Mays' inability to sign and Koufax' unavailability to sign at a reasonable price, you could almost say they've been "dead" since before the signed card boom. So few people were getting their career-era cards signed when they were signing for next to nothing, or even when their rates started rocketing from the $3 church basement days. Let's not even get into Koufax' sister and Mays' wives signing the deluge of TTM requests that came in. At least Koufax would sometimes do it himself (surprisingly, still does on the very rare occasion).

can you post a Koufax sister signed item please?

Secretarial

Koufax autos on modern insert cards can still be had for way less than his signing fee. Not sure why people are paying it unless they want a specific item signed.

thanks Jason

The thing with Willie Mays is his market for quite sometime was supresed substantially by the flood of what, early on, were believed to be good autographs with the "Say Hey" hologram.

These were available via every major autograph channel pretty much whenever one wanted, for well under $200, even "inscribed". Once the fraud of all the Say Hey items was exposed (Steve Hoskins signing them vs Mays himself), and the TPAs caught on and have steadily invalidated old certs and the general information about them being fake was exposed to a larger proponent of the market, collectors flocked to the genuine items to replace their bogus ones. Inscriptions are far tougher on Mays than many realized and the prices of quality sweetspot balls pushed into the mid to upper 200s. Inscribed baseballs easily bring in 4x that number now.

The other portion is after watching so many of the "card show era" heavy hitters pass away recently (Aaron, Frank Robinson, McCovey etc), Mays is far and away the last generational level player left and at nearly 92 and in poor health probably doesn't have long left so you've got a lot of collectors buying in anticipation of that inevitable surge.

The Mays "Sey Hey" issue doesn't pertain to signed vintage cards as is being discussed here. While an important subject to discuss, it's a separate matter altogether. That was limited to modern material: balls, bats and photos, etc.

A Willie for the thread:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...9a792bdf_z.jpg

Here's mine:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...71fa2703_z.jpg

I also like Mays vintage autograph - you know - back when you could actually read his name!

How about a vintage Hank for the crowd too:

https://live.staticflickr.com/4704/3...3a81e338_z.jpg

Still some major upside for a lot of undervalued cards. I just cant imagine prices going any higher. Hence why I sold!

There will definitely be a bump for Koufax and Mays upon their deaths. There was with Aaron and he was a lot more accessible.

Correct, but the overall price increase of his autograph does, and this plays a heavy part in the substantial jump in all mediums inclusive of cards.

AND SO is this one...ooofffff

you did. You were ahead of your time in the old autograph card racket for sure. Nice:)

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut!

Thread Hijacking Post ALERT
 

What about single signed HOF balls? Any correlation with the signed card market?

Usually move in tandem with the players overall market. Signed cards may jump at higher multipliers depending on card/condition, but generally SS balls move up or down as the card markets do.

A bit more nuanced, but population plays into as well. There are far more signed mantle Baseballs than Cards in the marketplace, for example, so cards will tend to out-perform given population counts.

I think it'll depend on the player and their tendencies as a signer. For example, I'd be willing to pay a lot more for a vintage Hank Aaron than the big unwieldy signature he had at the end of his life. Same with Stan Musial, etc.