[ls7plus]

Hi Dan.

It is my opinion after almost three decades in our hobby that this card is following the same path blazed by the '25 Exhibit Gehrig rookie, and that similar quantities of each exist. It took me 3-5 years of looking in the days before ebay and most of the large auction houses existed to find the Gehrig in VG (at the 1998 National, for $500, from a somewhat naive seller who didn't know that when they surfaced, which was extremely rarely, they were going for $1100 in that grade. I still have to laugh when I recall how hard he thought he had to work to sell it to me for the lesser price). It took a few years for prices to rise to the point that collectors/sellers who knew what they had were willing to part with them (unfortunately, I sold mine several years later for $6500 to put towards some ultra-high-performance modifications to my '72 Corvette--stupid!!!).

I believe that you'll start to see more of the Williams R303A available when G-VG's are going for $7500+, and even more surface when they're $12,000 to $13,000. And I don't believe it will take all that long (a few years for the former; perhaps a decade or so for the latter price range). No, I don't think this is an outrageous $$ range for this card. After all, you're going after a rookie card of a player that is very scarce to what some would consider simply rare who was certainly either the greatest or 2nd greatest hitter who ever lived. I personally believe Ted was the greatest, based on his having created 250% of the runs a league average player created over his career (a Bill James derived stat--the Babe comes in second in this category at 240%. Mantle, incidentally, was at 215%). Others would rank Williams second based on being about 12 points behind Ruth in OPS+, but the Babe had a somewhat unfair advantage in this category, as he was truly a pioneer of an entirely new hitting style.

Wish you the best of luck in your search--persevere and you will prevail. Then go after the 1939 V351--the R303A is downright common compared to that one!

Larry