[aljurgela]

I won the Punch Mendez and the Billiken Charleston and a couple other items, but I am much more of a dolphin than a whale and already have an extensive negro league/cuban card collection - not a new entrant. I was extremely surprised at some of the strength of some of the pricing (punch padron and chicho)... but the cards, for all of the talk, are still quite reasonabley priced, IMO. As someone else mentioned, when there are only two "rookie" cards of Mendez, is $30k really that high? My sense is that if we did a poll, we would find many distinct winners of the carrs and I am still of the opinion that most of the cuban issues from 1909 to 1928 are undervalued. Just my two cents.

I think that the story is different with the the strength in the photos/postcards. I believe this to be mainly due to a new entrant. On the photos, I have serious doubt if anyone had a legitimate shot of winning any photo of quality these days. It seems that any photo around the historical pricing is immediately bid up beyond the historical pricing by 20% before the acution really starts.

On the other hand, I have seen nothing close to the quality of the Willie Foster photograph nor the importance of the Josh Gibson Crawfords photo. You could certainly make a case that these pieces went low, but I am not as comfortable placing value on photographs when compared to cards. I was the underbidder on the CAG postcard and was very nervous of my bid, but when I was immediately outbid it was clear to me that it did not matter what I bid on the postcard, I was going to lose.

Bottom line to me... if you like the cards, you still have a shot.... if you want photos... you may have to wait. I am seriously thinking of listing the photos that I have...