Bull Tosi Auction

[TanksAndSpartans]

Does the bidder with the 34 feedback who threw out a $733 bid towards the end bother anyone?

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2047675.l2565

To be fair though, if this was an AH and not eBay, there wouldn't be anything in the bidding history to look at.

[elsnorto]

Not really, despite their having an 82% bidding history with PWCC in the past 30 days. But only because someone else topped them with the $800 bid.

They certainly could be a shill, but it was a moot point if they were... either way, I would have had to pay the same $810... a price I am pretty happy with.

I generally try to avoid the big consignors, because there is a ton of suspicious bidding activity with Probstein and PWCC, but for hard to find items I don't have that luxury.

Snorto~

[jefferyepayne]

Originally Posted by elsnorto

Not really, despite their having an 82% bidding history with PWCC in the past 30 days. But only because someone else topped them with the $800 bid.

They certainly could be a shill, but it was a moot point if they were... either way, I would have had to pay the same $810... a price I am pretty happy with.

I generally try to avoid the big consignors, because there is a ton of suspicious bidding activity with Probstein and PWCC, but for hard to find items I don't have that luxury.

Snorto~

Agreed. That is a good price for that card so worth it!

jeff

[TanksAndSpartans]

My thought is someone wanted to make sure it sold for at least 733. I agree its a moot point as the card is worth more - so you could think of 733 as the hidden reserve, but I don't like it.

Anyway, nice pick up! Can we switch things up and talk about the Tosi? I paid a premium for it over the other high numbers as well, but no one has really been able to offer me a satisfactory explanation as to why. Wasn't the Tosi printed in equal quantities with say.... the Isola (just to pick one)? Unless someone is hoarding them, why do they sell at such a premium? I think an Ernie Smith is similar condition (probably the centering wasn't as good as this Tosi though - this was an auction from a major consigner for a PSA 3 I'm thinking of) recently sold for less than 50% of that price.....

[jefferyepayne]

The two lowest pop cards in the Chicle set are the Tosi and Kostka. No one is sure why. Perhaps since neither one was a star, they weren't as collectible as the others. Of course, both are SPs but are even a bit lower in total POP than the other SPs.

jeff

[jefferyepayne]

A bigger question to me is why Kostka is in both the Chicle set AND the premiums. Does this mean that if Chicle had produced 240 cards as originally planned, that everybody in the premium set would have been included? And would their images have been the same?





If so, we have an idea as to what some of the other Chicle cards would have looked like by looking at the premiums.

jeff

[TanksAndSpartans]

Thanks Jeff - definitely a mystery about Kostka having both a card and a premium. One thing about him is that he was a hot prospect when the set was released. From the University of Minnesota, he was coming off a 1934 season that saw them win the the National Championship. Had there been a draft, he'd be considered a "bust", but it could be argued that given the popularity of college football, there would have been above average interest in his card at the time of release......

When I first looked at Tosi's career, I scratched my head as to why he was included in the set, but hindsight is 20/20. He was actually a starter at that time, but would soon be beat out by future hall of famer Wayne Millner.

Looking at just the PSA pop report, I actually see 93 Luke Johnsos cards and 92 Tosi cards - Nagurski has the most graded, but the other high numbers don't vary that much at least in my opinion. 10 or 12 cards does seem like a low number, but maybe I'm underestimating it because in percentage terms, we're probably talking about some cards having a 10 or more percent higher population than others.

Throwing the hoarding theory out the window, could it be that at one time (I think this is true) the Tosi did lag in the population report significantly which actually brought Tosi cards "out of the woodwork" to get graded. But,... the perception remained that Tosi was rare keeping the price up. I watch the auctions pretty closely and I haven't been seeing Kostka sell at a premium - a recent PSA 4 on eBAY sold for about what I would expect had it been Ernie Smith or Isola or whoever. And actually same goes for Masterson (last card). I'm only seeing Tosi sell at a premium recently.

Fun stuff to talk about it - if there is a perception driven Tosi bubble (just a theory I'm throwing out), I don't see signs of it going away....

Finally, I think another theory is that Tosi is a condition rarity. I think that argument would go something like: because there aren't enough high grade Tosi cards to go around, the high grade collectors bid up the lower grade Tosi's just to finish the set. This seems plausible, I'm just not sure if it's true. The Tosi isn't the first or last card, we don't know what the sheets looked like.... does Tosi usually have bad centering?

[jefferyepayne]

Tosi is lower that the others graded SGC so if you combine PSA and SGC I think he's very close to the lowest. It does look like some other SPs in the set have closed the gap since I last checked the POP a year ago or so as Tosi used to be the lowest by quite a few (total pop)!

It very well could be that its greater demand is due to less high grade ones available but I haven't checked that out. If true, this may mean Tosi was on the corner of the sheet.

jeff

[Publius]

If you look at PSA 7 and 8 cards populations you see the pops get thin in the high number cards

Tosi is a pop 4'psa 8 as is Masterson. Nag is a pop 6 PSA 8, but a superstar obviously.

Very rare in high grade, which is where the big dollar collectors are

[TanksAndSpartans]

Originally Posted by Publius

Very rare in high grade, which is where the big dollar collectors are

Hey Joe, thanks for jumping in - that's the heart of what I am wondering about.... The heavy hitters/big dollar collectors:

Scenario 1: The high grade Tosi cards aren't coming up, so collectors with high grade sets try to fill the slot with a lower grade card, thus bidding up the lower grade cards.

Scenario 2: The high grade collectors are patient enough to wait for one to come around that better fits the condition of the other cards in their set (I'd guess in grade PSA 6 or higher)

Scenario 2 always seemed more logical to me, which is why I'm puzzled to see the PSA 3 and PSA 4 cards sell so high. I would think the high grade collectors are ignoring those auctions, yet for whatever reason we consistently see PSA 3 and PSA 4 Tosi cards sell much higher than the other high numbers.

[jefferyepayne]

Originally Posted by DezHood

Hey Joe, thanks for jumping in - that's the heart of what I am wondering about.... The heavy hitters/big dollar collectors:

Scenario 1: The high grade Tosi cards aren't coming up, so collectors with high grade sets try to fill the slot with a lower grade card, thus bidding up the lower grade cards.

Scenario 2: The high grade collectors are patient enough to wait for one to come around that better fits the condition of the other cards in their set (I'd guess in grade PSA 6 or higher)

Scenario 2 always seemed more logical to me, which is why I'm puzzled to see the PSA 3 and PSA 4 cards sell so high. I would think the high grade collectors are ignoring those auctions, yet for whatever reason we consistently see PSA 3 and PSA 4 Tosi cards sell much higher than the other high numbers.

I think there is a third scenario that has to do with the popularity of the set in general. Looking at the registry, there are a LOT of people collecting the Chicle set (as compared to other pre-war football sets) and that means lots of people looking to purchase a Tosi. Low Pop cards force set collectors to lower their grade expectations and that drives up the prices of lower grade cards for those particular cards. Tosi and some of the other SPs in the set benefit from this demand.

jeff