1973 card auction prices

[trdcrdkid]

Tonight I was going through early issues of Sports Collectors Digest from the 1970s, going back to the first issue from October 12, 1973. One feature they tried briefly in the earliest issues was reporting auction prices realized. This was introduced with great fanfare in issue #5 (December 14, 1973), but only appeared a few times before petering out. The first listing only had results from three auctions: auctions of bakery cards and hot dog cards by Rich Egan, and a small auction of programs. But in issue #6 (December 28, 1973), there was a two-page spread of results, including an autograph auction by Jack Smalling, several more auctions of regional cards by Rich Egan, and an auction of E and W cards by Egan that's probably of more interest to this board. The results listed in issue #7 (January 11, 1974) included no pre-war cards, but issue #8 (January 25, 1974) included the results of Irv Lerner's big year-end auction, including T202s, T206s (with tough backs), and 1930s gum cards.

I took pictures of the relevant pages from the December 28, 1973 and January 25, 1974 issues and have posted them below for everybody's enjoyment. The pages were too big for my scanner, so I took the pictures with my phone, which isn't ideal but is good enough that you can read it. In the T206s in the Lerner auction, note that a Demmitt St. Louis (f-g) went for $38.01, and that an O'Hara St. Louis ("very good but with heavy crease") went for $52.60. That was a lot of money when T206 commons went for 50 cents and the Wagner was around $1000. He also had more than half of the T206 Southern Leaguers, which went for $2.50 to $4.95 except for the one Hindu SLer (Foster), which went for $5.80. The lots of 50 different National Leaguers and 50 different American Leaguers (all vg-ex) went for $36.00 each. There was also a Sovereign for $1.55, a Tolstoi (with cut corners) for $2.01, an Old Mill for $1.50, and six EPDGs for $1.10 to $2.50, the latter price being for Jimmy Collins (a HOFer) in ex-mt condition.