1951 Bowman Group Break cancelled

[darwinbulldog]

1951 Bowman Set Break (324 spots available)
(paid ad)

I am breaking up my complete 1951 Bowman set, featuring the popular rookie cards of Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays. I have recently finished upgrading the set to replace the cards in poor or fair condition. The average condition of the set is now a solid VG+ (3.39 “GPA”), and none of the cards have any holes, tears, heavy creases, or writing on either the front or back. Condition issues may include wax stains on the back, corner wear, light edge chipping, surface wrinkles, or light creases. Slots are available in three pricing tiers, depending on how many you want to purchase.

1 card: $35
3 cards: $100
10 cards: $300

Out of the 324 total cards, there are:
30 Hall of Famers
22 Rookie cards (including 5 HOFers)
72 High numbers
16 Graded cards
248 cards in VG or better condition

Key cards in the set include:
1) #253 Mickey Mantle (R) – SGC 1.5
2) #305 Willie Mays (R) – PSA 2.5
3) #1 Whitey Ford (R) – BVG 3
4) #165 Ted Williams – PSA 3
5) #2 Yogi Berra – PSA 2.5
6) #31 Roy Campanella – PSA 3.5
7) #80 Pee Wee Reese – PSA 5
8) #134 Warren Spahn – PSA 5
9) #198 Monte Irvin - Excellent (raw)
10) #232 Nellie Fox (R) – SGC 3
11) #32 Duke Snider – PSA 3

Most cards are in either VG or VG-Ex condition. The total value of this set if broken up for auction is $8000+, and the 11 key cards listed above account for approximately three-fourths of the total.

Mantle is both the most valuable and the lowest condition card in the set, with a technical grade of 1.5 due to the centering, but it has a strong image and the card is otherwise in VG condition. I believe every one of the remaining 323 cards in the set would grade at least a 2. That isn’t to be taken as any sort of guarantee, but it is my assessment as a conservative grader.

I accept PayPal but am open to other forms of payment as well if, for example, you would prefer to write a check. (You can both contact me with questions and remit PayPal to gscheyd@hotmail.com.)

Lots of 1-3 raw commons will ship in a plain envelope protected by a Card Saver II. Mantle and Mays will be sent Priority Mail with insurance coverage and signature confirmation. All others will be sent by bubble mailer (or upgraded to a box if necessary to accommodate volume). For cards other than Mays and Mantle, USPS insurance may be purchased through me at cost by request of the buyer.

If all 324 entries have been sold, the drawing will be held on July 22nd and hosted on www.random.org. In the event that not all entries have been sold prior to the projected drawing date, the drawing may be postponed until August (date TBD but no later than 3 days after the final entry has been sold). In the event that August ends before all entries have been sold, all entry payments will be refunded and the drawing cancelled.

You can email or message me to reserve spots or can claim them by replying to the thread. I will send you a confirmation when payment has cleared. I will update the top of this post with a tally of the number of available spots remaining. (I'm having a little trouble getting the photos down to the size limit, but I'll post what I can here, and you can email me for the large hi-res versions of the smaller photos below.) Now let's have some fun!

[darwinbulldog]

33 days left. Time for a bump. I'm still having trouble with the new photos from my scanner and camera, but here are the scans of various sizes I already had on my computer. And I'm happy to answer questions (and/or email images) for any card in the set. You can always reach me at gscheyd at hotmail dot com.

[darwinbulldog]

Four weeks left. Friendly bump.

[bnorth]

That is a beautiful rookie Mantle with nice color. Good luck with your break.

[darwinbulldog]

23 days left. 223 spots remaining.

Any questions, just ask. Good luck.

[Leon]

Good luck with the group break, Glenn.

[darwinbulldog]

18 days left.

[darwinbulldog]

13 days left.

Mantle rookie card prices are up this summer. Here are the last 5 sales of Mantle rookies in worse condition than the one I'm including in the break.

BVG 2 (miscut): $3750 (eBay 6/2)
PSA 1: $3256 (eBay 6/5)
PSA A (torn in two and glued back together?): $2700 (eBay 6/11)
PSA 1: $2999 (eBay 6/26)
PSA 1 (scuffing, creases, paper loss, off-center): $2714 (Saco River last night)

If you buy 10 spots in the group break (for $300), you have a 3.1% chance of winning the Mantle rookie. Also a 3.1% chance of winning the Mays rookie. Same for the Ford and the Williams.

[bobbyw8469]

Any spots left?>?

[Hxcmilkshake]

I'll take a spot if theres any left

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

[darwinbulldog]

Yes, there are still spots remaining. I'd like to sell out by next Monday, so that leaves 8 days.

Bonus:
Send your payment in before 7/22 and you can qualify for a bonus lot of '51 Bowman cards ($100 value). After the initial set break drawing, one number 1-324 will be drawn at random, and whoever won that card in the initial break will also win the lot of bonus cards. Cards will range from poor to vg-ex and will include low and high numbers, commons and Hall of Famers, but I guarantee a minimum (auction) value of $100.

[darwinbulldog]

3 days left to the target date (7/22)

I've had a number of people who have told me they are going to wait to buy spots until we get closer to selling out, which is understandable, but is a tragedy of the commons situation if everyone holds out until everyone else pays up, so no one ever gets anything. Therefore, I've added an enticement below to try to break that up. There are 202 spots available right now.

Bonus 1 (above) still applies.

Now, so does this one.
Bonus 2: This one will only be available for those who pay for more than one spot before 7/22. If you pay for 100 spots today you qualify. If you pay for 2 spots on Sunday you qualify.

How to win: Pay by 7/21 and submit, along with your payment, your prediction for the total number of runs that will be scored by NL teams and the number that will be scored by AL teams in all games played on Monday, July 22 and Tuesday July 23. (To clarify, this includes all runs scored in the late 7/23 games regardless of whether they are scored before or after midnight of 7/24.) That's a total of 26 games. If the set break sells out by 7/22 and you match both the NL number and AL number you will win one of the cards below.

Prizes: Winner will receive their choice of any one of the following cards. If there is more than one winner, first choice will go to the contestant who purchased the largest number of slots in the set break, second to the contestant who purchased the second most, and so on. In the event of a tie, selection order will be determined by a random drawing.

1954 Topps Hank Aaron
1959 Topps Bob Gibson
1952 Bowman Harry Brecheen prototype
T206 Bender portrait
T206 Bresnahan portrait
T206 Stovall portrait

And how many dollars are all these cards worth? 1951 of course. You can look it up.

In the event that the set break does not sell out by 7/22, I will make a decision next week to either refund all purchased and cancel the set break or to extend it for exactly one month (to 8/22). That will basically depend on how close it is to selling out. The two bonuses listed above are void if the set break does not sell out by 7/22, so that will have no bearing on my decision.

[darwinbulldog]

Tomorrow is the last day to enter the contest.

[darwinbulldog]

Last day for the contest. If it sells out, the drawing will be held at 10:00 P.M. EDT tomorrow.

[darwinbulldog]

Less than half of the slots sold, so I have decided to cancel the group break. Refunds were sent through PayPal today to those who purchased slots in the break, but PayPal indicates that it can take 3-5 business days for the refund to go through. The complete set has just been listed on eBay if any of you are interested.