1973 Topps Comics

[raulus]

Just picked up a near set (23/24) of these, and figured I would share a bit with the forum. In part, this is a new pick-up post, with the added bonus that since this is a bit of an oddball set, some of you may just now be hearing about it for the first time, so it's also an educational post.

Since I bought them raw and submitted them to PSA for grading, it's also in some ways a post about grading.

For those not familiar with the set, here's a nice article online

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...leased-rarity/

In my mind, it's a pretty fun set because the set is relatively small at just 24 items, and yet also includes a pretty decent smattering of HOFers and/or stars. That and they also have some nice colors, with the added benefit of being a bit of a crossover to another aspect of my misspent youth wasted on comics.

Over the last couple of years, with the difficulty in finding nice pieces in the mainline sets for reasonable prices, I've shifted a bit into some of the test sets and regional issues, which can often still be had at prices not too much higher than pre-pandemic. For the most part, I'm a player collector. However, as seems to often be the case, when I want to pick up a single item from an obscure set (in this case for McCovey), often the only way to find it is to purchase a larger group, which inevitably seems to lead to me getting into a new set.

So I picked up this near set a few months ago at auction, in ungraded form, and then immediately sent it off to PSA for grading at the Economy level. They arrived on 8/31 at PSA, and I just got them back in graded form, so about 2.5 months turnaround time. In terms of the grading, I was /somewhat/ pleasantly surprised. These items are incredibly thin, and so therefore very condition sensitive. Since they were intended to ultimately be used as gum wrappers, it's not surprising that they're not meant to be military grade.

Add to that, my recent experience has been that PSA's grades have been pretty harsh, which I think has been generally confirmed by others in the forum. When I sent them off, I expected mostly to get them back in holders in the 4-6 range. So getting some back at higher levels was a pleasant surprise. And if I'm being honest, when it comes to test sets that were never actually issued to the public, finding them at all is a big deal, and getting number grades north of 1 is often a major triumph.

Some of the photos might be a bit hard to make out all of the details, since we're limited here in quantity and size. If you want better shots, you can look up the cert on PSA's website, which should give you some better pics to be able to read all of the tiny text and get a closer look at some of the graphics.

Hopefully everyone enjoys them as much as I do!

[D. Bergin]

Wow!

[Cliff Bowman]

I knew who was missing immediately without looking .

[raulus]

Originally Posted by Cliff Bowman

I knew who was missing immediately without looking .

HA.

I am missing Nolan Ryan. There was a graded version (I think PSA 8) in the same auction, and it went for more than I paid for the rest of the set. Maybe 1.5x what I paid. Plus since I really just wanted the McCovey, I wasn't going to bid on the Ryan at that price. But now that I have the rest of the set, I guess I'll need to figure out a way to pick up the Ryan.

[D. Bergin]

Just doing a cursory search, I can't imagine even a lower grade one would come up very often.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

Just doing a cursory search, I can't imagine even a lower grade one would come up very often.

Yeah. Based on the PSA pop reports the most common piece has pop 13 (Willie Davis, oddly enough), and the lowest is pop 7. So they're hard to find. And I don't think there's that many floating around in raw form. Probably still a few out there, but it's hard to imagine that there are very many.

Somewhat oddly, many that do exist graded very well. Of the 186 ever graded, 9% are PSA 10, 17% are PSA 9, and 19% are PSA 8. So they were well cared for over the last 50 years.