10K for a Young portrait in a 5

[griffon512]

Originally Posted by The Nasty Nati

There are 81 PSA 5s, 34 PSA 6s, 19 PSA 7s, 14 PSA 8s, and 1 PSA 9—For a total of 149 Cy Young Portraits graded 5 or higher. I can’t get the SGC pop report to work right now, but let’s say its roughy the same, and we throw in some raw examples that haven't been graded for good measure, that brings the total pop of Cy Young Portraits graded EX or better to nearly 300.

It’s a great card and one of my favorite portraits in the set, but when there are nearly 300 others out there with identical if not better appearance, I just don’t see how you can justify paying $10k…but what do I know.

Thanks for posting this data. I have a very difficult time justifying the price as well, but I think it highlights how important eye appeal is in getting premium pricing. I very much doubt there is anywhere near 300 cards in this pop with the level of eye appeal as that card. I would guess that less than 20% of same or higher graded Cy Young portraits have similar centering and registration as the one sold. Centering and central image quality are more important than corners to many collectors. In addition, I think a lot of intelligent and/or skeptical collectors are focusing on mid-grade cards because it's less likely they were "worked on" than cards graded 8-10.