I didn't even notice the E90-1 Jackson or the E90-3 Gandil. They were treated as commons. One thing I've definitely noticed about collecting in the 1970s vs. today is that there was much less of a premium for star players. One of the T202 Cobbs in Lerner's auction went for $9.51, the highest price of the group, but another one went for $5.55, about the same as several commons and not much more than the median for the whole group. I know that for many old-time collectors, it was considered gauche to pay more for for a star player if the card wasn't rare; all that mattered was whether you needed that card for your set, and whether it was hard to find relative to other cards in the siet. Among 1930s cards, there was no significant premium for HOFers except for the really big names, like Ruth and Gehrig, but even they would only go for maybe two or three times the price of a common. In Lerner's auction here, a 1939 Play Ball Ted Williams went for $11.35, less than twice what the commons went for. Today that is considered Williams's rookie card, and thus gets even more of a premium, but in the 1970s the concept of a "rookie card" was unknown. In the mid-70s, the 1952 Topps Mantle was going for maybe $15-$20 max, sometimes less; not until 1980 or so did it really start to take off, and that drove up prices for other star players, especially rookie cards.
Another thing that stands out in hobby publications from that era is how much advanced collectors sought out regional issues. In the first group of auction results above, note Rich Egan's auction of 1954 Dan-Dee potato chip cards, in which many commons went for over $10, more than almost any postwar Topps or Bowman card was going for at the time. Sets like Stahl-Meyer Franks were even more expensive by the standards of the time, sometimes going for $15-$20 a card, but I don't think very many people care about them today.
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01-09-2016, 12:39 PM
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