Very Interesting How Certain Stars are valued

[oldeboo]

Somehow bias ends up getting built into the hobby. I just did a quick glance at Ted Williams vs. Mickey Mantle. Williams was a 93% first ballot Hall of Famer, while Mantle was at 88%. Williams was a 19x All Star(who missed WWII years) vs. Mantle at 20x. Williams 2x AL MVP vs. Mantle's 3x. Williams had a .344 BA vs. Mantle's .298. Mantle clearly had the edge on World Series Championships. You can compare the stats all you want, but yeah, they aren't THAT much different.

You can look at one snapshot of 1957 Topps that have a similar availability and the prices aren't similar at all. This was a time when both players were still popular, although at slightly different stages of their careers. As a baseline I looked at PSA 5 sold examples and Williams cards sell for around $200 give or take and the Mantle examples go in the $700 range. The Yankees factor? The World Series titles? I guess those factor in among other things, but the prices are interesting.