Auction psychology

[raulus]

Originally Posted by BobC

Don't disagree at all, just don't really get why his '54 card would sell for less than his '62. IMO the '54 is a much better looking card to begin with. There are many people who are not real crazy about the wood grain effect on '62 Topps cards to begin with. And the '54 set also marks the first Topps cards they actually used real player photos on, so there is that added extra as well.

As I said, the pop reports don't seem to offer a reasonable explanation for such a price difference at all. What does possibly help explain it is if the high grade '62s have been hoarded in the recent past and not showing up for sale, as you mentioned. In which case, that difference could be due to two collectors just waiting a long time to finally find a high grade '62 Mays card for sale, and both went after it. Which actually just reinforces my original point that I don't think it was primarily the pop reports alone that explain the differences in the prices paid for those two different Mays cards.

Upon further reflection, and looking at some of the historical results a bit closer now, I may have over-stated the pricing differential here, pre-pandemic at least.

For example, at PSA 8, the 1954 Mays pretty routinely sold for about $3k-$4k. Same grade for 1962 was around $3.5k to $5.5k. Still a premium, but probably closer to 20-30%.

I'm not entirely sure that you can necessarily explain it just based on pop counts and aesthetics. For better or worse, the market tends to take on a life of its own, and often the results aren't as explainable as we might like. I guess if we were really adventurous, we could go out and take short positions on the 62, and long positions on the 54 so as to arbitrage and drive the pricing to a relative spot where we think makes more sense. But in the process, we might lose our shirts!