Ruth sporting news psa 4 rookie in REA

[griffon512]

some previous posters have alluded to this, but i think the debate boils down to the REA PSA 4 Ruth having poor eye appeal relative to comps in the view of most auction bidders. don't get me wrong, it's a tremendous card and i would love to go back in time with the foresight to buy it 5 years ago...but the greatest foresight would have been to go back in time and buy only high eye appeal rookie or early year cards of iconic players.

absent any major flaws, the biggest drivers of attractiveness of a card are centering and image quality. both have gotten progressively more important recently, where the premiums on high eye appeal and discounts on low eye appeal are more pronounced. we see examples of this all over the place in recent auctions of high end cards. e.g., look at the premiums t206 cobbs are getting with strong centering and registration. same goes for ruth goudeys, and countless other high end cards. on the flip side, a poorly centered mantle psa 6 rookie went for ~$9,900 in lelands (https://lelands.com/bids/bidplace?itemid=84399), probably $5k less than what a well centered example would have gotten. obviously the higher dollar value the card is, the bigger the $ impact is going to be for high eye appeal vs. low eye appeal.

unlike some post-war iconic players, i don't see any consistent signs of a slowdown in prices in mid-range and high-end ruth cards that have high eye appeal currently. it's the opposite. in addition i think this higher premium/discount on eye appeal will continue, because it's become accepted practice by collectors and investors to not let vcp or smr dictate prices when eye appeal in both directions deviates greatly from the norm. high eye appeal is a way that the hobby has created greater scarcity value in the same way a third party grade has in the past, and i think that trend is here to stay!