The Willie Mays price boom

[Gorditadogg]

Originally Posted by rats60

Mays RC PSA 8 264k
Clemente RC PSA 8 99k
Aaron RC PSA 8 64k

Mays cards were about the same as Mantle cards until NY dealers bought them up in the mid 80s driving prices of Mantle up. Mantle has been increasing at a higher rate than Mays for ~35 years, but in the last 2 years Mays has separated himself from Clemente and Aaron and is closing the gap on Mantle.

There are far more Aaron rookies than Mays, which accounts for much of the price difference between those cards. There are only 59 52T Mays cards in PSA 8 and 193 54T Aarons. Also, the fact that the 52T set is the gold standard for many collectors probably creates more demand for those cards.

Looking at an early year for both players, the 1957 Topps cards of both players in PSA 8 most recently sold for about $4500. You can check some other years and grades and I think you will find the prices between Mays and Aaron are pretty close.

[Kutcher55]

I would say Mays and Aaron are pretty close to parity in terms of like-for-like pricing. You can't compare the 51/52 Mays to the 54 Hank because of pop counts. To do a fair comparison you really need to get into the late 50s and beyond and it's pretty close.

I don't think vintage is booming anymore. It's probably inevitable with the market tanking and crypto crapping the bed that vintage is going to take a bit of a hit this year. I have seen signs of weakness and have sold quite a bit, although you can't have my Yastrzemskis and I don't want to let go of my Aaron RC either even if it might decline some.

I am probably in the minority but I put Henry above Willie in the Pantheon. Hank had a higher lifetime BA, and is the HR King*, the RBI King, the total base King, and had more hits, greater durability. Willie leads the War battle 156-143 and OPS .940 to .928. It's pretty close and you could make a case for either. I prefer Aaron's place in history and he also had a certain class that is hard for Mays to duplicate, not that Willie lacks class.

Some people think Willie's cards will go even higher when he passes on and I'm not so sure about that.

The '52 Topps Mays is a special card to me and it has really exploded in value in the last two years. I'll take it any day of the week over the Bowman issues. Heck I hope they all keep going up but I'm not so sure. I cringe a bit when I see guys selling vintage with the sales pitch that "it's only gonna keep going up." I am tempted to call them out on this assertion but I like to avoid internet battles whenever possible, despite them being somewhat enjoyable and a way to pass the time.

[cardsagain74]

The thing about the '52 T Mays is that not only was it a total buyers' market for that card before the pandemic (one of my simplest acquisitions early on during my set build at the beginning of 2020), but it also took a long time to participate much in the pandemic boom.

Al or others, is there any truth to that card being triple-printed for a semi-high? I still remember the story of the huge number of them in the mr. mint high number find. Regardless, it seemed to be treated that way.

Then once it eventually went nuts in as 2020 wore on, we were getting close to the Feb '21 peak. Reminded me of how the stock market sometimes acts during a bubble....when the former dogs of the market start getting bought up like the leaders, you know you might be near a top.

[Touch'EmAll]

Heritage auction closes in couple days. I have a few bids in the serious yet reasonable realm, see how it goes. Am tracking many cards and will be interesting to see the closing prices and the state of the current market.

[NYYFan63]

Originally Posted by Touch'EmAll

Heritage auction closes in couple days. I have a few bids in the serious yet reasonable realm, see how it goes. Am tracking many cards and will be interesting to see the closing prices and the state of the current market.

Same here - good luck!


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[jsfriedm]

Heritage will definitely be interesting. A lot of prices for key vintage cards are still well below the prices of the last 18 months. If some of them hold, it could be a bit of an inflection point.

[IndyDave]

Well I was the winner of the SGC 1.5 1952 Topps Mays in the Heritage auction. Never would have thought in a million years that I would win a Heritage auction. The higher end stuff always was something that was out of my league.

Willie was the last card I needed for my low number run. I have much regret for passing on many better conditioned versions a few years ago. I committed a few months ago to getting the best version of the card I could in the low $4k range - and I succeeded here.

We will see how I feel when I have the card in hand. Whenever I win an auction of this magnitude there is the immediate feeling of I overpaid - if no one else was willing to go this high, then I must've overpaid....

I'm now going to focus on filling out some other sets where every card should be available for much less than this. LOL.