Shoeless Joe Jackson

[Bridwell]

Shoeless Joe's cards are vastly overpriced, in my opinion. I don't own any, and don't plan to.

Shoeless Joe has the perfect combination of hype: He's been immortalized in movies, had a great nickname, had some awesome talent and had a train wreck of a career. He was famous and infamous.

He was also left out of a lot of major card sets. So he's high demand in the sets he is in.

[rhettyeakley]

Pat, all of the "Black Sox" have one thing going for them, notoriety. For better or for worse we all know their names and they are a known entity. Compare that with your average "common" and it is no surprise that one would rather have a card of Swede Risberg or Hap Felsh than Chick Fewster or George Dauss. That novelty factor over the years has turned a lot of people to collecting them specifically. Now, collecting Black Sox cards has become one of the most popular niche collection out there.

When I first becan collecting pre-war there was only a slight premium for the Eddie Cicotte & Chick Gandil's versus a common in the T206 set--today that gap has widened significantly.

-Rhett

[mintacular]

For better or for worse we all know their names and they are a known entity. --So theoretically in future years Bonds and Arod would garner more attention/value due to their substance abuse? And wouldn't by this same logic Wagner be more desired if he was involved with a scandal? I guess waht I'm saying is that if Joe's accomplishments were good enough to stand on their own than this scandal should have hurt his collectability yet for some reason it has only helped him...I guess time heals some of these wounds and perhaps Bonds Rose and the like will be forgiven at some point

[rhettyeakley]

Pat, I'm not sure why it is hard to believe that notoriety or infamy of those breaking rules causes there to be much more interest than there otherwise would be. Some of the most valuable signatures belong to some of the lowest forms of life--John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, etc., etc.

As human beings we are strangely fascinated by those that break rules. I have one of the first few Beckett/Eckes price guides for baseball cards and in it sets like M101-4 where there are most major HOFers present Jackson is priced at about the same as Walter Johnson, and quite a bit less than Ty Cobb. Obviously, now, Jackson will outsell Cobb all day long. This being said, it is not a hard and fast rule that can be applied to everyone--take Gaylord Perry for example-he admittedly broke rules but isn't very well collected today and doubt he will be garnering any major following in the future--so I don't think Barry Bonds and ARod may be as well collected as you might think--there is nothing romantic about injecting steroids in your a**--however, working for a miserly owner that doesn't pay you very well does provide (to some people out there) a bit of justification for what the Black Sox did.

I agree with the poster above that stated the Black Sox are all vastly overrated BUT I can tell you they are quick sellers when you do have one--so the market (the buyers) have determined thay would rather have a Black Sox player than most HOFers within the same set. There are many that like to romanticize these guys as well, refusing to believe they did what they did. Honestly, barring the scandal a Buck Weaver card would sell for about the same as Jacques Fournier--so in the overall scheme of things Infamy has made some fairly common players into larger than life figures.

On a completely unrelated note...I was thinking about the 1919 White Sox the other day and I gotta admit I feel bad for Nemo Leibold -truly the forgotten 1919 White Sox -he was the only guy in the everyday starting lineup that is neither collected as a Black Sox card nor is in the HOF (Collins, Schalk)--too bad Nemo, you should have taken the money, then we'd all know your name!

[mintacular]

Thanks for you comments. I did not realize that the other "black sox" players were also widely collected...I guess there is no exact formula for how scandal will impact the collector demand for any given player as there are many other factors that are also in play...As someone else mentioned "Field of Dreams" definately seemed to launch these players into the stratsphere in regards to name recogntion.