Theories About the Existence of High Grade Vintage

[mybuddyinc]

Agree with what Luke and Ken said -- scrap books, shoe boxes, etc.

I think that, say cards that were produced in 1910, that are high grade today were high grade in 1915. Those were the ones NOT "played" with. The cards that are low grade today, again, were low grade by 1915. Those were the ones traded, shoved in pockets, went through the wash, etc., etc.

Although I mainly deal with lower to mid grade cards, I have handled a few higher grade ones. These cards are actually, imo, quite durable little pieces of card board. You would have to blatantly fold them in half to get a crease, or bang them very hard to mess up a corner. Conversely, once a "handled" card is wrinkled, a wrinkle can turn into a crease with more handling, as well as a corner ding turn into corner wear.

Well, that didn't add much.

[mechanicalman]

All great answers, guys, and very logical. I knew about scrapbooking, but I guess I thought (wrongly) that those mainly ended up as 1s and A's because of torn or glue-stained backs. But it makes sense that some of those were removed with no trace of the residue.

Thanks, jsq, for the history. Man that would have been fun to be a part of. Would make a great article or short story.

My faith is starting to be restored.

[sforaker]

Great topic. Fascinating and well articulated historical perspective, jsq, thank you. This perspective provides some heartening balanced perspective to the very legitimate concerns about trimming and altering.

[Peter_Spaeth]

So why is it that old time dealers who have handled countless thousands of T and E cards have told me they NEVER encountered cards that would grade 8 or 9? Or that it was an extremely rare occasion?

[jsq]

Peter,

i banged out the article relating what was found on the hotel buying trips and did not take the time to CLEARLY describe everything related to older cards condition. i will try to clear up a point on condition related to your question.

you are correct, their was not much in the way of 8 and 9 e and t cards ie pre 1930 stuff. from talking with knowledgable people i gather that the printing technology left something to be desired as the first problem. lots of cards from pre 1930 but the condition was much lower ie most stuff peaked out as best i can recall compared to today in the e 7 and 8 range. with lots of stuff psa 2 - 5.

the cards from if i would guess 1955- 1965 had tons of psa 8,9, and 10 material available to the hotel buying groups. you have to remember also, the cards the hotel buying groups sold in 1976, 1977, and 1978 were to collectors NOT KIDS. as such the stuff found in great condition ie pre 1960 era cards stayed in the condition they were found for the most part from those 1975 era hotel buying trips. they were saved for posterity by the hotel buying groups. as you drop back in years that grade availablility did of course continually slip. the older the card the weaker condition as one would expect.

nonetheless i have looked at the psa site and stats and would say i am not the least surprised by what they report. and then you also have sgc who has graded a lot of cards.

since i got out of cards for the most part in 1978 or so my knowledge of psa grades comes from the vicarious thrill i receive from viewing auction catalogs and looking at cards for sale on ebay. i am not a grading expert but have spent many hundreds of hours viewing cards online and in auction catalogs besides occasionally attending a national and meeting up with old acquaintances and have some understanding of modern grading.

my wife and i have donated the bulk of our wealth to charities including some non bb card related collections to various museums. we do not wish to own stuff anymore. been their done that. but that is not true with most people. some of the great bb card collections put together in the mid 70's are still in those collectors hands. i am talking about people who assembled primarily 1933 - 1965 sets in 1976 - 1978.

in regards to the comment that it was extremely rare to find e and t cards in psa 8 grade, i would say back in 1975 "seldom" to encounter what today would be an e or t card as a psa 8 would be an accurate description. but not extremely rare or even rare occasion to those who did a lot of hotel buying trips. some groups did upwards of 100 cities. in regards to hotel buying trips i was peanuts i did 3 as i got into it at the very tail end. the volume that was brought into the hobby was incredible and took years to work off. their was no way to sell all the cards for years to come that these hotel buying trips uncovered.

another thing many do not realize is that many great collections built in the 70's from these hotel buying trips are still in collectors hands and have never been slabbed. my friend mike, long since passed to the great bb diamond in the sky, sold what were likely his duplicate sets to mr mint and those were hailed as one of the great buys for condition of all time at the time in the 1990's.

my stuff was sold before the hobby took off, i needed the money and fortunately life worked out for me.

many others kept their cards that they purchased from the hotel buying group buyers and those cards, which were old cards in 1976, have not been seen by the hobby, ever! i have visited with some of my old friends over the years and some of them still have those cards they bought back in the mid 70's.

hope that helps clear up a bit.

jsq

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

So why is it that old time dealers who have handled countless thousands of T and E cards have told me they NEVER encountered cards that would grade 8 or 9? Or that it was an extremely rare occasion?

[Peter_Spaeth]

I agree with you, 50s and 60s is an entirely different animal.

[Luke]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

So why is it that old time dealers who have handled countless thousands of T and E cards have told me they NEVER encountered cards that would grade 8 or 9? Or that it was an extremely rare occasion?

8s and 9s are either untouched for decades (Black Swamp find for instance) or doctored. I'd guess the ratio is around 1:99

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by LukeLyon

8s and 9s are either untouched for decades (Black Swamp find for instance) or doctored. I'd guess the ratio is around 1:99

Right, and the OP's question was about 8s and 9s.

"Since re-entering the hobby a few years ago, the thing that has most blown my mind is the existence of extremely high grade vintage cards. I'm talking about T206s in 8 and 9s, Goudeys in 9, and even a '34 Goudey Gehrig in Gem MT 10 coming to auction from Heritage."

[hangman62]

Jsq

well said !

[trdcrdkid]

Prompted by a query on this board from jsq, I recently went through every issue from the first five years of Sports Collectors Digest, from its inception in October 1973 to late 1978. (My recent post about 1973 card auction prices was one result.) One thing that SCD often did in those days was reprint newspaper articles about card collecting, of which there were a lot in the mid-70s as the hobby was starting to take off. Many of these articles focused on a single collector and appeared in his local paper. It wasn't unusual for these articles to mention that the collector had 20,000 or 50,000 cards, and several of them mention the hotel buying trips. I was just a kid at the time, and I remember hearing about such things after I got seriously interested in collecting in 1975-76, but there was no way I could have afforded anything like that on my 50 cents a week allowance.

One other interesting thing I found was articles in the mid-1970s decrying inflation in the hobby, even though any inflation up to that time was nothing compared to what was to come a few years later. Dave Meiners, a columnist for SCD, wrote a long two-part article in early 1974 ripping all the newcomers who didn't really care about the hobby and were causing prices to go up. He included a chart showing the year-by-year rise in prices of common cards from a bunch of popular sets, going from 1966 to December 1973. (I don't have it in front of me, but I think the average price of T206 commons went from something like 14 cents to 76 cents during that time, according to Meiners.) Then Dave Goldsman wrote a long follow-up article for the June 30, 1976 SCD, in which he extended Meiners' chart by going back through hobby publications from the previous two years and calculating common card prices for each of 60 sets every month from January 1974 to May 1976, and using these to create a "baseball card price index" with January 1974 being 100. He found that the index was at 161 in May 1976, meaning that card prices on average had risen by 60% in a little over two years, though individual sets varied quite a bit. The average T206 common sold for 83.7 cents in January 1974 but only 80 cents in January 1976. He had a chart showing the average price of some popular sets (1950-55 Bowman, 1951-74 Topps, 1959 Fleer, T206, 1970-72 Kelloggs) every three months over the two year period.

Three months after Goldsman's article, the September 30, 1976 SCD had an announcement of Jim Beckett's card price survey, which he was going to distribute at the upcoming Twin Cities card convention and by mail to anybody who wanted to fill it out. The results of Beckett's first survey were published in SCD in 1977, and the results of the second one were published in 1978, before Beckett and Dennis Eckes started publishing the Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide in 1979.

Oh, and Bill Mastro was all over SCD in 1976, with ads in almost every issue and an occasional article. In the September 15, 1976 issue he was selling a T206 set in vg condition, minus Wagner, Plank, and Magie, for $900.

[1880nonsports]

Thanks

[jsq]

really neat to see the research you listed from past hobby issues. i provides some interesting perspective.

thanks and all the best,
jsq

Originally Posted by trdcrdkid

Prompted by a query on this board from jsq, I recently went through every issue from the first five years of Sports Collectors Digest, from its inception in October 1973 to late 1978. (My recent post about 1973 card auction prices was one result.) One thing that SCD often did in those days was reprint newspaper articles about card collecting, of which there were a lot in the mid-70s as the hobby was starting to take off. Many of these articles focused on a single collector and appeared in his local paper. It wasn't unusual for these articles to mention that the collector had 20,000 or 50,000 cards, and several of them mention the hotel buying trips. I was just a kid at the time, and I remember hearing about such things after I got seriously interested in collecting in 1975-76, but there was no way I could have afforded anything like that on my 50 cents a week allowance.

One other interesting thing I found was articles in the mid-1970s decrying inflation in the hobby, even though any inflation up to that time was nothing compared to what was to come a few years later. Dave Meiners, a columnist for SCD, wrote a long two-part article in early 1974 ripping all the newcomers who didn't really care about the hobby and were causing prices to go up. He included a chart showing the year-by-year rise in prices of common cards from a bunch of popular sets, going from 1966 to December 1973. (I don't have it in front of me, but I think the average price of T206 commons went from something like 14 cents to 76 cents during that time, according to Meiners.) Then Dave Goldsman wrote a long follow-up article for the June 30, 1976 SCD, in which he extended Meiners' chart by going back through hobby publications from the previous two years and calculating common card prices for each of 60 sets every month from January 1974 to May 1976, and using these to create a "baseball card price index" with January 1974 being 100. He found that the index was at 161 in May 1976, meaning that card prices on average had risen by 60% in a little over two years, though individual sets varied quite a bit. The average T206 common sold for 83.7 cents in January 1974 but only 80 cents in January 1976. He had a chart showing the average price of some popular sets (1950-55 Bowman, 1951-74 Topps, 1959 Fleer, T206, 1970-72 Kelloggs) every three months over the two year period.

Three months after Goldsman's article, the September 30, 1976 SCD had an announcement of Jim Beckett's card price survey, which he was going to distribute at the upcoming Twin Cities card convention and by mail to anybody who wanted to fill it out. The results of Beckett's first survey were published in SCD in 1977, and the results of the second one were published in 1978, before Beckett and Dennis Eckes started publishing the Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide in 1979.

Oh, and Bill Mastro was all over SCD in 1976, with ads in almost every issue and an occasional article. In the September 15, 1976 issue he was selling a T206 set in vg condition, minus Wagner, Plank, and Magie, for $900.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by LukeLyon

8s and 9s are either untouched for decades (Black Swamp find for instance) or doctored. I'd guess the ratio is around 1:99

+1--what more is there to say?

Larry

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by ls7plus

+1--what more is there to say?

Larry

Plenty because most people, I think, don't believe it. How great (or not) would it be if some day one of our beloved superstar card doctors actually confessed the extent of what they (and others) have done in terms of crimes against the hobby.

[JRO$!(]

I really appreciate your post and contribution to our hobby!

I believe you could easily write a large book filled w/adventures about

the hotel buying trips and friendships w/other card collector/dealers.

j

[Jantz]

Originally Posted by mybuddyinc

Agree with what Luke and Ken said -- scrap books, shoe boxes, etc.

I think that, say cards that were produced in 1910, that are high grade today were high grade in 1915. Those were the ones NOT "played" with. The cards that are low grade today, again, were low grade by 1915. Those were the ones traded, shoved in pockets, went through the wash, etc., etc.

Although I mainly deal with lower to mid grade cards, I have handled a few higher grade ones. These cards are actually, imo, quite durable little pieces of card board. You would have to blatantly fold them in half to get a crease, or bang them very hard to mess up a corner. Conversely, once a "handled" card is wrinkled, a wrinkle can turn into a crease with more handling, as well as a corner ding turn into corner wear.

Well, that didn't add much.

I agree with the NOT "played" with theory.

Growing up in Ohio meant snow on the ground on Christmas day. So on Christmas I would open up my toys, maybe assemble them or put the decals on and place them back in their box for when Spring came and I could go outside and play with them or I would play with them inside the house and when Spring came, I was ready for something else like riding my bike or fishing. So my toys received little abuse, if any.

My Mother (Thanks Mom! ) kept all my childhood toys and sports cards.

So I decided that over this winter I would sell my childhood toys. I called my Mother and told her that I would be getting all my toys out of her attic and selling them. Some of the toys I brought home were 40 year old toys still in their original box.

Finding 80+ year old cards in near-mint condition doesn't sound crazy to me.


Jantz