Charleston v. Clemente

[Peter_Spaeth]

For better or worse, other than Paige perhaps, the great Negro League players just aren't known or appreciated or desired by most people who collect, let alone the general public It doesn't surprise me at all, or suggest Clemente is overpriced.

[aljurgela]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

For better or worse, other than Paige perhaps, the great Negro League players just aren't known or appreciated or desired by most people who collect, let alone the general public It doesn't surprise me at all, or suggest Clemente is overpriced.

I just happen to believe that more SHOULD care, but I guess that is a matter of personal opinion and preference...

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by aljurgela

I just happen to believe that more SHOULD card, but I guess that is a matter of personal opinion and preference...

no disagreement there

[quinnsryche]

MOST collectors/fans DO know who Clemente is.
MOST collectors/fans DON'T know who Charleston is.
Plain and simple, fame dictates pricing & availability.

[Exhibitman]

I don’t think it is fair to compare anyone with Clemente and Robinson. They aren’t just loved they are revered for reasons that transcend sports.

As for the NL cards, it is part of the obscurity vs rarity debate. It is a spectrum that often frustrates me. Why does a card that is so much rarer sell for less?

[aljurgela]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

I don’t think it is fair to compare anyone with Clemente and Robinson. They aren’t just loved they are revered for reasons that transcend sports.

As for the NL cards, it is part of the obscurity vs rarity debate. It is a spectrum that often frustrates me. Why does a card that is so much rarer sell for less?

Fair point Adam... but if I did the analysis on someone else (let's say Reggie Jackson or Nolan Ryan), I am pretty confident that the results would be the same.... no?

[Leon]

Originally Posted by aljurgela

Fair point Adam... but if I did the analysis on someone else (let's say Reggie Jackson or Nolan Ryan), I am pretty confident that the results would be the same.... no?

All of the points made are very good ones (and great research and debate too.) It really comes down to what has already been mentioned, demand. I have collected a few rare cards but rarity alone just doesn't escalate the value the way demand does.

.

[egbeachley]

Originally Posted by quinnsryche

MOST collectors/fans DO know who Clemente is.
MOST collectors/fans DON'T know who Charleston is.
Plain and simple, fame dictates pricing & availability.

Clearly that's it. Also add in the fact many many more fans have seen Clemente play. So, while I like the market capitalization theory you posed, you should only compare players from the same era. And if you compare to a Yankee, drop them 30% because they get overhyped

I consider myself an average baseball fan. So, without looking, I tried to name as many players primarily from the Negro Leagues as I could. Josh Gibson, Satchell Paige, Cool Papa Bell, ummmmm that's it. Dang, I must have forgotten some. But Oscar Charleston - never heard of him. Looked him up in Wiki and see that Bill James lists him as 4th best player ever. Really? OK, that may be too high because the reason Wiki mentions that is because it was the highest. But I respect Bill James' work so if not 4th it's likely high nonetheless.

Regarding the sets mentioned like Punch, is there a dedicated thread to those sets on this Board? Like number of known cards in the set, how many known cards exist of each player, any short prints, scans all in one place, etc. I love it when the obscure sets are documented in one thread. Of course the experts may want to hold back on some information as they may still be trying to complete the set.

[darwinbulldog]

I don't think "short print" really has much meaning when you're discussing sets like Punch. http://www.oldcardboard.com/foreign/...cardsetID=1016

[egbeachley]

Originally Posted by darwinbulldog

I don't think "short print" really has much meaning when you're discussing sets like Punch. http://www.oldcardboard.com/foreign/...cardsetID=1016

Agree and I hesitated when typing that. Just because there are fewer examples of a card doesn't mean it isnt from random distribution and random survival rates. But I wasn't referring to just the Punch set.

[obcbobd]

I don't think this is the main reason(s), which others have outlined in this post, but the 1955 Topps Clemente is a beautiful card, and in a well loved set that many collectors are pursuing. I don't think any of the Charleston cards can aesthetically compare.

Now if he had been in the 33 Goudey set...

[Scocs]

We should keep things in perspective, however. It’s not just Negro League baseball, but all old time baseball.

Sure, everyone has heard of Babe Ruth (cultural icon) and Lou Gehrig (disease). How many people know who Christy Mathewson was? Nap Lajoie? Hell, even Honus Wagner if they’ve never collected baseball cards. The same could be said for the vast majority of baseball players who played prior to 1980. Maybe even prior to 2000.

That’s the truth. But at least as far as reference material goes, there’s no shortage of it — people just have to experience it. Not to sound geocentric, but I wish the Negro League Baseball museum were on the east coast and not in Kansas City because I would absolutely love to visit it in a regular basis, and get all my friends to join me.

[triwak]

These are my cards. Which one do you think, that I value more? (Sorry, just being silly - good discussion, here).

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by egbeachley

Clearly that's it. Also add in the fact many many more fans have seen Clemente play. So, while I like the market capitalization theory you posed, you should only compare players from the same era. And if you compare to a Yankee, drop them 30% because they get overhyped

I consider myself an average baseball fan. So, without looking, I tried to name as many players primarily from the Negro Leagues as I could. Josh Gibson, Satchell Paige, Cool Papa Bell, ummmmm that's it. Dang, I must have forgotten some. But Oscar Charleston - never heard of him. Looked him up in Wiki and see that Bill James lists him as 4th best player ever. Really? OK, that may be too high because the reason Wiki mentions that is because it was the highest. But I respect Bill James' work so if not 4th it's likely high nonetheless.

Regarding the sets mentioned like Punch, is there a dedicated thread to those sets on this Board? Like number of known cards in the set, how many known cards exist of each player, any short prints, scans all in one place, etc. I love it when the obscure sets are documented in one thread. Of course the experts may want to hold back on some information as they may still be trying to complete the set.

The problem with ranking Charleston that high, to me, is that there is really no evidentiary foundation to justify that ranking, through no fault of the negro league players themselves. The negro league teams included, in their schedules, games against semi-pro teams, as well as against other negro league teams. What we are left with, to the best of my knowledge, is hearsay 10-20X over, myth, and legend. Not a basis for actual ranking of the greatest players of all time (which certainly does not impute any fault to the players themselves, as they would be the very last ones to blame for this deficit). While James disclaims political correctness in his rankings, I believe, respectfully, that inclusion of such players on his list is precisely the result of that factor. I saw Mantle play in his prime in the early '60's, and you simply couldn't convince me that Oscar Charleston was the better player.

Mike Trout comes the closest I've seen to Mantle, yet while very, very fast, isn't quite as fast (Mantle was clocked running from home to first at 3.0 seconds from the left side, and 3.1 from the right); has fine power, but certainly not equivalent to the Mick's (Mantle homered every 12.5 times at bat for ten years, from '55 through '64, when still in his prime; Trout is clouting them once every 17 times at bat while in his prime; and Trout doesn't have the tape-measure power to all fields that Mantle had. Combine Trout with Judge re the latter, make Trout a bit faster, and you'd have Mantle in his prime. Oscar Charleston a better player than that? I truly doubt it.

Just sayin',

Larry

[Exhibitman]

The problem isn't just one thing. In no particular order:

--Rarity vs. obscurity: The Charleston v. Clemente example is extreme but there are plenty of examples among the Clemente cards that are rarer than a 1955 Topps. The early Kahn's cards and the 1962 Pittsburgh Exhibit come right to mind. But those are relatively obscure cards and people don't chase them except as needed for a registry quest. A Topps RC will slaughter them at auction despite the relative rarity. Rare is fun but when it shades into obscurity, you are SOL.

--Set significance: 1955 Topps, one of the Topps Golden Age sets. 52-56 Topps is about as high profile as T206 and 1933 Goudey. These are the classics, the 'Yellow Submarine' of cards. When I saw Ringo and his allstar band some years ago, he prefaced YS with a speech about how everyone knows this song from grandmums to their grandkids. Same idea in card-world.

--Lack of population: call this the collectability factor. People just don't value what they can't hope to own. I've never gotten into NL collecting because I know that I will never own a Cuban Charleston card, a vintage Josh Gibson RPPC, a Punch card, etc., unless one falls into my lap. I have no deep interest in what I cannot ever collect. Casual interest as a curious collector, sure, desire to know what it is in case I stumble across one in a junk shop, absolutely, but not more than that. But a 1955 Clemente, I have one, and I could conceivably find a nicer one in some collection I purchase.

[aljurgela]

Originally Posted by egbeachley

Clearly that's it. Also add in the fact many many more fans have seen Clemente play. So, while I like the market capitalization theory you posed, you should only compare players from the same era. And if you compare to a Yankee, drop them 30% because they get overhyped

I consider myself an average baseball fan. So, without looking, I tried to name as many players primarily from the Negro Leagues as I could. Josh Gibson, Satchell Paige, Cool Papa Bell, ummmmm that's it. Dang, I must have forgotten some. But Oscar Charleston - never heard of him. Looked him up in Wiki and see that Bill James lists him as 4th best player ever. Really? OK, that may be too high because the reason Wiki mentions that is because it was the highest. But I respect Bill James' work so if not 4th it's likely high nonetheless.

Regarding the sets mentioned like Punch, is there a dedicated thread to those sets on this Board? Like number of known cards in the set, how many known cards exist of each player, any short prints, scans all in one place, etc. I love it when the obscure sets are documented in one thread. Of course the experts may want to hold back on some information as they may still be trying to complete the set.

I have a YouTube Video on the Punch cards and there are less than 100 graded, yes so every card is a super short print.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khfYeqNzrAk&t=25s

By the way, I have most of the scans of the Punch cards that I have (roughly 70% of the set) on the SGC registry.

Also, a few other points. Bill James mentions the talent in the Negro League and defers to the experts who pretty uniformly choose Oscar Charleston as the best the league had to offer. Recall that we are talking about a league that, shortly after its demise produced, Aaron, Mays, Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, etc.... meaning that certainly all the negro league players at the turn of the century and prior to integration had some amazing talents. Even the Major Leaguers themselves are quoted as saying as much. But in the end few people know about this sub segment of baseball.

Based on some of the other conversation, it may make sense to compare Charleston to another player that a lot of current baseball fans do not know... like Eddie Collins or someone like that to see the results.

Anyway, lots of great conversation and opinions and I thank everyone for sharing.

[aljurgela]

By the way, here are the other two cards of Charleston (the Aguilitas one was already shown)

Pop reports (to the conductibility issue) from both PSA and SGC

Billiken 10
Tomas Gutierrez 7
Aguilitas 10

[rats60]

Originally Posted by aljurgela

I have a YouTube Video on the Punch cards and there are less than 100 graded, yes so every card is a super short print.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khfYeqNzrAk&t=25s

By the way, I have most of the scans of the Punch cards that I have (roughly 70% of the set) on the SGC registry.

Also, a few other points. Bill James mentions the talent in the Negro League and defers to the experts who pretty uniformly choose Oscar Charleston as the best the league had to offer. Recall that we are talking about a league that, shortly after its demise produced, Aaron, Mays, Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, etc.... meaning that certainly all the negro league players at the turn of the century and prior to integration had some amazing talents. Even the Major Leaguers themselves are quoted as saying as much. But in the end few people know about this sub segment of baseball.

Based on some of the other conversation, it may make sense to compare Charleston to another player that a lot of current baseball fans do not know... like Eddie Collins or someone like that to see the results.

Anyway, lots of great conversation and opinions and I thank everyone for sharing.

What experts are those? It certainly isn't a point that I have ever heard expect from Bill James. Everything that I have heard was that Josh Gibson was the best player and Paige was the best pitcher. They were the 1st two elected to the HoF. Charleston was 7th although he probably should have been elected sooner.

I agree with the point above about relying too much on reputation or opinion. Orlando Cepeda who played with Mays and Aaron, said Clemente was the best player that he ever saw. Mays said that other than himself, Clemente was the best player he had seen. There are others who offer similar praise about Mays, Mantle, Aaron, Clemente, etc. We also hear similar praise for top Negro League players.

The price of Clemente's cards are a product of his greatness on and off the field. Charleston's prices have nothing to do with Clemente or any comparison to him. It is a combination of not having a card in an iconic set, not playing in the majors and a lack of information in general about him or his career.

[aljurgela]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

no disagreement there

it is what it is though... at least we are on the same page there....

[Baseball Rarities]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

For better or worse, other than Paige perhaps, the great Negro League players just aren't known or appreciated or desired by most people who collect, let alone the general public

I would add Josh Gibson to that list as well.

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by Baseball Rarities

I would add Josh Gibson to that list as well.

The general public knows Jackie Robinson. They do not know Satchel Paige. And they definitely do not know Josh Gibson.

Edited to add: I see you meant among people who collect. There I don't know. Could be. Most of them know who Derek Jeter is, probably Paige, maybe Gibson, but I didn't know about Gibson until I was an adult, so if I had to guess I would still say that most collectors don't know of him and, in particular, aren't interested in adding a Gibson card to their collections.