Gretzky future

[goldenage]

Great looking card frozeninferno. You can never go wrong with paying under or over for great looking cards, and thank you Irv.

[goldenage]

Just paid $560 for this one this month. Had to with this front and back centering on an 85 opc.

[goldenage]

Wrong photo, and don't know how to erase photos. Here's the right one.

[pootshwan]

Nice pickups gentleman. You can never go wrong with Gretzky.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Compare the pop on the Orr RC to the pops on the Gretzky RCs.

[FrozenInferno]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Compare the pop on the Orr RC to the pops on the Gretzky RCs.

The Gretzky RC has many, many times more examples in the pop than the Orr RC. In fact it's a pretty common card.

I'm a PSA guy so I haven't taken the time to check pops at BVG/SGC/KSA/etc but the last time I looked at the Gretzky at PSA I recall it was sitting above 6,000 for each of the OPC and the Topps. So over 12,000 combined, just in PSA holders. With more flooding in all the time. And any time you go on eBay there are lots of them available in pretty much any grade you could want.

The last time I checked the 1966 Topps Orr it was sitting around 980 total copies at PSA give or take. Again, I don't know the pops of the other graders but just looking at PSA there is roughly one Orr RC for every 12 or 13 Gretzky RCs. That is a pretty significant difference in scarcity. And when you go looking on eBay for one the pickings are very slim in comparison.

Grade for grade the Orr generally sells for about double of what the Gretzky OPC gets, so the scarcity definitely is a factor to some extent. Honestly it should probably be a much wider gap when there could be a 12x difference in supply, but I don't know if or when that will change. Any collector from any sport knows who Gretzky is even if they don't follow hockey at all. But they may not know who Orr is, how important he is to hockey history, or how scarce the RC is so it might remain undervalued forever.

I'm a proud owner of both the Topps Orr and OPC Gretzky RCs and although I love both (and am in the camp that Gretzky is the undisputed GOAT) I appreciate my beater Orr a lot more. It's a true grail card.

[goldenage]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Compare the pop on the Orr RC to the pops on the Gretzky RCs.

This doesn't always apply in the hockey card world.

Look at the scarcity between 1971 opc hockey and 1971 bazooka hockey.
Same cards (a little smaller for bazooka), but very few collect bazooka and everyone collects opc. There are bazookas on ebay that just sit and sit and sit and never sell. Plenty of guys have the money to go after them, but they don't.

Look at the scarcity between 1955 parkhurst and 1955 quaker oats. Very few go after the less common quaker oats.

I would assume that everyone in the 55 and above range want some kind of Orr. I would assume that every child who was around during the card boom in the 80s will be more likely to buy a Lemieux or Gretzky before they think about an Orr.

Gretzky's are abundant, but Orr's come up all the time as well. And a Gretzky rookie card purchase is not an easy one. There are so many poorly centered ones in holders they are not even worth looking at.