M101-2 Supplements in Memory Lane

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Bliggity

I've been putting together the M101-2 set over the past couple of years. The ones in Memory Lane certainly had great eye appeal, but I believe this is just a function of people paying crazy money for PSA plastic. A couple years ago, there were a bunch of M101-2s that sold at auction (I think PWCC, but can't remember). It was the first round of PSA-graded M101-2s that I'd seen. They were all graded PSA A. It was clear that whoever had them graded just opted for authentication and not a grade. They still sold for 3x the price of a comparable raw copy. It made no sense to me. I imagine some of it must have been driven by registry lemmings given that M101-2s in PSA holders were very scarce. But there were also some non-registry purchasers who I thought at the time just flatly overpaid for no apparent reason. Since then, PSA A and PSA 1 copies have continued to rise, and based on the Memory Lane results are now more like 5-8x the price of a nice raw copy. Meanwhile, other nice M101-2s that are raw or in BGS holders are selling for maybe 1-2x their pre-pandemic prices.

I will admit that there's not much data here, so it's hard to know exactly what's up, but it just seems to me that it's another example of people paying up for plastic. I'll pass and wait for raw copies...I hope! I have no idea why someone would want a M101-2 graded in the first place.

I also acknowledge my bias as a M101-2 set builder who would like to continue to have access to reasonably-priced examples

Hi Dan,

I've been a coilector of the M101-2 set myself, just not paid attention much in recent year once I got 99 of the 100 supplements. And like you, I would much prefer to collect them raw, see no real need for getting them graded. i actually have two of them graded by Beckett, had in the earlier post said only one as I forgot about my 4.5 supplement of Harry Lord to go with my 1.0 supplement of Wajo/Street. A set collector is not going to worry about grading, especially when it comes to some of the double page team supplements. Don't believe any TPG has a holder for those anyway so not sure if they'd even try to grade them.

Anyway, I haven't been paying much attention to their prices for several years till I saw these ones from the ML auction this past week. Those are some insane prices, or so I thought, especially for PSA1s. I didn't even realize PSA had started grading these, any idea how long it has been? I knew Becket had been grading them all along, but never SGC for some odd reason. Still can't believe a PSA graded one would be worth that kind of a premium over a raw or Beckett graded version. It is obviously not normal set collectors, like you and I, pushing these prices, especially for just PSA1s. Unless it is a set collector(s) who want to put a PSA registry set together and figure to work on a set that no one else really has even started on yet. I guess that way they would be assured to have a top rated registry set just by having a PSA graded one when no one else has.

Just took a quick look at PSA's pop report for M101-2 supplements, and I was stunned again. They show only 102 graded supplements, in total, with none being graded higher than a 3!!!! And of the 102 graded in total, only 3 - 3s, and 4 - 2s (and of those 2s, one has a qualifier). There are 100 different supplements in the M101-2 set, and to date PSA has only graded 46 out of the 100 different supplements.

I was going to say that if it were the investors looking to buy into these M101-2s and pushing these prices so hard now, they would normally only go for the higher-end graded supplements. So why would they be spending so much on these PSA1s then? Well, based on the PSA pop report, I guess there really aren't any graded much higher. The Cobb/Wagner is one of the three highest graded, the Cobb is the second highest graded, the Jackson is one of the three highest graded, the Mathewson is one of the two highest graded, as is the Wagner also one of the two highest graded. So if some not-so-well informed investors are paying those kind of prices for M101-2s they think are literally the highest grades out there, based on PSAs current pop reports, they may be in for a surprise as I have to believe there a lot more, higher condition M101-2 supplements out there in the hands of collectors that couldn't care less about having them graded. Of course, with recent auction results like this for the M101-2 supplements, I guess that could start changing quickly.