Prices of complete sets relative to singles

[Gorditadogg]

Originally Posted by Carter08

My main issue with set building, speaking from doing a gran total of 1 so far, is that it’s fairly annoying when there’s a card or two that just never pop up. I guess I need to have a few different balls in play to stay busy or pick a popular set.

Yep. What most people do to stay busy is come on Net54 and complain about random stuff.

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[bnorth]

Originally Posted by Gorditadogg

Yep. What most people do to stay busy is come on Net54 and complain about random stuff.

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It is their hobby.

When I put the 55 Bowman set together the shipping cost was a huge part of putting the set together. For me the fun of putting a set together is worth the extra cost of just buying a completed one.

[FrankWakefield]

Is there value for a set being intact? Yes. But it isn't monetary value. The value is in the self-satisfaction of having completed a set.

If it's all about the 'more money', then collect the cards that you like in a given set, then move on to a different set; don't "lower" the value by completing a set with cards you don't care about.

I recall when the sales tax in Kentucky was 3% when I was a kid. At some point, might have been 25 cents, the clerk would add a penny for tax. Hmmm, so if I bicycled over to the store that sold baseball cards, with enough coins to buy 8 packs (40 cents), then I'd make two trips through the cashier's line. 8 packs at once would cost 41 cents. Two purchases of 4 packs each would cost a total of 40 cents. THEN, to my outrage, in March of 1968, the Governor and state legislature got a law passed that would change the sales tax to 5%, and I think at 15 cents of a total sale they'd add the first penny of tax. I was shattered. Much of my early ball card money was from picking up Coke, Pepsi and RC bottles out of ditches on Saturday mornings. I'd get 4 cents for returning a Coke bottle, and 3 cents for the others. So a penny tax was frustrating to a bicycling kid. By 1968, paying a few cents occasionally for tax was not an insurmountable burden. But I still didn't like it.

[Jobu]

I am not a set collector, but in addition to the posts above talking about the enjoyment of putting together a set, there is also the issue of the total amount of money in a single transaction.

There are a lot more people whose budget allows them to buy a card/handful of cards here and there without going into the red on their bills that month than there are people whose budget allows them to spend what it takes to buy everything at once, even if it does come at a bit of a discount.

[GeoPoto]

Does anybody else question the OP's premise that "complete sets are regularly cheaper than the equivalent summed singles pricing"? I've never purchased a complete set, so I don't have a lot of relevant experience, but my recollection of the half-a-dozen-or-so instances where Mile High has run auctions that allowed bidding on the individual cards and the set is that the set won more often than not. My memory could be wrong, but I certainly remember "winning" a lot of individual cards only to be trumped by the high set-bidders.

[cardsagain74]

The online marketplace has changed everything too.

During the junk wax era, complete sets were priced more in line with the underlying breakup value. Sometimes even above it. Because there was a lot more demand for them. Mainly because building a set was quite tedious w/ only SCD, maybe a local card shop, and whatever shows you could make it to. Which, unless you lived in a big city, were often just 30 to 40 tables of Kevin Maas cards at the local VFW.

But with the ease of finding practically anything you need online, partials and commons have a much more popular marketplace than they did back then. Leading to many people going back to their childhood fun of putting a set together. Buying complete sets just isn't as popular anymore.

[cardsagain74]

Originally Posted by GeoPoto

Does anybody else question the OP's premise that "complete sets are regularly cheaper than the equivalent summed singles pricing"? I've never purchased a complete set, so I don't have a lot of relevant experience, but my recollection of the half-a-dozen-or-so instances where Mile High has run auctions that allowed bidding on the individual cards and the set is that the set won more often than not. My memory could be wrong, but I certainly remember "winning" a lot of individual cards only to be trumped by the high set-bidders.

He's right. I've been really involved in putting together a post-war run of vintage baseball sets in the last couple years, and it's usually more cost-efficient to buy them complete. Often not even that close.

There are a some exceptions ('64, '74, and especially '81 Topps come to mind), but not many. With individual star cards and partials in such demand, it doesn't take much for the pieces to cost more than the whole.

Especially when you have really expensive cadillac cards or high numbers for a set's era

[savedfrommyspokes]

Originally Posted by GeoPoto

Does anybody else question the OP's premise that "complete sets are regularly cheaper than the equivalent summed singles pricing"? I've never purchased a complete set, so I don't have a lot of relevant experience, but my recollection of the half-a-dozen-or-so instances where Mile High has run auctions that allowed bidding on the individual cards and the set is that the set won more often than not. My memory could be wrong, but I certainly remember "winning" a lot of individual cards only to be trumped by the high set-bidders.

Your memory is correct. Especially with graded sets, the sets seem to sell for more than the singles would cumulatively. Occasionally a bargain can be found. There was a near 1968 PSA baseball set with BP that finished around $20k (sans top 10 cards) in the recent Memory Lane auction. Obviously, over the past year, the cost/value of graded sets has increased due to the grading costs of commons.

Over the past year raw set prices seem to have doubled. For example, mid-grade 72 baseball sets could be had for around $1500, today the same set would bring $2500-3000.

[bks14sr]

I appreciate all the responses. I’ve so far only completed a few sets, as I primarily chased singles of interest. My recollection from past efforts were that complete sets did pull a premium. As mentioned, maybe that’s changed due to ease of finding singles these days, a few of the mentioned reasons, as well as the particular set being chased. I recently started making some changes in my collection and decided to get more liquid to chase bigger wants. I seem to change collection direction every so often, so it’s swaying me from chasing sets with current approach. I’ll start taking the less popular approach, buying complete sets as a start point, then replacing singles from there. Started pricing a sell of my mid grade 54T set, was surprised by the huge difference in complete comps to singles. It should be closer in my eyes.

My sets are uniform throughout, as I do cherry pick from large lot and single purchases. That’s more why I asked the original question. A direct sales comparison between selling a set and breaking out those same cards, I figured the value would lean towards the complete set. But I see most don’t have my same logic.

[cardsagain74]

Originally Posted by savedfrommyspokes

Your memory is correct. Especially with graded sets, the sets seem to sell for more than the singles would cumulatively. Occasionally a bargain can be found. There was a near 1968 PSA baseball set with BP that finished around $20k (sans top 10 cards) in the recent Memory Lane auction. Obviously, over the past year, the cost/value of graded sets has increased due to the grading costs of commons.

Over the past year raw set prices seem to have doubled. For example, mid-grade 72 baseball sets could be had for around $1500, today the same set would bring $2500-3000.

Complete sets have done better lately (relative to the underlying value), but your numbers are skewed. They haven't doubled in just the last year.

For the '72 you mentioned, a lot of ex+/ex-mt raw sets have gone for 2300-2400 on ebay in the last three months. A year ago, those sets would've sold for 1700-1800. And that's the type of 30-40% increase that I've seen across the board for many vintage sets. Anyone spending 3000 for a "mid grade" '72 really overpaid.

Plus the underlying breakup is still a bit higher than those recent sales. Even before factoring in the transaction costs of building one.