Steve Carlton Rookie worth so little

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by rats60

The last two sales on Carlton RC in PSA 7, 475 and 540. Tiant in PSA 7 is a 100.00 card.

I think Carlton pitching too long also hurts the value of his card. A lot of collectors remember the 1985-1988 Carlton and not the 1972-1982 Carlton. In the earlier days of the hobby, it was definitely priced stronger versus other superstar rookie cards. It used to be the key card in the 1965 Topps set. Now it is behind base cards of Mantle, Mays, Clemente, Koufax, Aaron and Rose as well as the Morgan RC.

Not sure if you noticed, but I was talking about PSA 8, not PSA 7 for the Luis Tiant vs. Steve Carlton comparison.

If you look at sold items on ebay's website (not PSA's, which lags by a few months) you will see a Luis Tiant PSA 8 sold for $796 on December 1st.

Meanwhile, a PSA 8 Carlton #477 sold for $777 on December 13th.

The fact that Tiant is remotely close to Carlton in price is surprising to me, no offense to the great Luis Tiant.

[Rad_Hazard]

I never understood why his cards were always so cheap either. One of the greatest LHP of all time.

My first introduction to him was 1994 in the throws of my newly found baseball and card addiction. It was this interview called "Thin Mountain Air"...

https://deadspin.com/thin-air-in-the...d-co-478492324

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by Rad_Hazard

I never understood why his cards were always so cheap either. One of the greatest LHP of all time.

My first introduction to him was 1994 in the throws of my newly found baseball and card addiction. It was this interview called "Thin Mountain Air"...

https://deadspin.com/thin-air-in-the...d-co-478492324

Holy Moly, Carlton is a nutjob. While it doesn't diminish his pitching career, it certainly can't help his collectability. Wow.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by cgjackson222

Holy Moly, Carlton is a nutjob. While it doesn't diminish his pitching career, it certainly can't help his collectability. Wow.

He definitely marched to the beat of his own drummer.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by cgjackson222

Not sure if you noticed, but I was talking about PSA 8, not PSA 7 for the Luis Tiant vs. Steve Carlton comparison.

If you look at sold items on ebay's website (not PSA's, which lags by a few months) you will see a Luis Tiant PSA 8 sold for $796 on December 1st.

Meanwhile, a PSA 8 Carlton #477 sold for $777 on December 13th.

The fact that Tiant is remotely close to Carlton in price is surprising to me, no offense to the great Luis Tiant.

I did, but one sale doesn't mean the cards are close in value. A PSA 8 Tiant sold for $305 on 10/18/2022 too. If you look at prices for other grades 5,6,7,9 & 10 the most recent sales of Carlton and Tiant have Carlton's RCs selling for multiples of Tiant's.

As far as Tiant, he has been on recent Veteran's Committee Ballots and is a possible future Hall of Famer. With Jim Kaat and Jack Morris making it, it seems like only a matter of time before Tiant does too.

[raulus]

Just be glad that you can pick it up for cheap!

It used to annoy me to high heaven that my man Willie Mays got no respect compared to Mantle.

Now that Mays' cards are closer in price to Mantle's, I'm wishing for the good old days!

[cgjackson222]

Originally Posted by rats60

I did, but one sale doesn't mean the cards are close in value. A PSA 8 Tiant sold for $305 on 10/18/2022 too. If you look at prices for other grades 5,6,7,9 & 10 the most recent sales of Carlton and Tiant have Carlton's RCs selling for multiples of Tiant's.

As far as Tiant, he has been on recent Veteran's Committee Ballots and is a possible future Hall of Famer. With Jim Kaat and Jack Morris making it, it seems like only a matter of time before Tiant does too.

Yeah, its not just one sale. A '65 Tiant PSA sold for $756 on December 10th, and if you look on 130point.com or any other website showing best offer sales on ebay, another sold for $700 on November 25th.

As for the $305 sale you site. That was actually on 10/18/2021, not this year.
https://www.psacard.com/auctionprice...ues/185553#g=8

I agree with you Luis Tiant will be in the Hall of Fame some day. But he is not on any ballot that is being voted on any time soon. And he is not Steve Carlton good.

[jchcollins]

You can basically blame it on the rule that baseball greatness does not always equal baseball card greatness.

Vintage pitchers are at a disadvantage to start with in terms of card popularity, because the hitters are always so much more popular. Add to that the strange and unspoken rule since about the year 2000 that people don't want to celebrate pitchers so much for preventing runs and winning ballgames, but only for the sexy things like striking out a lot of batters and accumulating a record number of no-hitters. (Remember that even for Nolan Ryan, the number of no-hitters he threw in comparison to the total rest of his career represents a scant fraction of his innings on a major league mound...) The result is that the Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax cards remained valuable, and a lot of other pitchers who were top tier HOF'ers in their day are largely forgotten about - at least besides their rookie cards. I think Carlton falls into that category. As others have pointed out, his unwillingness to cooperate with the media after about 1973 probably also has something to do with his image taking a beating, and then he was the classic example of a pitcher in his 40's who hung around too long after he had pretty much lost his stuff. Still, that is no excuse to me today for a kid who wasn't even alive in the 1970's or 80's being able to quote Nolan Ryan stats to you - yet they have never heard of Carlton and his '72 season, or can't tell you anything about Tom Seaver or Jim Palmer. Just doesn't add up. But I guess that is the way society has gone now.

[Rad_Hazard]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

You can basically blame it on the rule that baseball greatness does not always equal baseball card greatness.

Vintage pitchers are at a disadvantage to start with in terms of card popularity, because the hitters are always so much more popular. Add to that the strange and unspoken rule since about the year 2000 that people don't want to celebrate pitchers so much for preventing runs and winning ballgames, but only for the sexy things like striking out a lot of batters and accumulating a record number of no-hitters. (Remember that even for Nolan Ryan, the number of no-hitters he threw in comparison to the total rest of his career represents a scant fraction of his innings on a major league mound...) The result is that the Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax cards remained valuable, and a lot of other pitchers who were top tier HOF'ers in their day are largely forgotten about - at least besides their rookie cards. I think Carlton falls into that category. As others have pointed out, his unwillingness to cooperate with the media after about 1973 probably also has something to do with his image taking a beating, and then he was the classic example of a pitcher in his 40's who hung around too long after he had basically lost his stuff. Still, that is no excuse to me today for a kid who wasn't even alive in the 1970's or 80's being able to quote Nolan Ryan stats to you - yet they have never heard of Carlton and his '72 season, or can't tell you anything about Tom Seaver or Jim Palmer. Just doesn't add up. But I guess that is the way society has gone now.

As a kid in the early 90's I can tell you that I was obsessed with baseball stats and record books and knew all the stats, and I knew of Carlton, despite this being the early 90's and Nolan was dominating the headlines. His no-hitters and fight with Ventura were absolutely legendary. As someone who grew up in the 90's, my favorite players are by far Nolan Ryan, Bo Jackson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Frank Thomas. No one else came close. I know that Carlton was great, but to me Nolan is legendary.

[jchcollins]

Originally Posted by Rad_Hazard

As a kid in the early 90's I can tell you that I was obsessed with baseball stats and record books and knew all the stats, and I knew of Carlton, despite this being the early 90's and Nolan was dominating the headlines. His no-hitters and fight with Ventura were absolutely legendary. As someone who grew up in the 90's, my favorite players are by far Nolan Ryan, Bo Jackson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Frank Thomas. No one else came close. I know that Carlton was great, but to me Nolan is legendary.

Don't get me wrong, Nolan was my favorite pitcher growing up too. His RC is one of my most prized possessions, having been a child of the 80's and 90's - and always will be. But look at it without the bias of your era. Carlton is only great, but Ryan is legendary? Sorry but that doesn't make any sense. Carlton won 4 Cy Young Awards, Ryan 0. He won 20 games 6x to Ryan's twice (Palmer did it 8 times). Who helped their team win ballgames to a greater extent in their prime? It's not even a contest.

[GasHouseGang]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

Don't get me wrong, Nolan was my favorite pitcher growing up too. His RC is one of my most prized possessions, having been a child of the 80's and 90's - and always will be. But look at it without the bias of your era. Carlton is only great, but Ryan is legendary? Sorry but that doesn't make any sense. Carlton won 4 Cy Young Awards, Ryan 0. He won 20 games 6x to Ryan's twice (Palmer did it 8 times). Who helped their team win ballgames to a greater extent in their prime? It's not even a contest.

When I was a new baseball card collector, I had a friend who told me I shouldn't waste my time collecting Nolan Ryan cards because he would never be considered a great pitcher or make "The Hall" because all he did was get a lot of strikeouts. He had never been a 20 game winner, and would be considered a common by the time he retired. I stupidly listened to him.

[Rad_Hazard]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

Don't get me wrong, Nolan was my favorite pitcher growing up too. His RC is one of my most prized possessions, having been a child of the 80's and 90's - and always will be. But look at it without the bias of your era. Carlton is only great, but Ryan is legendary? Sorry but that doesn't make any sense. Carlton won 4 Cy Young Awards, Ryan 0. He won 20 games 6x to Ryan's twice (Palmer did it 8 times). Who helped their team win ballgames to a greater extent in their prime? It's not even a contest.

That's just my view of it in the lens of who I grew up watching. Nolan definitely has legendary status much like Bo Jackson. They are folk heroes in my eyes.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

You can basically blame it on the rule that baseball greatness does not always equal baseball card greatness.

Vintage pitchers are at a disadvantage to start with in terms of card popularity, because the hitters are always so much more popular. Add to that the strange and unspoken rule since about the year 2000 that people don't want to celebrate pitchers so much for preventing runs and winning ballgames, but only for the sexy things like striking out a lot of batters and accumulating a record number of no-hitters. (Remember that even for Nolan Ryan, the number of no-hitters he threw in comparison to the total rest of his career represents a scant fraction of his innings on a major league mound...) The result is that the Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax cards remained valuable, and a lot of other pitchers who were top tier HOF'ers in their day are largely forgotten about - at least besides their rookie cards. I think Carlton falls into that category. As others have pointed out, his unwillingness to cooperate with the media after about 1973 probably also has something to do with his image taking a beating, and then he was the classic example of a pitcher in his 40's who hung around too long after he had pretty much lost his stuff. Still, that is no excuse to me today for a kid who wasn't even alive in the 1970's or 80's being able to quote Nolan Ryan stats to you - yet they have never heard of Carlton and his '72 season, or can't tell you anything about Tom Seaver or Jim Palmer. Just doesn't add up. But I guess that is the way society has gone now.

Absolutely true about vintage pitchers being at a disadvantage. They are faced with an often extreme, modern bias, brought on a lot by modern statistics, and how the game is now played in regard to pitchers. Younger people only know starting pitchers typically going 5-6-7 innings in MLB games, and everyone worrying about pitch counts, strike outs, and the like. As statistician's and the like keep touting today, wins are not that important a factor in looking at and determining how good a pitcher really is in the modern game. But older, vintage pitchers were much more likely to be pitching in the games they started till the very end. As a result, their impact on the eventual outcome of those games was hugely increased over what it is for modern pitchers. But because the younger generation only truly know and see how the game is played today in regard to pitchers, they can't really get beyond thinking like that in terms of all MLB pitchers, regardless of when they pitched. They honestly don't know any better.

I still laugh out loud whenever I remember a comment I got on here once from a long since blocked/ignored member, claiming that Hyun-Jin Ryu is a so much better pitcher than Warren Spahn could have ever hoped to be, and that it wasn't even close how much better Ryu supposedly was. Last I looked, Ryu has now completed 9 seasons of MLB pitching, and has a 75-45 record, with a cumulative 3.27 ERA and a cumulative career WAR of 19.5, over 1003.1 innings pitched. Meanwhile, over his first nine seasons pitching in MLB, Spahn had a record of 145-98, with a cumulative ERA of approximately 2.93 to go along with a cumulative WAR of about 49.8, over 2149.2 innings pitched. And then over the last 14 years of his career, Spahn added another 218 wins, and 50.3 WAR. Ryu for the 2022 season had a 2-0 record, but with a WAR of -0.3. Something tells me to not put any money on Ryu and expect him to have anywhere near the success over the rest of his career like Spahn had. Ryu is going to be turning 36 this coming March, and I don't see him improving much more at this age.

And probably the most stunning difference between the two pitchers is that in the 174 games Ryu has started in career, he has only 4 complete games, and only 3 shutouts. Meanwhile, Spahn in his first nine seasons has 268 starts, of which 166 ended up being complete games, and 32 of those were shutouts. Oh, and Spahn also had 12 saves during his first nine seasons, to Ryu's only 1 save, so he helped his team as more than just a starter when called upon.

These modern statistician types keep saying how starting pitchers are not all that consequential when it comes to wins, which makes perfect sense for someone like Ryu who only completed about 2% of the games he ever started, and only averages about 5-6 innings pitched per start. Meanwhile, over his first nine seasons Spahn completed about 62% of the games he started, while averaging around 8 innings pitched per game. I think Warren had a little bit more to do with all those wins his teams had, and is probably worthy of a bit more credit for all his wins than someone like Ryu could ever hope for. Just saying!