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Posted By: Eric Brehm

Well here is some data regarding the appreciation in value of baseball cards in recent times.

In the book Cardboard Gems published by Mastro Auctions, Doug Allen put together a portfolio of 100 high grade (NM-MT) baseball cards, and showed the amount of appreciation in value of this portfolio from April 1995 to April 2006 to be 143%, which he says compares favorably with the performance during the same period of the S&P 500 (153%) and Dow Jones Industrials (133%). The total value of his 100-card portfolio was $986,875 in 1995, increasing to $2,401,940 in 2006.

Now one problem with Doug's portfolio is that about half of its value is tied up in one very significant, very thinly traded card: T206 Honus Wagner PSA 8. If you exclude this one card (which went from $430,000 to $1,265,000), the performance of Doug's portfolio drops from 143% to 104%. That still isn't too bad. In other words, without the T206 Wagner, the other 99 cards he selected, taken as a whole, roughly doubled in value from 1995 to 2006.

I thought it would be interesting to divide Doug's portfolio into two parts: pre-war and post-war, and compare the appreciation experienced by the two segments of the market.

The pre-war portfolio (excluding the T206 Wagner) consists of 34 cards: 5 T205's, 4 T206's, 4 1915 Cracker Jacks, 14 1933-1938 Goudeys, and 7 1939-1941 Playballs. The cards he selected were mostly of major stars such as Cobb, Johnson, Mathewson, Gehrig, Ruth, and Dimaggio. The T206 Magie error card and the '33 Goudey Lajoie are in there too. All of these cards increased in value from 1995 to 2006 except the '33 Goudey Lajoie, which dropped from $62,500 to $50,000.

The post-war portfolio consists of 65 cards covering 1949 through 1969, and includes 6 1949 Leafs, 17 1949-1954 Bowmans, 27 1950's Topps, and 15 1960's Topps. Again the cards are mostly of major stars such as Mantle, Mays, the Robinsons, Musial, Clemente, etc. Of these cards, 35 increased in value, while 30 declined or remained the same in value, between 1995 and 2006.

So here are how the two portfolios compare, in terms of total appreciation:

*34 pre-war cards went from $313,525 to $859,250, a 174% increase in value
*65 post-war cards went from $243,350 to $277,690, a 14% increase in value

*99 cards total went from $556,875 to $1,136,940, a 104% increase in value