A new breed of whale

[Matt]

Al - congrats on the Billiken Charleston - I was the underbidder. Given the trimming, I was expecting it to go under where it did.

Your market cap angle is interesting; certainly a different way to look at things. Of course, to your question at the end - "Was Satchel Paige more than “twice” the pitcher that Mendez was?" presumes that the quality of the player is the driver for discrepancy in market cap; obviously things like how many people collect a given issue also feed heavily into the demand for a player - no doubt there are more 1948 Leaf and 1953 Topps set collectors then there are Punch/Billiken/Aguilitas collectors, so the pool of total dollars available for Paige is certainly going to be much higher then it is for Mendez.

[e107collector]

Hi Al, congrats on the pickup's. Very nice cards.

Do you or any other board member know how many Punch Cobb and Eddie Plank cards there are?

I think there are 2 Cobb's, but I never saw a Plank before. Can someone post a pic?

Thanks,
Tony

[wonkaticket]

Al, well said and really good points I enjoyed that post!

Cheers,

John

[atx840]

Plank second group, second in.

[aljurgela]

Matt,

I actually have the belief that this card is not trimmed, but it is hard to know until I get it in hand, so I might have SGC look at it again with many other copies of the Billikens that they have graded. The image in much better than the one that I currently have and the SGC 60 that I traded away last year.

On the "market cap idea"... of course, this is just a general discussion and your analysis on the Leaf and the 1953 Topps is the right one. If people prefer these sets, this will cloud the analysis.... as will card grading .... as will the assumptions of what percentages of cards from an issue are graded vs not.... as will the quality of the card stock (if there is just one beater of one player of equal stature and just one nice copy of the comparable player from the same issue, we would incorrectly assess those cards as equally valuable based on the number of available copies).... at the end, we end up where we began....

Value is relative and subject to interpretation. And the intrepretation of myself (and at least a few other collectors) is that the negro league stuff is rare and has room on the upside, even at these high prices.

Another interesting conversation is where do people go after they have completed their Leaf and 1953 Topps sets? These rare issues - especially the phtographic Punch, Billikens and Aguilitas are amazing. Every time I bring out one of these to people who have never seen them the reaction is the same: "Wow, that's so cool". It is. For many years the 1948 Leaf Paige was my dream card and when I got it, I said "now what?" I think these cards blow away any of the other stuff I used to collect.

This is just my take.

[benchod]

Hi Al,
congrats on the Mendez and Charleston.
The image on that Charleston is fantastic

[Matt]

Originally Posted by aljurgela

Matt,

I actually have the belief that this card is not trimmed, but it is hard to know until I get it in hand, so I might have SGC look at it again with many other copies of the Billikens that they have graded. The image in much better than the one that I currently have and the SGC 60 that I traded away last year.

No doubt it has a strong image, but the whole bottom border is missing - compare it with other Billikens.

[wonkaticket]