Phantom Values of Baseball Cards

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

With no sales history of the following baseball cards is this an ethical way to provide guide book values?


This lot of three different 1886 Hancock minor league baseball player cards were purchased through an online auction in November1999. The cards were not listed in any baseball price guides.

The cards have now been listed each year since 2001 in the Baseball Card Price Guide Catalog. Although the three cards are in about excellent condition a three-tier price structure of NM $10000, EX $5000 VG $3000 was used!! There is no foundation for these prices they are phantom values.

The owner of the cards supplied the guide prices that were printed in the catalog.

Due to this catalog listing the cards obtained 'legitimate' values. Afforded by this free advertising the owner of the cards consigned one of the three cards to a 2004 auction.

The auction catalog description of the consigned card was quite generous in its’ praise and contrived importance. A success! The consignor's four-year plus ownership of the card ends when the card brings $18306.85. Which is significantly more than the cost of all three cards.

How much influence did this price guide value have on the bidders? Would this lot have been bid as high if the catalog listing merely showed the existence of the cards without the bogus values? In other collectibles such as coins the space for the guide price is left blank, as it should be if there is no history of legitimate sales.

The price realized for this auctioned card can now be legitimately added to the baseball price guide. This in turn will allow a significant increase to the catalog value of the remaining two cards.

M12-04-810