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mchenrycards
Featured Contributor, Vintage Corner, Senior Membe
While watching a case breaker on YouTube recently I noticed that pack opening has changed quite drastically from when I was younger. While I am not old enough to be the old man who yells at kids to stay off of my lawn, I do remember the days when card packs were actually made with wax and the only grading I cared about what was my teacher was going to give me on my report card. While watching this breaker the first thing I noticed was that he had latex gloves on. Now I fully understand the need for these gloves, especially when dealing with chrome-like cards but I found myself shaking my head with a mocking smile on my face as I watched the guy take great care not to ruin the cards he was cracking in hopes of providing his customers with a nice return on their investment. The next thing I noticed was that the breaker had a stack of semi-rigid holders by his side and would slide these cards into the holders to once again, avoid damage and hurting the customer’s ROI. As I watched this “event” I thought back to the days when my friends and I opened packs outside the local drug store and wondered how our cards ever survived.
As kids, we never had semi-rigid holders and plastic sheets to hold our cardboard treasures. A return on investment was never something we considered as we wrapped our cardboard with rubber bands and tossed them in a Velveeta cheese box, sorted in numerical order. While many kids collected their favorite teams or player, there were those die hard collectors like me who attempted to assemble complete sets each year and keeping them in order was high priority. Without knowing it, these die hard set collectors created a modern day scarcity for us vintage collectors many years later.
We have all probably heard of the infamous 1952 Topps Andy Pafko card that is card number one in the wildly popular baseball card set. This card, for many years, set records for prices in high grades and was at the top of wish lists for those collectors who were assembling a high grade PSA registry set. One has to ask themselves why this Pafko card has generated so much interest because Pafko, while a decent player and all star, was never one that anyone would blow a large amount of money on to own his card. There seemed to be no other reason for the high value on his cards except that he had the good fortune to be chosen as the first player in the set with his cardboard being numbered as number one.
In vintage cards, it is generally accepted that the first and last card of the set will hold a much higher value if the card is in better condition because many of them were destroyed with rubber bands. Being at the very front and the very back of the set, these cards undoubtedly bore the brunt of the rubber band damage from collectors back in the day causing a shortage in high quality examples today. Cards like the Pafko, when found without this type of damage will always command a much higher premium over their lesser condition counterparts. For example, a number of Excellent-Mint condition copies in a PSA 6 holder have recently sold on Ebay for upwards of $1700 with a gem mint copy being sold for $85,000 a number of years ago. In comparison, lesser grade Pafko’s graded by PSA will either fail to be sold on Ebay or be sold for around $250 for a PSA 3 or $425 for a PSA 4. There is quite a contrast in pricing for lower grade Pafko cards when compared to higher graded examples.
I was curious as to how the prices of the Pafko card compare with other “commons” in this landmark set so I looked up pricing for card number 46, Gordon Goldsberry. In the interest of full disclosure, I looked up Mr. Goldsberry because I used to work with him and he was the first player that came to mind. In comparing sales against the Pafko card in a PSA 6 card, recent sales on Ebay show the Goldsberry card, in the same grade as the Pafko sold for between $45 and $65. In looking for sales on a PSA 8 Goldsberry, a recent Goodwin auction shows that a Goldsberry failed to sell with a PSA 7 being sold in a Mile High auction a few short years ago for around $250. Sales for a common card in the 1952 Topps set, when compared to the Pafko card #1, fails to measure up and shows just how important a high grade card number one card is for vintage collectors. Comparisons such as these can be made for most vintage sets that lead up to the modern era of card collecting. We see the importance of high grade first and last cards start to taper off in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s when card collecting, and card protection became an important part of the hobby.
The hobby has seen a modern card number one that has caused a stir in the Upper Deck Griffey rookie but that has less to do with the condition and more to do with the the first rookie card of a future Hall of Famer in a modern landmark, premium quality set. While card prices no longer support the card number one theory for this Griffey rookie, there was a time when the card was thought to be much more scarce in higher grades. Since Upper Deck issued many of these cards as a complete set, the Griffey card was of course the first one packed into the box causing it to be less protected from shipping wear and corner dings and more susceptible to production damage. If Upper Deck’s management team had not let the presses run on the Griffey rookie and printed thousands upon thousands more of these rookie cards in a later printing, we might still see the card number one effect on his cards. But since they flooded the market with high quality cards that were not packed out or placed into sets but delivered in stacks to their hobby friends, they removed the card number one quality factor as there were so many high quality cards that came to the hobby, making those that were actually packed out left for the lower grade PSA plastic tombs.
While the first and last card phenomenon is lost on most modern collectors, most vintage collectors are well aware of the importance of a high quality example of these cards. Modern collectors who are opening their packs with latex gloves and who quickly entomb their treasures in semi-rigids will want to remember that the better investment may be in purchasing higher grade vintage cards that are numbered either the first or last card in these older sets. These cards, while maybe not Hall of Famers, can potentially serve you a higher return on your investment than many of the modern rookies you are chasing. Unlike the shiney new rookie cards, these vintage treasures all have a proven track record and will continue to spark collector interest and draw their dollars for higher grade examples as more collectors with disposable income discover their love for vintage collecting.
PSA 10 $85,000
PSA 6 $1700
PSA 3 $220
As kids, we never had semi-rigid holders and plastic sheets to hold our cardboard treasures. A return on investment was never something we considered as we wrapped our cardboard with rubber bands and tossed them in a Velveeta cheese box, sorted in numerical order. While many kids collected their favorite teams or player, there were those die hard collectors like me who attempted to assemble complete sets each year and keeping them in order was high priority. Without knowing it, these die hard set collectors created a modern day scarcity for us vintage collectors many years later.
We have all probably heard of the infamous 1952 Topps Andy Pafko card that is card number one in the wildly popular baseball card set. This card, for many years, set records for prices in high grades and was at the top of wish lists for those collectors who were assembling a high grade PSA registry set. One has to ask themselves why this Pafko card has generated so much interest because Pafko, while a decent player and all star, was never one that anyone would blow a large amount of money on to own his card. There seemed to be no other reason for the high value on his cards except that he had the good fortune to be chosen as the first player in the set with his cardboard being numbered as number one.
In vintage cards, it is generally accepted that the first and last card of the set will hold a much higher value if the card is in better condition because many of them were destroyed with rubber bands. Being at the very front and the very back of the set, these cards undoubtedly bore the brunt of the rubber band damage from collectors back in the day causing a shortage in high quality examples today. Cards like the Pafko, when found without this type of damage will always command a much higher premium over their lesser condition counterparts. For example, a number of Excellent-Mint condition copies in a PSA 6 holder have recently sold on Ebay for upwards of $1700 with a gem mint copy being sold for $85,000 a number of years ago. In comparison, lesser grade Pafko’s graded by PSA will either fail to be sold on Ebay or be sold for around $250 for a PSA 3 or $425 for a PSA 4. There is quite a contrast in pricing for lower grade Pafko cards when compared to higher graded examples.
I was curious as to how the prices of the Pafko card compare with other “commons” in this landmark set so I looked up pricing for card number 46, Gordon Goldsberry. In the interest of full disclosure, I looked up Mr. Goldsberry because I used to work with him and he was the first player that came to mind. In comparing sales against the Pafko card in a PSA 6 card, recent sales on Ebay show the Goldsberry card, in the same grade as the Pafko sold for between $45 and $65. In looking for sales on a PSA 8 Goldsberry, a recent Goodwin auction shows that a Goldsberry failed to sell with a PSA 7 being sold in a Mile High auction a few short years ago for around $250. Sales for a common card in the 1952 Topps set, when compared to the Pafko card #1, fails to measure up and shows just how important a high grade card number one card is for vintage collectors. Comparisons such as these can be made for most vintage sets that lead up to the modern era of card collecting. We see the importance of high grade first and last cards start to taper off in the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s when card collecting, and card protection became an important part of the hobby.
The hobby has seen a modern card number one that has caused a stir in the Upper Deck Griffey rookie but that has less to do with the condition and more to do with the the first rookie card of a future Hall of Famer in a modern landmark, premium quality set. While card prices no longer support the card number one theory for this Griffey rookie, there was a time when the card was thought to be much more scarce in higher grades. Since Upper Deck issued many of these cards as a complete set, the Griffey card was of course the first one packed into the box causing it to be less protected from shipping wear and corner dings and more susceptible to production damage. If Upper Deck’s management team had not let the presses run on the Griffey rookie and printed thousands upon thousands more of these rookie cards in a later printing, we might still see the card number one effect on his cards. But since they flooded the market with high quality cards that were not packed out or placed into sets but delivered in stacks to their hobby friends, they removed the card number one quality factor as there were so many high quality cards that came to the hobby, making those that were actually packed out left for the lower grade PSA plastic tombs.
While the first and last card phenomenon is lost on most modern collectors, most vintage collectors are well aware of the importance of a high quality example of these cards. Modern collectors who are opening their packs with latex gloves and who quickly entomb their treasures in semi-rigids will want to remember that the better investment may be in purchasing higher grade vintage cards that are numbered either the first or last card in these older sets. These cards, while maybe not Hall of Famers, can potentially serve you a higher return on your investment than many of the modern rookies you are chasing. Unlike the shiney new rookie cards, these vintage treasures all have a proven track record and will continue to spark collector interest and draw their dollars for higher grade examples as more collectors with disposable income discover their love for vintage collecting.
PSA 10 $85,000
PSA 6 $1700
PSA 3 $220
