In order of closing date (as of Sunday evening PT):

Sirius Sports Cards Auction (ending April 9)

⚾ 1964 Venezuela Topps #306 Giant Gunners (Mays/Cepeda) PSA 2 - $59

🏀 1977 Topps #100 Julius Erving PSA 6 / PSA/DNA 10 - $143

⚾ 1972 Topps #310 Roberto Clemente In Action PSA 8 - $192

Love of the Game Auctions (ending April 11)

⚾ 1970 Topps #65 NL Home Run Leaders (McCovey/Aaron/Mays) PSA 8 - $25

🏈 1968 Topps Football Stand-Up Joe Namath SGC 7 - $70

⚾ 1968 Tom Seaver O-Pee-Chee (SGC 3) and Milton Bradley (PSA 2) Pair - $80

Wheatland Auction (ending April 12)

⚾ 1909-11 T206 Miller Huggins Sweet Caporal Back SGC 2.5 - $40

⚾ Lot of (27) 1947-1959 Baseball Exhibit Cards w/ Yogi Berra & Ernie Banks - $45

🏈 Lot of (70) 1960-66 Football Cards w/ 1960 Topps Johnny Unitas & (50) 1965 Donruss Spec Sheet Cards - $55

Collector Investor Auctions (ending April 12)

🏈 1972 Topps #200 Roger Staubach RC SGC 5 - $15

⚾ 1957 Topps #35 Frank Robinson RC PSA 3 - $15

🏀 1970 Topps #75 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar VG (Raw) - $16

There’s also a Goldin March Elite Auction ending on April 11, but prices start at $100, the cheapest vintage card is currently at $190, and most start at $500.

Other active auctions:

Lelands Spring Classic (ends April 18)

REA (ends April 19)

Hunt Auctions (ends April 29)

Clean Sweep Auctions (ends April 30)

⚾ 4 Forgotten and Undervalued Vintage Baseball Card Sets

💰 Strongsville Show Set to Return in New Venue

⚾ Five Things You Didn’t Know About the 1971 Topps Thurman Munson

💰 Rare 1910 “Shoeless Joe” Jackson Card Headlines Sports Card Auction at Heritage

⚾ Estate Sale Find: Rare Autograph of Hall of Famer Pete Hill Now on the Market

💰 Wide-Ranging Wheatland Auction Includes Multiple T206 HOFers

Stallworth was part of a draft class for the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1974 that was likely the best one in NFL history. The Steelers picked Lynn Swann in the first round, Jack Lambert in the second round, Stallworth in the fourth round, and Mike Webster in the fifth round - all of whom landed in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

John Stallworth - WR

HOF Induction in 2002

Standout Stats:

The average price came out to be $33.35.

In looking at the 1960s football HOF rookie cards and second-year cards, I figured there would be a slightly bigger divide between the two values as compared to the 1970s, based on my assumption that the further back we get with vintage football and basketball cards, the fewer collectors there are for player runs.

This was indeed the case, and to a greater degree than I assumed.

For those new subscribers, collector-grade is a grade that aligns with the decade, so for the ‘60s, it’s a 6 - and I default to using PSA average prices.

Meanwhile, from a popularity perspective, I wasn’t sure how to think about players past Joe Namath and Gale Sayers. The others that came to mind were Dick Butkus, Mike Ditka and Fran Tarkenton, and maybe Bob Griese, purely based on name recognition. After some thought, I decided to go with Butkus and Tarkenton - and feel free to weigh in if you disagree.

One thing I should note is, due to the fluctuation of card companies producing football cards in the 1960s (along with Topps, there was Fleer and Philadelphia) and which players they made cards of, and the tendency for manufacturers to not produce true second-year cards for certain players, there was a fair amount of jumping around, both between manufacturers and occasionally years.

Here are the results, courtesy of Card Ladder, based on the 20 players with the highest average collector-grade rookie card values.

What jumps out initially is how high the percentage gaps are across the board. Only one player falls below 70% (and just barely), while the first ten players are separated by just 6.7 percentage points.

Using mean to determine the average, it came out to 83.4%, the highest number so far, and there’s a difference of 7.5 percentage points between this decade and the ‘70s for football, which had a mean average of 75.9%.

For the four players I chose as most popular, the percentage was even higher, with the mean at 85.4% - but that was actually lower than for the ‘70s, whose three stars (Bradshaw, Payton and Staubach) had a mean average of 86.9%.

I continued to look at cards one grade up from collector-grade, to see if my original theory of a wider gap as grades went up was true.

Indeed, there was a small jump of three percentage points, to 86.4%, with only three players (Sayers, Griese and Otto) falling below 80% and eight players above 90%, including Willie Brown at 98% (his PSA 7 second-year card averaged $9.26, while, interestingly, his collector-grade second-year card averaged $23.50).

For the most popular players, the mean average came in at 87.6%, so 1.2 percentage points higher than the entire group - but 2.5 percentage points lower than the most popular players from the 1970s.

From collector grade to one grade higher, only five players (Shaw, Alworth, Dawson, Otto and Buoniconti) had their percentage gaps go lower, with Buoniconti’s the widest gap of 7.4 percentage points. For those whose percentages increased, three players had double-digit increases - Chuck Howley (10.6), Willie Brown (11.3) and Paul Warfield (12.8).