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

Sterling Sports Auctions (ending February 5)

⚾ 1939 Play Ball #3 Red Ruffing (raw) - $20

🏒 1979-80 OPC #175 Gordie Howe PSA 6 - $20

🏈 1963-71 Topps Football Lot of (6) w/ Namath (raw) - $32

Goldin Weekly Auction (ending February 5)

⚾ Nolan Ryan Signed, Inscribed Trading Card PSA/DNA 10 - $12

🏀 1978-79 Topps Basketball Near Set (125/132) - $14

⚽ 1962 Idemar Album No. 1 Coisa Nossa-Enciclopedia Brasileira #86 Pele PSA 2 - $22

Fanatics Weekly Auction (ending February 8)

⚾ 1952 Topps Vic Wertz #244 PSA 1 - $5

🏃🏾‍♂️‍➡️ 1936 Reemtsma NR. 14 Jesse Owens Rookie #49 SGC 3 - $5

🏈 1980 Topps Football Joe Theismann #475 PSA 8 - $5

💰 eBay Adding Card Ladder Data to Its Price Guide Feature

⚾ Signed Babe Ruth Card Found in 1930s Scrapbook Could Fetch $1M in Goldin Auction

🤔 How Sports Card Dealers Decide What to Sell at Shows

🏆 The Most Graded Sports Cards in 2025

⚾ Comparing Vintage Cards With Their Original Photos

Bert Blyleven has done one thing that no other pitcher has ever done. In 1986, he gave up 50 home runs. No one has ever given up more in one season, and the way starting pitching is trending, I don’t know that anyone ever will.

Bert Blyleven - SP

HOF Induction in 2011 - Named on 463 out of 581 ballots (79.7%)

Standout Stats:

After looking at the 1950s through the 1970s for baseball, football and basketball collector-grade HOF rookie cards over the past few months, I thought I should review all the data and see what stood out.

As mentioned in past newsletters, collector grade is based on the decade - a 7 grade for the 1970s, a 6 for the 1960s, and so on, and these have all been PSA-graded cards that I’ve looked at, with average prices determined by the previous three sales, with the data via Vintage Card Prices.

One admitted caveat is that the data isn’t current, since I draw from data I compiled over the past few months, so hopefully there hasn’t been too much movement in prices during that time.

I broke up the cards into three categories: less than $100, $100-$499.99, $500+

Here’s how they break down by decade:

One interesting note is that none of the cards under $100 in the 1950s are baseball cards (the cheapest one being the 1957 Topps Bill Mazeroski, at an average sale of $121.82), and the same can be said of the cards in the 1970s over $500 (Mike Schmidt’s rookie card came in at an average of $499).

Percentage-wise, 57.9% of the cards average less than $100, 29.7% are between $100-$499.99, and 12.4% are more than $500.

Meanwhile, look how close each of the decades are as far as the number of Hall of Famers go.

And here’s the breakdown by sport:

For one thing, the NFL has more than twice as many HOFers as either MLB or the NBA during this period, and 67% of those NFL players’ cards average less than $100. And even with the NFL having more than 2.5X as many HOFers as the MLB, there are still more baseball HOF rookie cards averaging over $500.

Basketball has a similar percentage of cards averaging less than $100 (65.9%), while baseball comes in at only 23.1%.

It’s also interesting that there are more baseball cards averaging over $500 than there are ones averaging less than $100, primarily due to the strength of the 1950s (13 of the 17 cards). Football and basketball cards, meanwhile, follow similar trends, with the move from the lowest category to the highest producing more than a 50% drop between each.

In total, the 323 HOF rookie cards during these decades would currently cost a total of $151,601.44, or an average of $467.91. But, as has been the case throughout this research, it’s the most expensive cards that pull up the average. The top 25 cards (7.7% of the total) would cost $110,534.25, or 72.9% of the total, and an average of $4,421.28. That means the other 298 cards would cost $41,067.19, an average of $137.81.

If you drill down by decade, prices move as you might expect. The 1970s averaged $115.65 per card, the 1960s averaged $375.74, and the 1950s averaged $924.64. By sport, meanwhile, football averaged $177.26 per card, basketball averaged $369.11 and baseball averaged a whopping $1,377.86.

I hope you enjoyed this series. I think it’s always good to think about different ways to build a card collection, like last week’s profile of Scott Lang did for me.