In order of closing date:

Elite Collectibles (ending on June 9)

Clean Sweep Auctions (ending on June 10)

Collector Investor Auctions (ending on June 14)

Fanatics Weekly Auction (ending on June 14)

Other active auctions:

Sirius Sports Cards Auction (ends on June 18)

Goldin June Vintage Elite Auction (ends on June 20)

⚾ Topps Reveals Grade for 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle Redemption While at Auction

⚾ The 10 Rarest Signed Rookie Cards of Baseball’s Biggest Legends

⚾ History of the Exhibit Supply Company Baseball Cards

🏈 Some of the Most Iconic Football Cards of the 1970s

💰 High-Grade 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle Card, Babe Ruth Gems Headline Goldin Vintage Auction

⚾ Top 5 Iconic and Valuable Larry Doby Baseball Cards

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were not a good football team for most of Lee Roy Selmon’s career (their won-los record was 44-88-1, or a .335 winning percentage ), but he stuck with them and made the Hall of Fame, a true testament to his dominant play.

Lee Roy Selmon - DE/DT

HOF Induction in 1995

Standout Stats:

The average price came out to be $33.95.

Pop (or population) count for graded cards is, presumably, all about scarcity. As grades get higher, population counts should get lower, especially when it comes to vintage cards, since the condition either tends to degrade over time or the cards weren’t treated well in the first place, not being viewed as valuable assets 50-plus years ago.

One caveat to the pop count assumption is that not all players (and thus their rookie cards) are created equal. For example, someone like Bruce Sutter’s rookie card is not given the same weight in the hobby as someone like Mike Schmidt’s rookie card, even though both are members of the exact same Baseball Hall of Fame. This is where popularity can throw a wrench into the scarcity discussion, since it’s likely that fewer Bruce Sutter rookie cards are being graded because fewer collectors want to grade them, not because there are fewer of the cards themselves.

Another caveat is the year of the rookie card. Bert Blyleven and Ted Simmons’ rookie cards, for instance, are much more condition-sensitive than the average card, due both to being the oldest of the 1970s HOF rookie cards and, more importantly, due to the black borders of the 1971 Topps set that more easily reveal chipping and other condition issues. Another example is Ozzie Smith’s rookie card, which is known for a lack of centering, so much so that a lot of his graded cards will get qualifiers like OC (“off-center”) or MC (“miscut”).

And a third caveat is, of course, eye appeal. We’ve all seen PSA 7s that look like they should be PSA 8s or better, and vice versa. And each collector has their own idea of what’s most important to them (centering, color, corners, edges, surface, etc.) for the card(s) they want.

The above caveats are just three of the reasons why it’s difficult to do an apples-to-apples comparison. Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t try an analysis just the same, to see if it reveals anything interesting.

Last September, I compared a few rookie cards to see if the pricing difference between PSA 10s and 9s made sense relative to the pop count difference, taking into consideration how hard it is to tell the difference between a 9 and a 10. Of course, since most collectors don’t have the budget to be playing in the PSA 9 and 10 pools when it comes to vintage cards, I thought I’d look at a more affordable range.

That’s why I looked at collector grade (for this decade, that being a PSA 7) and PSA 8, to see if there were cards where it might make more sense to buy a PSA 8 (if you’re looking for more bang for your buck), because, say, while the pop count is a lot smaller, the price difference between the two grades might not be that big, relatively speaking.

Using the current Card Ladder values for both the PSA 7 and PSA 8 rookie cards for the 18 HOF rookie cards in the 1970s, I determined both the price differential (the PSA 8 price divided by the PSA 7 price) and the pop count differential (the PSA 7 pop count divided by the PSA 8 pop count, on the assumption pop counts get smaller as grades increase). Then, I determined the disparity (the price difference divided by the pop count difference), to see where potential value might exist.

The smaller the disparity, presumably, the better the value. That’s because the price difference isn’t as large moving from a PSA 7 to a PSA 8 as the pop count difference is, meaning you’re not paying as much of a difference to get a higher grade that’s relatively scarcer.

As an example, the Carlton Fisk rookie card is currently listed with a value of $103.01 for a PSA 7 and $256 for a PSA 8, or a difference of almost 2.5X. Meanwhile, the PSA 7 pop count is 1,833, while the PSA 8 pop count is 330, a difference of more than 5.5X. So, quite a bit scarcer as you go up one grade, but you’re not paying as much, relatively speaking, for that scarcity.

On the other end of the spectrum, Andre Dawsons’s PSA 7 rookie card is listed with a value of $44 and the PSA 8 at $149.95 (a difference of 3.4X), while the pop count is 1,368 for the PSA 7 and, unexpectedly, 2,343 for a PSA 8, a difference of only 0.58X. So, pop count is more plentiful as you go up one grade, but the relative amount you’re paying seems to imply that the PSA 8 is more scarce than it actually is.

Admittedly, in pure dollars, you’re paying a bigger difference to upgrade the Fisk, but with the hope that scarcity will continue to drive demand.

What did you think of the results?