At Thanksgiving, I had the chance to talk with my wife’s cousin, who’s also a longtime sports card collector, and he brought up a great point, one that I hope will help continue to guide what I focus on in the newsletter.

I mentioned to him how subjective card collecting is (who do we collect, do we focus on graded or raw cards, are we collectors or investors or dealers or a mix, etc.) and that I thought, because of that, it can be hard to know what people would want me to discuss in the newsletter.

In response, he said that’s one of the great things about the hobby - how each of us collects in such a different way, and that makes so many cards desirable because there are so many ways to collect. But then he added that a great way to collect what you want is to sell/trade things you don’t want or that you have duplicates of, and there are obviously certain cards that tend to be sought after by more people, and selling/trading those cards can help you acquire the cards you truly want.

Thinking about it that way was what I needed to hear, because while it’s pretty obvious, sometimes I don’t necessarily realize what’s right in front of my face.

I want you to be able to acquire the best collection you can, whatever that means for you, so I hope to write about things that will help you do that. And if that means you enjoy the hobby even more, then I’ve truly done my job.

If you have thoughts or suggestions, please contact me at [email protected].

I also want to mention that you’ll see an advertisement a bit further down, something I’m including for the first time. When I do include them, now and going forward, my intention is for the ads to be relevant for you.

In this issue you'll find:

Let’s get into it.

Recently Sold:

⚾ A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA 3 sold for $72,136 in a Goldin auction that closed this past Saturday. It’s the highest priced PSA 3 to sell in over a year; on September 28, 2024, an MBA Gold Diamond Certified PSA 3 sold for $87,840, also on Goldin (per Card Ladder).

🏀 A 1948 Bowman George Mikan (a no red ink on front version), the legendary center’s rookie card, sold for $32,400 in a Love of the Game auction that closed this weekend. What’s especially rare about this card is that it was autographed (the autograph earned a PSA/DNA 8, with the card graded Authentic), the only known “no red ink on front” version in existence.

🏒A 1979-80 O-Pee-Chee Wayne Gretzky rookie card, graded PSA 8, sold for $21,960 in the same Goldin auction the above Mantle sold in. It’s the highest price for that grade since a Heritage auction in September, when a different PSA 8 card sold for $25,620 (per Card Ladder).

🤦 Rick Probstein Closes snype Site, Returns to eBay

⚾ An Actual Babe Ruth Autographed Baseball Card Is Up for Auction

🏈 And the Most Graded Vintage Football Sets Are? …

🏀 Celebrating the Big O’s Cards for His 87th Birthday

⚾ Some of the Most Valuable Yogi Berra Cards

A few days ago, a 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card in a PSA 10 sold for almost $6,000 (although I do wonder if the price will get updated, especially since it was a Best Offer sale).

Assuming it does get changed, there have still been sales close to $5,000. This is especially notable because a PSA 10 started the year being sold in the neighborhood of $2,500, but the prices have slowly but pretty steadily increased throughout the year.

I’ve also noticed other high-grade cards going up in value throughout the year, which doesn’t necessarily surprise me because of lower supply leading to higher demand.

But it did make me wonder if higher graded cards go up more percentage-wise than lower graded cards when it comes to vintage cards, or if lower-graded cards become more desirable than higher-graded cards due to affordability, especially in challenging economic times.

That led me to crunch the numbers with nine Hall of Fame baseball rookie cards from the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, to see if any trends emerged.

I looked at three cards from each decade, tracking relevant sales in Card Ladder from the beginning of 2025 through this past weekend, for PSA grades 1-10.

For this exercise, I ignored half grades, along with prices from cards that had grading qualifiers, as those prices tend to drop to the prices for cards about two grades lower.

I also broke up the players into hobby tiers I thought they fell into for each decade - and please feel free to weigh in on where my tiering seems off.

Then, after determining all the pricing results, by averaging the first 2-3 sales of the year and the most recent 2-3 sales for each grade (when available), I created three categories:

I didn’t track PSA 10s because only Eddie Murray and Rollie Fingers cards have had PSA 10 sales so far this year.

One thing I should note is that I realize this small sample size isn’t representative of the totality of the year’s sales, and that each sale is inherently its own thing (some cards are better centered or have stronger eye appeal, some cards have been graded more recently and thus buyers take into account PSA’s stricter standards, etc.), but I still think it’s an interesting snapshot of where we are now versus the beginning of the year.

With that caveat out of the way, here are the cumulative percentage gains or losses for each of the three categories.

I think the biggest surprise was Mike Schmidt’s rookie card prices dropping a little, especially considering both Aaron and Ryan’s went up pretty substantially. That said, I admittedly wasn’t sure if he was the best choice for a tier 1 player in the 1970s, or, honestly, if there are any players with a 1970s rookie card who would be considered as tier 1 in the hobby space.

Meanwhile, the Dennis Eckersley card price drop likely happened because there were no PSA 1 sales, one PSA 2 sale, and only three PSA 3 sales, i.e., limited data to work with.

What’s impressive is that the Hank Aaron card prices went up as much as they did, especially considering the most recent average prices landed in the $2,400-3,900 range for this category. That said, it’s also an incredibly desirable card at the lowest (non-raw) entry point for collectors.

The biggest surprise may be that the Nolan Ryan cards jumped as much as they did, especially relative to the lower grades. That’s because the lower grades are currently in the $500-800 territory, while the mid-grades are in the $1,200-2,700 territory, and the biggest percentage increase were actually the PSA 6 cards (i.e., the most expensive card so far), which jumped almost 50%.

This could well be my Detroit Tigers’ bias, but I’m surprised the Al Kaline card went up as little as it did relative to the rest of the cards. In fact, both the PSA 4s and 6s went down (15.5% and 3.2%, respectively), but the PSA 5s went up enough (22.5%) to keep the category above water

The biggest surprise is probably the Tom Seaver increase, especially since the biggest one came via the PSA 9s, which went up 34.4%, with the most recent sales averaging $24,461 - and the PSA 7s actually dipped 2.4%. It may be that collectors now realize Seaver is under-appreciated (per Baseball Reference, he has the fourth-highest career WAR for a pitcher in baseball history and, for instance, it’s 35% higher than Nolan Ryan’s). Additionally, his rookie card is part of the 1967 high number series, i.e., has limited distribution relative to the rest of the set and therefore tends to be more sought after by collectors.

So, overall, the (approximate) average movement for the low-grade tier was up 13.3%, with 21.3% for the mid-grades and 14.7% for the high grades. Based on my collecting style, the mid-grade cards having the most positive movement makes sense.

Meanwhile, from a tiering perspective, here are the approximate average percentage results:

Tier 2 having the most consistent positive movement surprises me, but it’s also possible that, for instance, Tom Seaver is actually in tier 1, which is why tier 2 moved like it did. The tiering debate will have to be for a future article, because I think it’s worthy of a fuller discussion.

What did you think of the results?