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When the Detroit Lions were officially eliminated from the opportunity to be in the playoffs (sigh), my interest in the postseason admittedly fell off a cliff.

I did still watch the Super Bowl and the result was pretty much what I had expected. Well, other than New England’s offense not showing up until the fourth quarter.

All that said, as you’ll see in one of our Vintage Card Voyage videos below, pro football has been on my collecting mind.

I picked up a small collection of 1970s football cards via Facebook Marketplace, from a guy who had kept them in the same unique containers he had used to store the cards when he got them as a kid.

It’s one of the things I enjoy about buying other people’s cards: seeing how they’re stored and organized. It’s a little window into their personality.

I also thought it was a pretty fun collection, and hopefully there will be more vintage collections to come this year.

In this issue you'll find:

Auction highlights
News in the hobby
Ted Simmons’ rookie card and player profile
Have SGC-graded cards suffered since the Collectors purchase?
Recent Vintage Card Voyage videos

Let’s get into it.

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Auction Highlights

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

Clean Sweep Auctions (ending February 12)

🥊 1910 T220 Champions John L. Sullivan PSA 2 - $100 Starting Bid

⚾ 1954 Bowman #132 Bob Feller PSA Authentic/Auto PSA 9 - $36

⛳ 1935 J.A. Pattreiouex Sporting Events #19 Bobby Jones PSA 3 - $116

Goldin Weekly Auction (ending February 12)

⚾ 1933 Goudey #133 Fred Lindstrom SGC 3 - $12

⚽ 1966-67 Reddish Maid International Footballers Today #3 Bobby Charlton PSA 10 - $14

⚾ 1966 Topps #126 Jim Palmer Rookie Card PSA 7 - $47

Collector Investor Auctions (ending February 15)

⚾ 1962 Topps Stamp Panels Willie Mays and Tony Kubek PSA 4 (MC) - $2

🏀 1969-76 Topps Basketball Lot (80) w/ Stars Maravich, Baylor and Gervin (Raw) - $4

🏈 1973 Topps #455 Johnny Unitas SGC 7 - $5

News Briefs

💰 Goldin Winter 100 Auction Features Babe Ruth Rookie

⚾ Positive Proof Topps Doctored Film to Get the Shot

⚾ Top 5 Iconic Multi-Signed Vintage Baseball Cards

🏈 A Not-So-Mean Joe Greene Delights Fans, Collectors at Autograph Shows

⚾ 6 Must-See Sandy Koufax Cards for Any Collector

Vintage HOF Rookie Card: Ted Simmons

Ted Simmons falls into that category of former players who, when I found out he made it into the Hall of Fame, my first thought was “Really?” This likely has something to do with my not being old enough to follow baseball that closely in the 1970s.

Ted Simmons - C/iB

HOF Induction in 2020 - Named on 13 out of 16 ballots for the Modern Baseball Era Committee (81.3%)

Standout Stats:

Eight-time All-Star
413 career doubles as a catcher (per StatMuse - second all-time)
Hit over .300 seven different times in his career
Had 1,195 RBIs as a catcher (per StatMuse - seventh all-time)
Career WAR - 50.4

1971 Topps #117

Grade	PSA Pop Count	SGC Pop Count	BVG Pop Count
10	1	0	0
9	22	1	0
8	374	34	11
7	601	109	9

Hobby Thoughts: SGC-Graded Card Prices Since the Collectors Purchase

We’re approaching the two-year mark since Collectors purchased SGC, the grading company that many in the vintage community swear by. Since that purchase, PSA (also owned by Collectors) has steadily increased how many cards it’s grading, while SGC has stalled a bit (the following numbers coming from GemRate’s newsletter):

Year	Cards Graded by PSA	Cards Graded by SGC
2023	13.5M	1.2M
2024	15.34M	1.87M
2025	19.26M	1.42M

Based on this trend, along with the relative uncertainty that’s surrounded SGC’s future since the purchase (which I discussed a bit recently), it’s reasonable to wonder how people in the hobby view cards graded by SGC. Therefore, I wanted to look into how SGC-graded card values have performed.

My (admittedly unscientific) approach was as follows:

Using six notable vintage baseball cards, I took the average of each of those cards with the same grades from two periods of time - five card sales just prior to the SGC purchase on February 29, 2024, and the most recent five card sales.

I targeted one notable rookie card and one other notable card from three decades (1970s, 1960s and 1950s), and in order to make sure I would have enough sales data, used collector grade and below for each decade.

Taking the two aforementioned averages, I determined what percentage the average sales price of the various cards had changed in that nearly two-year period (and all had positive changes) for both SGC-graded cards and PSA-graded cards.

Then, I compared how much the average prices of SGC-graded cards improved compared to how much the average prices of PSA-graded cards improved, to see which percentage was greater, and that difference between the two is reflected in the final column.

The following data came via Card Ladder:

1970s

1960s

1950s

Two things stood out to me:

One, that every card in every grade not only went up, but quite a few went up pretty significantly (four cards’ averages increased more than 70 percent, including two of the Nolan Ryans).

Two, that SGC-graded cards beat out PSA-graded cards, percentage-wise, for one-third of the categories.

That 33% may be a small amount, but it’s a bit higher than I thought it might be, especially considering PSA’s relative dominance in the hobby.

Six cards is admittedly a small sample size, but I wanted to get at least a sense for what was happening with cards that are regularly being bought and sold, and if different grades would produce noticeably different results. I’ll be interested to see if other sports have similar results.

Let me know what you think.

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