In order of closing date:

Hunt Auctions Internet Auction (ending on September 16)

Heritage Auctions Fall Sports Card Catalog Auction (ending on September 18-19)

REA September 2026 Auction (ending on September 20)

Other active auctions:

Sterling Sports Auctions (ends on September 24)

Sirius Sports Card Auction (ends on September 24)

Goldin 2026 Monthly Sports Elite #8 (ends on September 26)

Memory Lane Summer Rarities Auction (ends on September 26)

Clean Sweep Champions Auction (ends on October 14)

⚾ The 7 Most Iconic and Valuable 1975 Topps Baseball Cards

💰 1956 Topps Mickey Mantle, Vintage Gems Headlining September Auction at REA (see above in Auction Highlights)

⚾ Restored T206 Wagner Returns to Auction This Fall

🏈 The Top 5 Most Expensive and Iconic Terry Bradshaw Football Cards

⚾ The Most Iconic Joe DiMaggio Cards From His Playing Years

🏈 As Color TV Captivated the Nation, 1966 Topps Football Cards Had a Unique Look and Feel

⚾ 50 Years Ago, the Bird Was the Word in Baseball

💰 Two 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth Cards, Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron Headline September 27 Sports Card Auction

He’s one of a number of people in the history of the NFL to have a rule named after them, or at least inspired by them. His physical play as a defensive back led to the rule about defensive backs only being able to make contact with receivers within five yards of the line of scrimmage.

Mel Blount - DB

HOF Induction in 1989

Standout Stats:

Eight of the 10 purchases was via auction, and the average price came out to be $63.52.

Chris Sewall, who took the Drawn to Cards Q&A late last year, recently had a video where he talked about how perception drastically impacts card values. One of the examples he used was Mickey Mantle vs. Willie Mays, showing a comparison of their statistics and accomplishments, and how Mays was pretty clearly a better player than Mantle, but the perception of Mantle has driven prices of his cards to outshine Mays. The example he used was the 1951 Bowman rookie cards of both, where Mantle’s values are typically about twice that of Mays.

That got me thinking about WAR, as in Wins Above Replacement. It’s a statistic that’s supposed to determine how many wins a player added to the team(s) he played with above what an average replacement player would’ve contributed. WAR is one of the statistics where Mays outshone Mantle. According to Baseball Reference, Mays had a career WAR of 156.2 (fifth all-time) compared to Mantle’s 110.3 (21st all-time).

What I wondered is, is career WAR of any value when it comes to determining rookie card prices? WAR should, presumably, help determine how great a player was during his career (assuming, of course, you trust WAR as a valuable statistic), and the greatest players are typically the ones most sought-after by collectors (but, yes, “typically” is doing a lot of work that in sentence).

Instead of using the all-time top players ranked by WAR, since card values vary wildly throughout the 20th century, as do card companies, I’ll instead focus on rookie cards from the 1950s to the 1970s, since those decades have cards coming out consistently and are primarily dominated by one company, Topps.

Methodology:

This is admittedly a small sample size, but it does demonstrate the variability in rookie card value separate from how great a player’s career statistics are.

In the 1950s grouping, the difference between Eddie Mathews and Hank Aaron from a WAR perspective is similar to the difference between Mantle and Mays. I think it’s safe to say that no one would say that Eddie Mathews had a better career than Hank Aaron, or that he’s more popular than Aaron, but because Mathews’ rookie card is a high-number (i.e., rare) card in one of the most desirable baseball card sets ever, his card is worth 23.7% more than Aaron’s. The two cards’ PSA pop counts (973 for Mathews’ card and 7,774 for Aaron’s card) gives you an indication of how rare Mathews’ is, relatively speaking.

Meanwhile, Frank Robinson’s rookie card value continues to baffle me, especially since it’s not like people have collectively decided the hobby doesn’t like the 1957 Topps set. Or that he wasn’t a nice guy. It’s just that, in most people’s minds, he doesn’t compare to the greats like Mantle, Mays and Aaron, and since they’re the GOATs, he’s apparently not, thus he’s not as sought after. Of course, if you want to collect him, that means it’s much more inexpensive to do so relative to the decade’s other greats.

In the 1960s, Tom Seaver’s rookie card is also a high number card AND he’s more popular in the hobby than Joe Morgan, so even though their WAR is only separated by about nine wins, Seaver’s card is nearly 12 times as valuable as Morgan’s. Interestingly, Morgan’s rookie card has a pop count of 5,948 and Seaver’s pop count is 4,268, so while Seaver’s card is a high number, it was likely more widely distributed than, for instance, the 1952 Topps cards, or more people kept cards from the late 1960s.

In the 1970s, the values are much closer across the board, while also being mostly reflective of the players’ WAR ranking. The difficulty in getting higher grades in the 1971 Topps set and the popularity of the 1975 Topps set may have also contributed to the respective values of Blyleven, Brett and Yount’s cards.

I’m admittedly a numbers guy who thinks that card value should be largely determined by a player’s career statistics, but that’s not the reality of the card market. There are a number of factors that determine a card’s value and while career statistics is certainly one of them, since desirable players generally tend to have better career statistics, they aren’t the overarching factor. And that’s something I continually have to adjust to.

Does a player’s career statistics ever factor into whom you decide to collect?