Nonsense Newsletter No. 146: A baseball card checkup, the lottery, an SGC 10 Wilt and so much more!
In this week’s kick-butt edition of the Nonsense Newsletter, John Dudley give the baseball card market a physical. I talk about the lottery, and the Quick Hits section is yet again AH-Mazing! So kick back and soak it all in people — it’s Nonsense Newsletter time!
By John Dudley
When the card market is healthy, cards rise in value with good performances and decline with bad play. When people ask if the market is healthy, the first thing I look at is if the top performers in a league are seeing their card prices plummet. It’s not the only factor in deciding if a market is healthy or not, but it is a good starting point.
With baseball almost over, it’s a good time to check the health of the baseball market. To do so, I’m going to look at most of the top 10 players in terms of WAR and see how their cards fared throughout the year. I’m leaving off Ketel Marte, Jarren Duran, and Matt Chapman as all three are on the very fringes of hobby relevancy. It’s possible that they might get there with a few more seasons like this, but they all have substantial hurdles to hobby glory. If the market is healthy, I expect to see big increases for this group. All of the data here with the exception of Gunnar Henderson’s comes from Card Ladder’s player indices.
By John McTaggart
Who doesn’t dream about one day selling a trading card worth millions of dollars, right?
Who doesn’t, just every once in a while, imagine pulling an RPA, sending it out to grading, getting that gem-mint number, then sending it off to auction.
I know I get caught up in this every so often, and, let’s admit it — it’s cool!
However, trading cards were never intended to be lottery tickets — lottery tickets are lottery tickets, right?
What’s happen though, and there are a few reasons why, is that sports cards have turned into lottery tickets for far too many in the hobby.
You see it daily in break rooms, and on YouTube, where self-proclaimed influencers parade a wad of cash around and act like they’re making life-changing deals at every table in every show.
You see it at local hobby shops when wax box prices are sky-high simply because one card might be in one of those sealed boxes.
If you go to your local party store and look at a stack of scratch-off tickets, same rule applies except the lottery doesn’t base the price of the ticket solely on the possibility of the biggest payout alone.
Quick Hits
Hobby News- PSA 9s are selling for raw prices and you hear about it every day. PSA 10 premiums have dropped from 5x raw to 2x-3x raw for most new cards. Grading premiums might be down but no one seems to mind as August was a record month for the grading companies. It wasn’t that long ago that I was amazed that grading volume hit a million. At current rates, the two million mark will be hit by the end of the year.
Vintage— In a follow up to last week’’s vintage post, the SGC 10 Wilt Chamberlain 62-62 Fleer rookie card that was found in the cabinet of an old grocery store — sold at auction for $1.7 million. Yep.
Hobby News- Giannis has thrown his hat into the ring in the quest for the Topps Now Curry/Durant/James triple auto. He’s offering a cool million for it and is one of many to offer a hefty bounty for the card. Topps made a fortune selling the cards and has likely eclipsed that in terms of publicity value but not all of it is good. Many collectors not familiar with the Topps Now program have expressed frustration at not getting packs and some are confused as to why they got multiples of the same card. It’s hard to tell if the latter group are trolls or just confused. Either way, avoiding interacting with them seems the safe route.
The Sports Card Nonsense newsletters reflect the opinions of only the authors and contributors. They are for informational purposes only and are not a recommendation for purchases or of an investment strategy or to buy or sell any assets.