Nonsenseletter #11
Scammers, oh my!
First Order of Business
Have you checked out the YouTube show? It is really different from the podcast and if you’re a fan of Mike and Jesse’s you’ll really enjoy this. It’s different from the Ringer podcast and highlights Mike’s glowing happiness and the lovable lug Jesse in a different environment talking about some different stuff. Highly recommended! They also arm wrestle left handed so it’s even more convincing! We really need you to subscribe to the YouTube channel. SCN gives you all the content you want for free, can you throw us a sub in return? Thanks!
Scam Week, 2022
GI Joe Cards Making a Comeback?
Remember that feeling as a 9 year old when you got snookered out of your money by some sleezebag at a card show? I do. Well, imagine being Logan Paul.
TMZ did a piece on this that’s worth checking out. GI Joe card prices skyrocketed immediately afterwards on various marketplaces.
Indian Giver?
Mike Gio’s favorite shirtless breakers, the children at Backyard Breaks had a doozy of a week. They promised a giveaway box to someone who participated earlier in one of their breaks. As they began to open the box and literally called out the name of the “winner”, they pulled a T-Law gold Downtown. They immediately reneged and made up some story about how he was only getting the two mini boxes. They then pretended to be earnest and straightforward by claiming they gave money to charity that day and then gave people a bunch of cards to try to make up for it. The mea culpa videos are as good as the break video. I’m reminded of this Ramones classic….
Mike Gio tackled all of this way better than I ever could in his Instagram Live
SGC vs. PSA:Vintage Basketball by John Dudley
It is easy for a collector to see through browsing sold items and completed auctions that PSA graded cards sell for a premium over other grading companies. One could look at that and conclude that PSA is the only rational place to send cards for grading. This does not consider the costs of grading or wait times though. This is the 9th article in a series evaluating how the sales prices for SGC compare to PSA in an effort to help collectors have solid data for choosing a grading company. We all want the most bang for the buck and hopefully this will help you get there. This week we turn to the vintage basketball market. SGC has a stellar reputation in the vintage market and has had incredibly strong showings in both the vintage baseball and football markets. The basketball crowd does seem to be the most skeptical of SGC and should prove a tougher test.
This article relies on pairing up similar SGC and PSA sales. Sales were included if the same grade card was sold in both PSA and SGC slabs within two weeks of each other. Almost all sales included happened within 1-5 days of each other. It would be nice to include BGS in this analysis but trying to find sales where all three sold within a few days of each other leaves too little data to do much with. Data for this project comes from 130point.com and Cardladder.com.
While earlier articles focused on gem mint 10 cards, examining the vintage market requires us to look at lower grades. The 9s and 10s in the vintage world are left to the rarefied air of auction houses with sales few and far between. This analysis focuses on sales in 5,6,7, and 8 grades depending on the player. Lower grades are omitted for two reasons. First, outside of personal preference the value added from grading lower quality cards is small for the cards included here and secondly there seems to be little price difference. To make proper comparisons no half grades from SGC are included, only whole number grades. No 5.5s or 6.5s here. The cards included are 1970-71 Topps Kareem Abdul Jabbar 1970-71 in 5 and 6 grades, Topps Pete Maravich in 5 and 6 grades, 1971-72 Topps Wilt Chamberlain in 5 grade, 1971-72 Kareem Abdul Jabbar Topps in 5 and 7 grades (no 6 sales in time frame), 1972-73 Topps Julius Erving in 5, 6 grades, 1974-75 Topps George Gervin RC in 7 and 8 grades, 1974-75 Topps Bill Walton in 6,7, and 8 grades, 1975-76 Topps Moses Malone RC in 7 and 8 grades, 1980-81 Topps Larry Bird/Magic Johnson RC in 6,7, and 8 grades. While it would have been nice to include some of the bigger cards from the 1969-70 Topps set, sales were too sparse to include.
Table 1 presents the findings including a breakdown by month. Overall, SGC again proves that it has a solid reputation in the vintage world even with discerning basketball aficionados. Throughout all sales, SGC cards sold for 73% of PSA cards. This is lower than that of baseball and football, but substantially higher than the ultra-modern or modern basketball markets. While entering the data, it became quickly clear that cards graded 8 performed differently than lower graded cards. For that reason, results without 8s are also included. Looking at only 5,6, and 7 grades results in SGC cards selling for 83% of the value of PSA cards. This is pretty much in line with the vintage baseball and football market.
So, what do we do with these numbers? Given that PSA is opening a $100.00 tier again and that SGC has a $25.00 tier when submitting through people like the wonderful Nash Cards, one would need to expect an increase in value of roughly $285.00 for PSA to come out ahead financially. Most sales for these cards are in the 5,6, and 7 range though. In that range one would need to expect an increase of roughly $475.00 to come out ahead with PSA. This also does not account for wait time which is currently a month or two at SGC or roughly a year with PSA.
Looking at the data from this week and the other weeks dealing with vintage cards, it seems that there is a price ceiling where once breached collectors become more concerned with getting a PSA label over an SGC label. That seems to be somewhere over $2000.00, but it is difficult to put an exact number on it with the data at hand.
As an aside, one thing that becomes evident after sifting through tons of graded card sales is that the vintage basketball market has some drastically underpriced gems (Moses Malone RC here I come). Additionally, after months of scattered sales, the vintage basketball market has been hopping in December at least in terms of volume. Another strange tidbit is that there were several fairly high sales on Halloween this year which I would have expected to be flat. The timing of auctions is a major point of interest for me and many other collectors. I certainly would not be surprised to see that investigated in this space in the future.
While this wraps up the proposed nine-part series (what was I thinking when I suggested that?), it won’t be the last you hear of this topic. As many readers have joined the newsletter recently, next week we’ll provide a summary of the findings for all nine articles. Additionally, several of the articles will be revisited periodically as new data comes in. Additionally, I hope to be able to dive into BGS and even CSG and HGA in the very near future, I’ve enjoyed writing this series and I thank you all for letting me invade your email inboxes. It’s a privilege to do so. Thanks for reading.