artie_fufkin wrote:

Webstergrovesalum wrote:

I found Tony's baseball card while at my mother's house & wondered if any of you guys have a clue as to the value of a card like this?

A lot of it depends upon the condition of the card, Web. I'd put it where it won't get damaged and hold on to it until LaRussa gets into the Hall of Fame. The value will probably increase by a factor of 10 once he gets inducted.

Good point.  I wonder how long of a wait that will be?

So - is he leaving the Cardinals after this year?

Baseball cards took a funny business twist right around the time I stopped collecting.

When I started (1985) there were 3 cards a year. Topps, Donruss, and Fleer.

Then Bowman hit.... Then Upper Deck hit..... Then they started doing series inserts into sets. UD decided to produce an ELITE card set (SP), Bowman decided to make the Chromes. Pretty soon after they got the idea of doing short prints. Then someone decided that the Beckette Magazine really wasn't a great way to value cards, they should be sent off to BCS or SCG or whatever to be encased, coded, and returned with a 5 point grading system. At some point it became cool to dice up bats/balls/jerseys etc. Then it became REALLY cool to dice up something historic and put those on cards (Like a set of George Vizena's fucking pads... no hockey hall of fame, let's shred that shit and put it on cards). Combine it with an autograph, run a small set of 1/10/25/50/100/250/500/1000/1500 and the cards are almost automatically worth >40.00 a piece (for bums!). So now you can charge 15.00 for a pack of cards. This circus-fuck snowballed in a matter of 5-7 years during the 90's from the pure and decent thing it was since the beginning.

Back to the other nightmare of grading. The overall result of this new system means that anything that comes back with 9's is worth considerably the mint price in a Beckette price guide, while 10's makes it much more valued. Any Short-print card that comes back with 10's is worth an unbelievable amount more.

Some grading services are tougher on ranking than others, so those 10's are worth more than other 10's. There's also like a 7.00 grading fee to do this per card. The end result of this kind of fiasco is something like the below link. Here you'll notice the Albert Pujols Bowman 2001 #264 rookie card (blue one) can cost you anywhere from 40.00 to 220.00.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=2001+albert+pujols+rookie+card+bowman&_sacat=0&_odkw=albert+pujols+rookie+card+bowman&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313

This entire transition is what kicked me out of the card market, there's just no way a kid can collect anything of value nowadays.

Last edited by alz (9/28/2011 9:46 am)

artie_fufkin wrote:

"When I started (1985) there were 3 cards a year. Topps, Donruss, and Fleer."

When I was a kid, it was just Topps. I read somewhere they don't even put the gum in the packs anymore because it reduces the value of the card.
I had a pretty extensive card collection that would probably worth a fair chunk of change today, but it probably got tossed when my dad retired and moved.

My husband is still angry about how his ex-wife stole his collection of cards from the 1950's & 1960's!

Webstergrovesalum wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

"When I started (1985) there were 3 cards a year. Topps, Donruss, and Fleer."

When I was a kid, it was just Topps. I read somewhere they don't even put the gum in the packs anymore because it reduces the value of the card.
I had a pretty extensive card collection that would probably worth a fair chunk of change today, but it probably got tossed when my dad retired and moved.

My husband is still angry about how his ex-wife stole his collection of cards from the 1950's & 1960's!

He should be, if they were kept in good condition (Boxed and not disturbed or able to jostle around and get thrashed) then you could probably estimate their worth at 1000.00 for every 50 cards (average). If he had cards like Mantle, Maris, Musial, Brock, maybe a Dimaggio (stopped in 1951), then he could have lost any amount of money.

The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle is largely considered the holy grail of cards (along with the T206 Honus Wagner tobacco card of the early 1900's), there are a few on Ebay, the PSA 0 listing (Meaning the card got the worst condition rating they could offer) was listed for 5000.00. I doubt he gets that since there are some 2's and 3's for 4,000.00. Still though, even in the roughest form, that card is worth a lot of money.

Edit -  Buy the way there is a Wagner T206 card (auctioned with a Plank card) on ebay. It's been graded simply as "Authentic" because it's condition is shit by today's standards. Asking price? $359K
http://www.ebay.com/itm/T206-Honus-Wagner-Eddie-Plank-both-PSA-Authentic-/260849927711?pt=US_Baseball&hash=item3cbbde061f

Last edited by alz (9/28/2011 2:59 pm)

"the T206 Honus Wagner tobacco card of the early 1900's"

Any truth to the legend there were only a handful of those cards made because Wagner didn't want an association with a tobacco company, or is that an instance of 21st century morality being imposed on a (practically) 19th century lifestyle?

"I guess the ATC began printing cards while asking for permission, and stopped after he did not give his, so only 50-200 were produced."

Tangentially, I wonder if there's some sort of standard clause in a player's contract that he has to pose for cards, and if they get paid. I've never heard of a modern player refusing to pose for a card, so there must be some kind of agreement.
I'll go even further off the path and note that there are and very few official photos of TK's pal Charles Radbourne in uniform. Seems Ol' Hoss used to like to flip a certain digit at the camera anytime a photographer tried to snap a picture.