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REA’s major event of the season, the Summer 2024 event, closes in mid August, offering a formidable assortment of vintage and modern grails spanning cards and memorabilia. In partnership with REA, we’ll be previewing the action over the next few weeks to shine a spotlight on some intriguing lots with insightful market context.
In case you missed last week's edition, we kicked it off by exploring three pre-war baseball assets sure to resonate with vintage collectors across categories. Today, we take a look at some of the rare rookie cards making rare trips across the auction block.
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Today’s rookie cards in the ultra-modern category are numerous, multiplied in supply by the number of products, sets, and parallels. While serial numbering of parallels ensures a hierarchy that still sends the most coveted cards to stratospheric levels of value, the landscape isn’t as easily understood as it once was. But the further back in time you go, the simpler the rookie card landscape becomes, and the passage of time means that natural scarcity takes hold, with high grades of older rookies remaining in short supply.
Thanks to that limited supply, the top examples of certain vintage cards - and even some more modern ones - only come up for sale every so often, and because of the narrower scope of products at the time of their release, substitutes are few. Often, the only substitute is lower grade quality, which to collectors chasing the best is no substitute at all. Let's use some examples from the REA event to better illustrate just how rare some of these cards and their availability at auction can be.
Though collectors may debate the merits of 1951 Bowman and 1952 Topps as the true rookie card of Willie Mays, the reality is that opportunities to buy the best of either are effectively nonexistent, so a substitution isn’t really viable. At present, there are 2,083 unqualified 1951 Bowman Willie Mays cards in the PSA population. Only 9 of those are graded 8.5 or higher, representing a mere 0.4% of the total population. A PSA 9 hasn’t sold publicly since 2009, and there’s only one 8.5 in the population report with no record of a public sale. Of course, that will change shortly when the lone 8.5 sells at REA.
Likewise, a PSA 8.5 or PSA 9 1952 Topps Mays hasn’t sold publicly in the 2020s. The last time a PSA 8.5 ‘52 Topps (also pop 1) sold in August of 2019, it drew $90,000, more than three times the $28,800 result for a PSA 8 in the same month. The PSA 8 ‘52 Topps Mays has increased in value by 3.5X since then, while the PSA 8 ‘51 Bowman has 4X’d….and both have sold on more than 15 occasions to the PSA 8.5’s zero. As a result, the anticipation for a big number from this month’s PSA 8.5 sale is palpable.
You need not travel all the way back to the early 1950s to find iconic athletes with scant rookie card supply. In the case of Wayne Gretzky and the 1979 O-Pee-Chee Hockey set, the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against any high-grade potential. Despite a total population of nearly 12,000 cards, the PSA 9 and 10 population sits at a mere 0.8% - a shockingly low share for a late 1970s printing. The O-Pee-Chee versions were produced in Canada, while their American counterpart was printed under the Topps brand. Though still a miniscule percentage, 1.3% of the American-made edition carries a mint or gem mint grade by PSA. The difference in population can be traced to a variety of factors including production quality, packaging, and storage.
The O-Pee-Chee Company developed a reputation for inconsistent printing and low-quality paper stock. While Topps used a guillotine-style blade through the late 1970s, which led to sharp edges but sometimes off-centering, the wire-cutting method used by O-Pee-Chee led to similar centering flaws but also resulted in battered edges and corners. The wire cutting blades were prone to dull quickly and the variability likely contributed to the low number of quality Gretzky rookie cards. If a card did manage to survive the printing and cutting process in a gem-mint state, the wax packaging used by O-Pee-Chee often left residue or stains on the cards, while erratic temperatures and humidity in Canada led to the rotting and deterioration of many cases.
The average auction price achieved for a PSA 9 O-Pee-Chee Gretzky over the past two years is $129K while the PSA 9 Topps version has averaged less than $40K. Heading into August, there have been the same exact number of verified auction sales (15) over that two-year period, which means that despite higher proportional turnover within the mint O-Pee-Chee population, the Canadian cards are still priced at a 3x multiple over the American edition.
The 1969-70 Topps Basketball set is one of the more iconic vintage basketball sets in existence, as it represented the return of Topps to the sport after more than a decade of absence. The set’s most coveted rookie is that of Lew Alcindor - later, Kareem Abdul Jabbar. The population of Alcindor cards in both the PSA and SGC census is nearly double that of the next most popular submission, Wilt Chamberlain. But of 1,954 Alcindor cards in the SGC pop report, just 10 are graded SGC 9, with none higher. That amounts to 0.5% of the population, a figure which is nearly replicated at 0.4% at PSA. So, popular though the card may be, high-graded examples are quite rare.
An SGC 9 has sold three times since the start of 2023, though the sale at REA will be the first of 2024. Those three 2023 sales traded at a multiple between 2.5 and 3.1x higher than a PSA 8. If you applied that range to the last sale of a PSA 8, you’d expect a result for the SGC 9 between $46-58k. While - oddly - an SGC 8 hasn’t traded in that timeframe, the multiples expand abundantly as you move down the ladder, reaching as high as 22x at one point versus an SGC 7. So though some may question the magnitude of difference in quality between an SGC 7 and an SGC 9 or a PSA 8 and a PSA 9, the market remains quite steadfast in its belief that the magnitude of difference in value is sizable.
With zero gem-mint cards and only five mint examples, the Joe Namath rookie card market is almost barren of high-grade prizes.
The enhanced 2-1/2” x 4-11/16" dimensions of the 1965 Topps “Tall Boys” Football set not only made the cards recognizable but also added a level of difficulty for those looking to preserve their collection. Unable to fit inside a standard sleeve, the edges and corners of cards from the set paid the price, and those that survived in near-mint condition now command top prices at auction.
The last verified 1965 Topps Joe Namath PSA 9 sale came in 2018 and realized $264,000. Since August 2018, the PSA 8 market, which carries a population of nearly 80 cards, has appreciated by more than 30%. The Joe Namath rookie card is not only plagued by poor condition, but it was also a short print. At the time, the AFL was still a fledgling league that had been little more than a punching bag for the premier NFL. The high-numbered cards within the 1965 set predominantly feature AFL players including Namath, Tom Flores, and Lance Alworth. The 1965 Topps card is the only Joe Namath card with a PSA population of at least 2,000 that has not recorded a single gem mint copy. Although it’s by far the most sought-after and valuable Namath, the 1965 rookie is his third most-graded card. As of July, the 1965 PSA population is below 2,200 while the 1972 and 1969 populations sit at 3,012 and 3,274 respectively. The lower population for a premier rookie is yet another indicator of how short that 1965 AFL print run might have been.
The enemy of high card grades? Foil. That’s why the 1993 Upper Deck SP Derek Jeter rookie - despite being vastly younger in age than the cards we’ve discussed so far - is so difficult to obtain in strong condition. The foil happily betrays the card’s flaws, easily surfacing scratches or corner imperfections. There are 4,768 Jetercards in the SGC population report, but a mere 4 of them have attained an SGC 10. That’s the top 0.08% of the population, better than 99.92% of other specimens. The figures are similar at PSA, where PSA 10s sit in the top 0.09% of the population, with just 22 of almost 24,000 cards having made the grade.
Before selling at REA for $312,000 in April - which was a massive improvement on two December 2022 sales for $204,000 - a PSA 10 version of the card hadn’t traded for the full balance of 2023 after a flurry of activity at the market’s peak in 2022. That result bucked a trend of flat-to-down performance for lower grades over the same period, perhaps emphasizing the unique appeal of rare, high-graded examples. Similarly, it’s now been over a year since an SGC 10 last changed hands. The last time an SGC 10 traded, it did so at just shy of a 10X multiple to a PSA 9, the lowest multiple since 2019. Without multiple expansion, that would imply a current value of a little below $34k. Over the last six sales, though, that multiple has averaged about 14.5X, which implies a $51k value at current levels. With bidding already exceeding that $34k level with fees, it seems the return to auction after the year-long absence of the high graded example has once again awoken Jeter collectors from their slumber.
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All of these rare, high-graded grails close on August 11th at 9PM. Who knows when the next opportunity might come?
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