Interesting Local Auction w/ 1955 Topps – Long Read

Just thought I would relate to you an interesting experience I had last Friday at a local auction in rural Kansas. Living in rural Kansas we don’t get many big shows and few auctions come around that have sports cards. So about a week before I was quite excited to receive a flier for a local auction with a near complete set of NM 1955 Topps cards. Naturally, I was very excited at the prospect of adding a bunch of NM stars to my collection. After a few minutes I did have the realization that NM probably meant around EX if sent to PSA, although I was fine with EX. When the pictures were posted the next day I saw the cards looked pretty nice, not the greatest pictures, some were off-center, but they all looked pretty solid.

So after stewing on this over the course of the week and preparing my game plan I got to the auction pretty early. This was a good idea because attendees could only view the cards one at a time. There were 4 Clemente rookies, 1 Koufax rookie, 3 Ted Williams, 3 Berra, 2 Spahn, 1 Kaline, 1 Jackie Robinson, 1 Banks, 1 Aaron, 1 Snider, 1 Killebrew rookie, and a few other cards to be sold as individual lots. The rest of the set was broken into 8 stacks of 25. Being a geek I had a ruler and a 10x loupe and started looking at the star cards. I left the black light in the car because I didn’t see any indications of alterations. After I finished, I watched some of the other attendees looking at the cards; I did not see anyone evaluating as closely as I did and didn’t see many people writing information down except for player names/#’s for the common stacks. Maybe they did it all in their heads, but that is a feat I could not accomplish. I did overhear a guy behind me who thought they would grade a 6 or 7, so some of the attendees were familiar with professional grading. I’m sure there were also some other collector/dealers who knew their stuff.

I called my wife and let her know my theory of what would happen. My dreams of picking up some nice cards at low prices were quickly diminishing by the number of people attending and all the copies of Beckett and Tuff Stuff floating around (nothing against either but you could kind of tell a lot of people bought them just for this auction). My theory was that people did not look closely enough at the cards, did not know current grading standards, and would bid these cards out of my price range. So after sitting through the auctioning of the 1980’s and 1990’s sets, binders and trays, the real auction started. Results of the cards I was interested in are shown below. I’m having a hard time reading my handwriting but think I got most of the info pretty much correct. Note that I do not regularly collect 1955 Topps so my projected values are probably off – I was just using them as a guide if anything appeared to fall in the range I was willing to spend.

(Card – my grade – what I estimated as a graded SMR/ebay value – actual price):

Killebrew – VG-EX (wrinkle) - $50 - $235
Snider – Solid EX nice - $200 - $200
Kaline – VG (paper loss on front) - $25 - $70
Robinson – EX (little OC) - $100 - $135
Banks – EX (way OC) - $90 - $85
Aaron – EX - $160 - $180
Berra 1 – VG-EX (nice looking though) - $80 - $90
Berra 2 – EX (way OC) - $60 - $60
Berra 3 – EX+ (nice) - $125 - $85
Spahn 1 – EX OC - $55 - $45
Spahn 2 – EX (way OC) - $40 - $35
Williams 1 – EX OC - $200 - $250
Williams 2 – EX (nice) - $260 - $300
Williams 3 – VG-EX (wrinkle) - $130 - $270
Clemente 1 – EX+ (nicest one) - $675 - $550
Clemente 2 – VG (MK and wrinkle) - $150 - $800
Clemente 3 – EX OC - $400 - $650
Clemente 4 – EX to EX/MT OC - $400 - $2800
Koufax – EX/MT - $475 - $800

Stacks of commons varied from VG/EX to EX/MT, some were high numbers and sell prices varied from $200 (mostly LN lots) to around $500 (mostly HN lots) with the last going for $700. I thought they may be worth around $200 to $300 per lot if ungraded, but was only willing to pick them up for cheap.

I was shut out as I was not looking to pay graded card prices for any of the cards. Maybe I was too harsh in the grading, but based on my own submission experiences I think I was pretty accurate. Actually, it’s probably easier to grade someone else’s cards since you do not have a vested interest in the outcome. The fourth Clemente is a pretty clear case of some bidders getting carried away. I felt bad for some of the folks, particularly an older guy in front of me that paid over $200 for what looked like a VG (at best) 1933 Goudey Travis Jackson (pretty much the only other vintage card except for a few semi-star cards from the late 50’s and 60’s).

There really wasn’t time for everyone to look closely at all the cards but I do believe they should have factored that into there bids (and naturally let me get the ones I picked out for cheap). Except for the OC cards and the ones with hard-to-see defects I think a number of people made out OK, although I imagine some think they did a lot better than they did. If they were collectors they probably did fine, but I just had a feeling a lot of them thought they may be able to turn a profit. Anyway, I thought it was pretty interesting as I had never been to a live auction with this type of offering. Was definitely surprised how high most of the cards went in this type of setting.

Adam