Someone won an auction for $160 for a raw 1977 Topps Mark Fidrych last night.
olb31
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I hope it wasn't you.
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olb31
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A PSA 10 went for $1,100.00 a few days ago.
That raw one looks pretty nice.
joe,
i think you have graded cards before. how often do you think you have a 10 when you send it in to psa, only to get an 8 or 9. for me, it's most of the time. The chances of getting a 9 on this card outways the chances of a 10. i use the theory that i will pay up to a psa 8 level on vintage, in the hopes of getting an 8. if it turns into a higher grade, then i win, if not i lose a few dollars. a psa 9 fidrych is a $100 card. $160+$10 to grade = $170, you leave yourself no room but to get a 10 or you lose in a big way. at a card shoe, like chantilly, va, i don't think you get $10 for this card raw. i do agree the card looks nice and i would have paid $20 for it, but $160 is another story.
I am the first one to admit that 10's are very hard to get. The card has white borders and looks perfectly centered to me, so if you are looking for a 10 it does have a few things going for it. No print dots either. Hard to tell on the corners, but they look pretty good.
I think this card in a 9 might be ok too, I'm betting if this one is a 9 the seller is likely to break even, make a little but won't lose much. Centering means a lot. An 8 is certainly a fail. If I sent it in it would get a 7.5 ;-)
I'm no expert on 77 Topps or this card in particular, but a quick look shows a lot of off-centered cards, and no recent 9's sold.
What astonished me was how much the 10 went for. If you like to gamble, this wasn't a bad one to make. At least you get to see the card before you buy it.
A $180.00 gamble to win $1,000.00? A lot of people have a couple hundred laying around and are bored and stuck at home.
It also seems to have been one of those auctions where 2 people decided they wanted that card and it went way too high.
I would not have given over 25.00 for this card.
One other thought crossed my mind while I was typing, a "good" trimmer might be able to get results with the centering as good as it is here.
Not really surprising. Gambling is the dominant aspect of the hobby currently.
I watch Vintage Breaks every so often and of course there is the obvious gamble of buying a spot in pack break. That's easy enough. More interesting to me is watching them break a 1971 Football set that is in EX condition with most cards having centering issues. The spots are sold for $14 a pop in the 263 card set. An EX set can be easily found on eBay for $200-300. Yet, Vintage Breaks rakes in $3,600 on the break. This shows how desperate the gambling mentality is currently in this hobby.
They had another one where they broke 100 slabbed cards at $150 a spot. There were probably 15 "hits" in the box. Most of the cards were similar to a PSA 9 Fleer Update 1990 Frank Thomas or like a 1991 PSA 8 Mike Piazza Bowman. Basically a $10-$15 dollar card. When the hits started to appear it was quite laughable as the "hits" were basically break even cards. Only maybe 3 or 4 cards topped the $150 mark. Yet, the gamblers were loving every moment of it even though they were just throwing away their money while the house took in $15k for what essentially was about $3k worth of cards.
I can’t believe the premium breakers get on some of their breaks.
More accurately, I can’t believe the premium buyers pay. Who in their right mind would pay into anything that totalled over 15-20% of the cost of the product?
Much more fun than buying a lottery ticket.
The last gamble I took was two-three years ago. Bought a box of 1985 Topps. No McGwire, no Puckett, one Clemens with a huge print defect.
It was fun opening, but not one card worth sending in.