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1980s Madness
ReggieCleveland
Posts: 3,854 ✭✭✭✭✭
A 1987 Leaf Maddux PSA 10 sold for $430 last night. The '87 Tiffany Bonds is closing in on $600. There are now two '85 Clemens cards closing in on $500. The Olympic McGwire crossed the $1,000 threshold. The '84 Topps Mattingly is now a $400 card and I don't want to think what the next '84 Donruss will sell for, probably $3k.
These aren't outliers. All of the smaller cards have seen the same growth. Hell has frozen over. Is everyone prepared?
Arthur
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Hi Arthur, I’ve seen people on this board predicting for a year or two that the 80s cards would eventually take off like this. It will be interesting to see if these prices hold as the new norm, or if they’re a byproduct of the pandemic, like the hobby-wide inflation we’ve seen.
Yaz Master Set
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Also collecting Andre Tippett, Patriots Greats' RCs, 1964 Venezuelan Topps, 1974 Topps Red Sox
Investors? Manipulation? Collectors? I think the new cards selling for outrageous prices probably influences the older cards some. People are paying thousands of dollars for Zion. The chances of him being that good throughout his career is low. Speculation has gone overboard.
The magic number to consider is when is too much too much, as in quantity. Griffey upper deck and DOnruss, 1990 Fleer Jordan's, etc. There are thousands of 10's, when does the market decide that there is just too many and the speculators/investors leave. Eventually, supply will be the major factor for most of these cards to grow in value. If supply is in the thousands like the UD Griffey look for free fall. The classic green Bonds has a 35 POP, look for a major rise at some point.
This is one I'm curious about. The '87 O-Pee-Chee has now surpassed it in count (35 to 30) and is a $3,000 card. The Green back last sold on March 1 for $375 so I would expect a jump on the next one sold but I don't see it attaining O-Pee-Chee level demand. It's a back variation going up against a brand, no chance.
Arthur
Picked up my 3rd Mattingly rookie (Fleer version) before prices get too far out there. PWCC has a newly listed Donruss.
I love the 80's but I'm anxious to see where prices are in a year from now.
So far the '86 Donruss Canseco has stayed where it was. I feel like that card is just tinder, it could go at any moment.
Arthur
Looks like it has just about doubled (from $150ish to almost $300) since the beginning of April.
My bad. Thought I looked a few days ago and saw one sell for $199.
It's one of the most iconic cards of the decade. For anyone that collected as a kid in 1988 and 1989 it's a white whale. And Canseco has always been popular among collectors HOF or not.
Arthur
Never said it would surpass the OPC. But might surpass a $1,000. Leaf will blow up too. The error variation of the opening day is the wrong person and it sells for alot. The Green back at least has Barry on the front. Look up white back versions of the 1956 Mantle or the 1969 variation on the Mantle huge price differences.
$2315 on the best offer
The Opening Day has the brand though, just like the Mantles. Classic is going to have a much lower ceiling on it than any card with a popular brand behind it. Rarity is only half the battle, you need demand as well.
That Mattingly seller was too impatient. There's one up now in a PWCC auction that will get shilled up way past $2315. Wouldn't surprise me if they decide to take it to $3k.
Arthur
This is going to push 80s unopened even higher. Never saw this coming. Will we see a crash from these prices if, as many predict, the deepest recession of our lifetime takes foot?
John
Two opposing forces pulling on each other -- deep recession vs. unprecedented influx of new collectors.
The 1980s stuff is "easier," if you will, to collect. Want to get all of Canseco's mainstream rookies? You're talking about three cards. What we're seeing with the 1980s now though is the modern effect of the "Rookie Card" rules being applied to cards from the 1980s.
For a very long time, the focus on Bonds rested almost entirely on his '86 Update/Traded cards. But those are now being treated like the '09 Trouts are treated and the '87 material is the equivalent of Trout's 2011 material. The 1987 Topps base card is now $125? I think its pop is around 1400. How many people need to demanding that card to force it up to that price point? Look at 1987 McGwire cards, too. Those are now being treated as "rookies" while the '85 Topps assumes the '09 Trout role.
Trout rewrote the hobby playbook and it's having a retroactive effect on cards from the 1980s decade, as well.
Arthur
Don't pay much attention to the talking heads on TV.
I'm an ops manager at a construction firm in PA. This is our restart week. Within days demand has spiked near pre-shutdown level. I'm not saying demand will continue at the former level. We have plenty of customers ready to go NOW.
As for cards, 80s and modern (and many others) are having a major breakout. It hasn't hit vintage yet. No, not sustainable for every example. A new baseline will form after awhile. As usual, the market will overshoot the new baseline prices.
Erick
I completely agree with Arthur's Mike Trout Theory. Like a lot of people here the 1980's are my prime years for baseball. I always chased the update and traded RCs first. It looks like I should have spent more money on the lower cost base rookies even if they came in the next year.
I have started selling my "year after" RCs like the 1984 Strawberry and 1985 Puckett/Clemens/Gooden. I'm keeping the traded and update rookies if they were the first rookie card.
I’m not sure why the surge in 1980’s prices has caught so many off-guard. There are a few factors at play, all of which indicate this will be a sustained trend.
Everything tells me this will be sustained for the next 20 years until this group turns 60-70 and starts to simplify their possessions. If you love the 1980s like I do, time to stock up as this bull has 20 years to run.
There are two parts of the equation, supply and more importantly demand. As we can see by Jordan cards, supply can be quickly eaten up by a huge demand.
Early 1990's BKB is showing great life and that supply is among the highest in the hobby.
EDIT: I would recklessly speculate that the "peak" hobby collector base occurred sometime in the late 1980's through mid-1990's. That crowd is now in their highest earning years (at least until the virus got us!).
This just isn't accurate. I began my 1980s collection back in 2013 and was doing it just for the fun of it. It was a cheap way for me to have a lot of fun with the hobby. In order to introduce some level of difficulty to it, I wanted to acquire every card in PSA 10 condition. I assumed that, even adding this stipulation, it wouldn't be difficult for me to acquire any of the cards I want. Obviously, my first step was to just look to buy raw cards dirt cheap with the thought that I would self-submit and this would be the most cost-efffective plan. This is what I learned:
Nobody took care of any of these cards from a huge period of years. These cards were supposed to be a cash windfall for so many people and they ended up being worthless. People were angry. They left the hobby. There was spite. For more than 25 years, these cards (the ones that weren't used as kindling or just tossed in the dump) were given away to younger kids time and time again. And yeah, that includes 1987 Topps Barry Bonds cards. NOBODY was gently pulling those from packs and penny sleeve/top loadering them. They were raw in monster boxes that were getting tossed around and moved and flipped through and sorted over and over and over again.
I bought so much raw stuff on eBay. Single cards that looked Mint+, large groups and lots, unopened, you name it. I ended up with virtually zero grading material. Anything that did get top loadered was put in there raw. You want to know what a horrible long-term place to put a baseball card is? A top loader with no penny sleeve. They rattled around, scratching their surface, sliding out of the tops, dinging corners, getting compressed against hard plastic for 25 years. Over time, those top loader become brittle and any kind of surface flaw ends up acting like the tip of a knife.
It's like people deliberately treated this stuff like dirt out of spite. It hadn't lived up to what they were promised to they were going to beat the living hell out of it and make it pay. I've never seen that many dinged corners and surface scratches in my life. The idea that there's monster boxes out there full of gem mint Barry Bonds rookies is hilarious. It wasn't like modern is today; 90+% of the stuff that came out of packs back then had no chance to gem. It's the complete opposite now.
Arthur
I wouldn't say it's hilarious. People bought cards in bulk like they were stocks back in the 80s. Bricks of 50, 100, or even 1,000 of the same player were not uncommon in multiple ads in SCD. Bonds was not a blue chip prospect and very reasonable in price. It wouldn't shock me if a large amount surfaced from one source, though those odds seem low now.
There are a lot of 80's sets with atrocious centering and I agree that 10's from many sets can be quite difficult even though production numbers are high in many cases.
Agree completely with Arthur’s last post regarding the condition of the “well kept” collections. I need only look at my childhood collection.
As for the % of dimes leaving fresh packs these days? Well our esteemed Board member Chris is giving us a real time lens into those statistics. I ripped perhaps 50 boxes of 83-87 with some 89UD as well. Horrible results. But it was fun.
I’m ok with the opportunity cost, it was all cheap at the time.
John
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I think that perhaps you should read this thread from start to finish.
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/995191/i-love-the-1980s-the-ultimate-unopened-rip-quest-to-build-topps-fleer-donruss-psa-10-sets#latest
Come on, Chris.
Andy
I just ripped wax, and rack and opened vending of 1987 Topps. About 10,000 cards. I have 2 Barry Bonds rookies to send in and I am not confident they will be 10's. One might be, the other will prolly be a 9. I would not be surprised if I got two 9's or even an 8 and a 9. There were 12 total in the rip and the other 10 are all off-center.
I did a little better on Bo Jackson. Maybe 6 that could be 10's, but they are half of the value of the Bonds.
The population report shows that out of 13,401 there are only 1,303 Bonds' that achieved a 10. The rest are basically worthless. 10's are not easy to get in this card. This year has centering issues that are just bad enough to keep most cards out of a 10 holder. There are also a LOT of print spots on many of the well centered cards.
For good or bad, the hobby has changed, while still kind of staying the same. More nice cards, but the only ones anyone wants are rookie 10's. Nolan Ryan being the only real exception.
Some of the vintage cards are actually going down in price in PSA 8, cards that looked like they would hold their value and maybe even go up.
In pretty much everything from 1986 forward there are only a couple of cards in each set that have ANY value, and as stated, only in a PSA 10. I am excluding the "low pop" commons as only a very few seem to be completing graded sets. The grading fees are huge with a 700 card set. Especially when so few cards will sell for even the grading fees.
Look how many 1989 UD Griffey's there are, almost 3,800 and the card has recently gone over the $1,000.00 mark. Plenty of unopened still out there too.
What you say is true, the cards are being taken better care of now, but 99.8% are worthless. Remember when second year cards had value? How about that 5th year short print?
Have you ever seen the old comic book ads? You could do this in the 1960's as well.
As far as 1989 Upper Deck goes You had to buy EVERY CARD in the set in a "brick" to get a brick of Griffey's.
I think this is pretty much the thinking of collectors that don't have any current experience in cards from this era. It's completely understandable; it's what everyone thought for 20+ years. The difference is, the people that have jumped back in and gotten their hands dirty have realized this thinking is inaccurate.
Arthur
This is my baseball card album. None are getting a 10.
I should dig thru my bubble years inventory. There's gotta be a 10 somewhere
Edit: idk, had to move them, shove them, toss them around a hundred times in those cardboard boxes within cardboard boxes. $1.00 or more would go in toploader. Under a buck went in the binder. Had to move them around as Beckett changed.
While I completely agree that there are likely 1,000,000 of the 1987 Topps Barry Bonds that were produced, your logic that 93,000 potential PSA 10s exist is WAY off. There is an inherent bias that people submit only those they think will PSA 10. Therefore the 9.3% hit rate on submissions is massively skewed versus total cards produced. I can tell you from ripping more 1980s case fresh cards than anyone else, that the hit rate on 1987 Topps pack fresh cards being worthy of a PSA 10 is actually 0.4%. Yes, four-tenths of one percent. This means that best case would be 4000 potential PSA 10s if every card from Topps still existed in pack fresh form. As you state, 1303 have made there way into PSA 10 holders. This is after 25 years of PSA grading cards all through the Barry Bonds hype days of smashing 70+ HR in a season. Let’s speculate that 10% of 1987 Topps production remains unopened and another 10-20% remains pack fresh, perfectly stored away decades ago and never submitted for grading. That would mean that another 400-1200 candidates exist in perfect raw form. Therefore the ceiling on PSA 10 Bonds from 1987 Topps is closer to 2500 copies. That would be a doubling of the current pop report and a much better estimate of the ceiling. Everyone won’t submit though and many will stay buried in unopened, so reality is 1500-1600 will make PSA 10 status.
I had planned to respond but certainly couldn't have put this tremendous analysis together.
Excellent post.
You're projecting. Just because you did something does not mean that that's what everyone else did. You have a thread full of people that are speaking from actual present-day experience that are telling you otherwise and yet you still vehemently disagree just because your own personal experience from 30 years ago doesn't fit.
Arthur
Any Luis Sojo’s in that box of 90 Leaf worth grading?
Jason
Personal Collection | Willie Woodburn | Legion of Doom
Take a look at this thread.
https://forums.collectors.com/discussion/995191/i-love-the-1980s-the-ultimate-unopened-rip-quest-to-build-topps-fleer-donruss-psa-10-sets#latest
You can't use the pop reports and extrapolate ratios like you did. I own the 1982 Wrestling All Stars Series B Rick Martel PSA 9 which is easily in the top ten condition rarities from any trading card set from the 80's from any genre. There is one PSA 9 and one PSA 8.
There are only 48 graded because most will never get sent in because they are a 5 or below. One might look at this and say you have a 2.08% chance of landing an 8 or a 9. This couldn't be further from the truth. It needs to be taken on a card by card basis in reality. I have a stack of these in a drawer I just pulled out and here are 16 and I have a few signed and a few others that are loose in another box.
I collect unopened rack packs and cello packs with the key cards showing and the prices have at least tripled for many of these. I have been offered four figures for each of the attached. Last year these would have only been 1/2 as expensive. I turned down a trade for the 84 donruss that would have given me a authenticated 75 Topps Baseball rack pack. An those Shaq 92-93 cards are skyrocketing. Thos rack pack is rc on front and his gold rc on the back of the same rack!
Send your cards in and get all 10’s!
What grade would you assign to this beautiful 89 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr I pulled from a factory set and put right into a penny sleeve and then a top loader?
Does it have the tiny crease on the back? A lot them do.
Awesome packs! A thousand bucks for a double Shaq? Send them my way if you don’t wanna sell, and ask the guy who wants your Gwynn if they’d like to have a Boggs instead?
timetoca$hthosein
Join the Rookie stars on top PSA registry today:
1980-1989 Cello Packs - Rookies
How much do you submit? I submit a ton. Hitting a PSA 10 80s card is not as easy as you have set in your mind. I buy tons of unopened wax from these years as well as factory sets. I go through them and most are not worth submitting. When I do find 80s cards worth submitting then hitting a 10 is another thing. I went through 4 beautiful 87 Topps football factory sets not long ago. I came away with 2 10s. (Cunningham and Mike Singletary). Several pretty 9s a few 8.5s. The rest not worth submitting. Centering is usually terrible and cards can be pack fresh all day long but not Gem Mint.
“I don’t submit”’
That is obvious
Ok....
wait.....
what?
"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large; I contain multitudes.)"
Andy
Spend about 15 years submitting then I will value your opinion on these matters. I am not saying these cards are long term gold, and I am not trying to be a jerk but I do not want someone giving me ratios if he is not familiar and involved with the craft.
I ripped around 50 boxes of 85 OPC a few years back and didn’t hit one of the key players in a ten. Only sent in 20 or so. Someday I will go through them all and I’m sure there are some blazers in there but I picked through 50 Pucketts and best was a 9.
Wrong. I have multiple back issues of SCD, Baseball Hobby News, and Tuff Stuff that say otherwise on Bonds.
FWIW, I have opened multiple cases of '87 Topps vending and rack and have pulled Bonds cards whose main issue straight from the factory cases are centering. Despite large production, these cards can't be assumed to be gem as easily as you think.
You assume a lot Dustin. Probably should change your name to Dustinspeaksabouthatwhichhedoesnotknow. It is a little long but yeah I am not selling searched sets. Anyway my mistake for posting, It is always best to let someone continue in their opinion on the internet because you are not going to change their mind.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1985-Topps-Mark-McGwire-ROOKIE-RC-401-PSA-10-GEM-MINT-PWCC-E/143596474863?hash=item216f0451ef:g:GBQAAOSwEwpesIGe
This McGwire is getting some major action. I bought the off centered copy I posted above from what would turn out to be my first college economics professor and who got me hooked on it. He had an entire lecture about how he sold them all off as the chase for 70 was peaking and that is when we both realized I was one of his customers. Unfortunately I paid $160 as a 19 year old for that one and didn't realize how critical centering was.
No one disputes that fact. The amount that will end up in 10 holders is what is being disputed.
Dustin thanks for the entertainment today. I am taking some anti inflammatory pills and can't drink like I usually do on a Saturday but you have provided some much needed comic relief. I do appreciate it.
No. The numbers dustinspeaks for themselves.
No, no. For themselves the numbers dustinspeaks.
No, not quite right. The numbers themselves dustinspeaks for.
Grrr...dustinspeaks for the numbers themselves.
Almost. dustinspeaks the numbers for themselves.
Now I'M confused.
Andy
Here. I threw together old data I have with previous pop totals vs. today.
(for either side of the debate)
hmmmm...you may want to submit 100 of your best cards and see what results you get before throwing out blanket statements about how worthless cards are because they were so overproduced and how easy it is to get 10's from the 80's and early 90's...I have bought well more than a million cards from various lots off of Craigslist over the past 1.5 years, and I can assure you, as others have tried to do, that finding PSA 10 worthy candidates is TOUGH. You only need follow Jordangretzkyfan's thread where he is opening unopened boxes from that era...pack fresh cards, and he is finding a few per box that he deems to be PSA 10, and even then, he has to get the grader at PSA to agree with his assessment. You can eliminate 90% of the cards right away due to horrid centering. Buy some unopened product and some 5k count boxes of cards from that era, and you will soon see what everyone in this conversation is trying to advise you on...