509 - 1980 Topps Vending sets @ Heritage
NGS428
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Cool story.. Should have bought them from him in 1980!
From Heritage:
Today was a fun one. A gentleman walked in to our NYC office and asked to speak with me regarding some baseball cards. In 1980, baseball card collecting started to become more popular and he decided he wanted to try to make some money. He tricked Topps into believing he was a major distributor and ordered over 100 vending cases of their newest product, 1980 Topps. Hiring some local school kids, he opened all 100 cases and assembled sets, countless complete sets of 1980 Topps. Next, he took out an ad in Sporting News magazine selling these sets for $10 or $12, undercutting famed dealer Renata Galasso by half. He ended up having some minor success, but decided baseball card dealing wasn’t for him.
How many vending sets did he have left over? 509.
509 complete vending sets of 1980 Topps baseball. I couldn’t believe it and had to see it for myself. I rented a van and drove out today to see in person. Sure enough, here they are, some housed in the original empty vending cases from 1980. I have a lot of work ahead of me.
Nic
Guides Authored - Graded Card Scanning Guide PDF | History of the PSA Label PDF
Comments
Wow. Can't wait to see a lineup of 500 Rickey's! Nice find.
Three quarters at least will be too OC to be considered PSA 8 or 9 material and then there will be print defects. Combine that with kids hand collating sets in 1980 there are bound to be some dinged corners too
ISO 1978 Topps Baseball in NM-MT High Grade Raw 3, 100, 103, 302, 347, 376, 416, 466, 481, 487, 509, 534, 540, 554, 579, 580, 622, 642, 673, 724__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ISO 1978 O-Pee-Chee in NM-MT High Grade Raw12, 21, 29, 38, 49, 65, 69, 73, 74, 81, 95, 100, 104, 110, 115, 122, 132, 133, 135, 140, 142, 151, 153, 155, 160, 161, 167, 168, 172, 179, 181, 196, 200, 204, 210, 224, 231, 240
Out of 500 how many do you expect to grade 8 or 9, and will any grade a 10? I would guess 5 - 9's, 10 - 8's, and zero 10's.
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I would hope heritage would grade the top 10 if they thought any could 10?
My guess 0 10s in that group.
Cool find. I'd imagine the same thing with grading. The fact they were handled by teenagers back then probably does not help either.
Do I understand correctly - these are 509 hand collated sets? Doesn’t seem like a big deal to me.
My ripping experience of 1980’s vending would suggest about 1% will be candidates for PSA 10 and about 7% will be strong contenders for PSA 9. This would project to five PSA 10s and 35 PSA 9. Given current grading standards, I would set the over/under at 1 PSA 10 and 36 PSA 9.
I dont think we will see another psa 10 rickey. protecting the pop. may get a few 9's. think of how many times the loose cards in all those boxes were moved/dropped/shifted. i would have to think lots of 5,6 and 7's
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I wouldn’t touch it
I think this is a fantastic find!
Jordangretzkyfan has a lot of experience opening vintage, I would agree there will be very few Rickey 10's from these......if any.
Lots of speculation here on whether or not the cards were damaged during putting the sets together and subsequent damage that may have happened.
I would assume minimal damage.
If the guy was doing this as a business, you would hope he instructed his employees to be careful and the photo shows the sets are in the original vending boxes. They look like they have been taken care of very well.
Of course the Henderson card is the holy grail here, but I think there's going to be a lot of 9's and a few 10's of some very desirable cards, not to mention minor stars and commons.
I can't help but thinking it would be fun to put together 1 (or more) "perfect" set from this find.
First we need a large bottle of Tylenol! 😁
Exactly my thoughts too.
A project that someone else could do. Not me. Can you imagine that work involved.
In the picture above the boxes are standing on end, tilted, etc. I'm guessing a lot of the cards have issues from handling.
It does tell us there is still some sh*t out there……
I bet we would all be shocked if we knew exactly how much is out there in the wild.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I am trying to figure out how many cases he originally purchased from Topps. It would take at least 31 vending cases to make 509 sets, assuming perfect distribution. If you count those double printed cards, this guy probably had to buy 40 cases to make these sets. And these are just the number of sets that he had leftover. I wonder how many sets he sold in 1980.
buying O-Pee-Chee (OPC) baseball
In the OP it says he bought "over 100 vending cases".
What is Heritage going to do with anything not a gradable Henderson or maybe Ryan? So they grade maybe 100 cards max and how much do they expect to get for the rest? Will be interesting to see how they sell them.
In this case I think the story is cooler than the actual cards.
If they can get 10s on the Ozzie, Brett and Rose then those sell at a decent price.
Otherwise, you're right. Mostly crickets.
Complete sets sell for $400.00.
10’s on anything from 1980 and earlier aren’t happening anymore.
Nice cards. All of these look graded with pre-hologram labels. I concur with @dan89...with the new standards, it will be tough to 10 anything 80 and earlier.
Thanks,
David (LD_Ferg)
1985 Topps Football (starting in psa 8) - #9 - started 05/21/06
I'm not debating that, just pointing out that there are more than 3 cards going for good money.
Can you imagine what a freshly graded Ryan 10 would go for?
I am also guessing they didn't pay a whole lot for those sets for the reasons given here.
I think it's a great story. Good for the hobby!
I want to fess up that I am the one with all the 1980 sets. Several years ago a women named Jenny came on the board and had many old unopened cases of cards she wanted to get rid of. She also had these 509 sets. She said her cousins uncle's nephews late grandfather had inherited the cards. She just wanted to get rid of them. So I told her that I would pay for the shipping of the cards if she sent them to me. It cost, at the time, $8 per set, so i ended up spending around $4,000 for all the sets. She was so kind she also threw in 4 unopened boxes of 1980, because I was so nice. LOL!!!
I realize it's an amazing story and I'm glad he shared. Personally, if I had purchased 509 hand collated sets of 1980 Topps for resale purposes, I would've kept it to myself. Knowing there are that many out there, as a buyer I would adjust my bids accordingly.
And I realize the majority of the money will be made on whatever he lands PSA 10's on, but he still has to liquidate 500 or so sets at the end of the day.
She could of at least thrown in a box of 1952's if she was really that kind.
i agree. she only 1 1952 left and 2 1953's. lol!!
Wow, there's a lot to unpack before unpacking the first set!
Mark
Save Ferris.
What a great post.
While I don't expect you will share, it would be very interesting to know what you paid for 509 sets.
If I were to guess, I would say between $50 and $60 per set.
Erik
I think people should totally be paying 1k for 1980 Topps cards.
Even the set boxes empty, if in good shape, have to be worth a buck or two.
More like 1 or 2 THOUSAND
Seriously though, you could tell me the Henderson is on a part of the sheet that makes it hard to 10. But, this was not a small print run. Most of the cards in the set should 10 at a decent rate. Not like modern cards where like huge majority 10s. But, decent rate.
800 count boxes new are $1 and up before taxes/shipping.
I thought you were talking about empty wax boxes. Heck, they're probably worth more empty than full cause, ya know, they're lighter and you can fold them making them easier to ship.
I miss Jenny.
Me too. What a collection!!
Seriously we should take bets.
Over under .5 PSA 10s
Over under 500 PSA 5s
Im going to parlay mine and go both under.
are they really going to tell us?
Just watch the pop report. Make note of it weekly. Or post it here
Rickey Henderson
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33,174 Total graded today.
26 PSA 10s
2162 PSA 9s
11972 PSA 8s
8637 PSA 7s
5120 PSA 6s
2738 PSA 5s
Not including Qs and .5
But you can get a rough guess later when they grade the order. Also same with SGC but I dont even know how to use there POP report to be honest. I thought I did but it always makes me made trying.