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How Much High Grade Raw Vintage is Left?

In another thread RG58 opined:


<< <i>Are you kidding... I'm sick of people talking a big game! Do you really think that there is a significant amount of high grade vintage (pre-1960) psa 8 and higher out there! I'd say there is close to nothing except for an occasional common or minor star that you find at a show after weeding out a hundred or so could-be psa 4-7s. Maybe there is still stuff from the 1960s, definetely stuff from the 1970s, but I would say almost no significant numbers pre-1960. Collectors and dealers aren't stupid. We are talking about MONEY here! >>


My first thought here is this -- Maybe its not the supply of high grade raw vintage that's dried up, maybe its the supply of people who deal in it that's dried up.

Look through most any hobby publication today and you'll see ad after ad, large and small, from people with captions like, "Always Looking For Consignments!" and "We'll Buy Your Collection!" and "Nobody Beats Our Buy Prices!" Personally, I find these laughable because I think most of these clowns are spending lots of money on these ads week-after-week and month-after-month and getting very little "stuff" coming in. But they need to maintain an ad presence just in case somebody actually DOES come along looking for a place to dump his/her collection for pennies on the dollar. I wonder if THEY know how silly they look, including "Mr. Mint."

But more to the point, I personally believe that about 80% of the high grade raw vintage RG58 is talking about sits in the hands, not of dealers, but of former collectors who are no longer active in the hobby. The crap that happened in the late 80s and 90s turned them off enough to stop actively participating in the hobby, but not enough to sell off their collections (unless they died and somebody else did it for them). In fact, I'd bet dollars to donuts that over half of what somebody like "Mr. Mint" DOES manage to find comes from the collections of dead guys.

Meanwhile, many dealers have become PSA submitters themselves. So, when they DO find high grade raw vintage, they don't sell it raw, they submit it to PSA. OR, they simply store it in a back room or basement for later submission. But either way, its out there -- not nearly as much as what's still in the hands of disinterested former collectors, but a lot.

What's clearly NOT out there anymore are the boxes of high grade raw vintage cards coming out of non-collectors basements, closets, and attics at cheap prices. What was there prior to the late 80s and 90s was bought up by storefront shops -- the same shops that are now going out of business right and left. THAT is most of the high grade raw vintage that's been graded to date. Not convinced? Try looking on eBay (everyone's marketplace now!) sometime for the stuff that RG58 is talking about. You'll find relatively little high grade raw vintage prior to 1981, when Topps, Fleer and Donruss started cranking out cards by the gazillions whether anybody bought them or not. Its also pretty funny to see all those 80s investors out there on eBay now trying their damnedest to make ANYTHING on all those cases of cards still in their garages and storage warehouses.

So, like the X Files mantra, its out there. But good luck getting to it.

Scott

Comments

  • The reason I've heard the most for not grading this stuff is "I have no intention of selling it and it has stayed so nice all of this years the way I currently store it.....why should I pay $10 a card for it to sit in the same spot? If I decide to sell it someday then I'll grade it."

    It's kinda hard to argue that when the current storage method has worked.
    There is a fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"
  • estangestang Posts: 1,319 ✭✭✭
    Your belief that Mr. Mint finds a good deal of his finds from a deceased collector's relative contacting him, made me cringe. I fear one day I'll open up my SCD one day (Halloween) and see an ad of him, with well, you insert your thoughts and captions here...

    I don't mean to offend anyone but it would make for some dark humor.

    Enjoy your collection!
    Erik
  • So I guess we can expect to see a Mr. Mint ad with him crouching over someone's coffin with a bunch of money properly placed in their hands with that s--- eating grin on his face.
    Collecting vintage material, currently working on 1962 topps football set.
  • BoopottsBoopotts Posts: 6,784 ✭✭
    From what I can gather, about 60% of the offers to buy that those guys in SCD receive are from collectors who are about to get divorced, and want to liquidate fast before the wife learn just how much the stuff is worth. Given this, I doubt that Mr. Mint, etc., are buying up lots of mint cards from the 50's at pennies on the dollar. It's probably more accurate to assume that the bulk of the deals these guys make come from collectors like you and me, who know what their stuff is worth.

    I'd guess that guys like Mr. Mint probably make around a 20% profit on most of their buys. But who knows?
  • I believe there is still a reasonable amount of high grade vintage raw cards out there.

    If you look at the pop report numbers (say for 1933 Goudey), you'd see the HOF's with hundreds of submissions; even the Lajoie has more submissions than some commons. Deductive reasoning would tell you that there are still many pristine raw commons from that set for example. For whatever reason, collectors haven't sent them in.

    Is it a coincidence that 2 of the 4 Gem Mint 10's of the set are of Ruth and Gehrig? If you submit enough high grade examples, eventually one will come back a 10. There are probably dozens of other 10's still out there (maybe commons, maybe HOF'ers).

    Or look at a set like 1915 Cracker Jack. Have all of the raw high grade factory sets been graded thus far? Perhaps not.

    Not to mention the numerous sets of the 50's and 60's. I was glancing through some old SCD back issues the other day. And guess who was on the cover? Our buddy Mr Mint. He was in California buying a million dollar raw card collection (his biggest deal ever I believe). Just in the last few years he's had a 1960 Leaf unopened find, '68 Topps 3-D; he unearthed a 1960 Topps rack case awhile back; incredibly this stuff is still out there.


  • I hate to burst the bubble that BigKid and others have of NM or better raw that is still out there, but I am in my mid 50's and have seen firsthand some of the early history of 50's and 60's cards.

    The argument here and on another thread that the population of high-grade commons is proportional to that of key stars and rookies of the set is weak IMHO.

    I and my wax-pack busting cohorts with few exceptions would separate the cards into specific categories -- stars and players from favorite team(s) would be in the keep pile and any dupes would be used in trade. The rest of the cards depended on whether you were a set collector or not: set collectors, like me, separated the dupes and would only trade/flip these got-em's....non set collectors would just flip or trade any other card. If you didn't catch the guy with the need-em's before he started to flip them, you were going to get a beat up card.

    So by now, most of the commons dupes from set-collectors, and all of the commons from others were victims of flip games, bike spikes, or the bottom of the toy box. Therefore, in essence, except for the rare set-collector, like myself, what you had left in decent shape, were star cards and those from local teams (in my case, Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants).....my best guess would be that less than 10% of all kids collected or did not flip/play with their cards. And of those, how many were thrown away by mom because they were cluttering up your closet, or by dad who was cleaning out the attic or basement, or just lost somewhere along the way?

    I am not entirely sure of the Topps print runs of the 50's and 60's, but if you run the numbers, I would be very pessimistic as to the population of raw stuff that is still out there between team and full set collectors.

    Jim



    building 1956 Topps PSA 8/9


  • << <i>I am not entirely sure of the Topps print runs of the 50's and 60's, but if you run the numbers, I would be very pessimistic as to the population of raw stuff that is still out there between team and full set collectors. >>


    Jim, so do YOU still have all your sets from the 50's?

    Scott
  • Bosox1976Bosox1976 Posts: 8,551 ✭✭✭✭✭
    How much is left?
    Mike
    Bosox1976
  • bosoxphanbosoxphan Posts: 107 ✭✭
    Understandable but a lot of the high pop cards in the 50's sets weren't star players at the time the cards were released. The 54 Topps Aaron card is a good example of that. It's the highest pop card but back in 54/55 it was a common. Therefore i think the highest pop cards in a set are a pretty good representation of whats out there across the board.
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