Greatest, Greatest Moments set

1954

Steve,
I just saw the addition of your four PSA 9 Greatest Moment cards that were added to your set this week. Congratulations on getting to a number that both of us thought we would never see. This set is incredible and well deserving of the top speciality set of the year award.
For those that are not familiar with this set, very few PSA 9's exist and Steve practically has all of them with the exception of five.

Shane

packCollector

Shane /Steve

Do either of you know where all of the recent ones to hit the market came from or how many more are still being held back? Someone must have stumbled across a storage box in the back of the topps factory with all these as there seems to be a high grade set in every auction , I think mastro had 3 in a single auction as well.

Thanks

mikeschmidt

Shane-

Steve's set is absolutely phenomenal. As there are so many cards that still don't even exist in PSA 8 condition -- the across-the-board strength of Steve's set makes it one of the truly remarkable efforts of any of the oddball/rarer Topps specialty sets.

I've somewhat surprised that I'm seeing more GM sets pop up in auctions on a regular basis than I saw a few years ago. Nonetheless, nothing beats Steve's set in terms of truly MINTY-fresh.

1954

I agree that there seems to be more of these out there. The truth of the matter is I broke my set and Colt broke his set last year which allowed many PSA 8's to hit the market at one time. If you compare the pop report from last year only 190 of them have been graded. PSA 8's are still hard to come by and the 9's are very few compared to what has been graded. You still see tons of the same PSA 8's up for auction, but none that are pops of 2/3/4/5. I believe there are five guys still actively pursuing an all PSA 8 set which makes the market for these low pop cards very desirable. Guys like Davilillo and Fogal who are making this set in all PSA 8's but aren't really aggressively buying these can pick half the set up for 150%-200% of SMR excluding the Rose which is selling below SMR because of the pop and DP. Once they start looking for the harder cards from this set it will be a costly adventure.

Shane

rvc

has anyone ever seen an unopened pack ?
i saw the uncut sheets once a few yrs ago in a rea.

helionaut

There was the Topps employee stash that was auctioned off about 3-4 years ago. I think they were raw, but nice, and were snapped up at prices comparable to 8s. I haven't heard of any new finds, but I get all my hobby info here, so there might be.

I've never seen a pack or a wrapper, but Topps Vault sold a box a few years ago. I think it went in the $350 range, but I might be off. Shane might remember. It was all folded up like it just came off the assembly line, surely never assembled and never put into service. I have a picture on my old PC, I think. Bright red and yellow.

I'm kind of stuck on my own set right now. I've got just about all the "easy" 7s but the tougher ones just keep on going in pricing. $333 for Joe Pepitone. Wonderful. 16 cards to go that will cost probably double what the first 39 cost, if I can convince myself to keep going. I'm still kicking myself for not hitting the $600 BIN on that PSA 9 Pete Rose 5 years ago, but I had only been collecting the set for about 15 minutes at the time. Couldn't have known.

1954

Joel,
The box from the Topps Vault was purchased by a friend of mine off of eBay. The price on this was in the neighborhood of $1900. There also was an uncut sheet of this that sold for $3300 in Lelands auction which another friend of mine purchased for his collection. The uncut sheet is perhaps the best item that I have ever seen.
I have never seen an unopened pack nor a wrapper. I do believe there was some sort of unopened product because some of the cards in my collection have wax staining on the front. I am not very sure on how much product was actually boxed up for resale. You would think that someone including the Topps employee who consigned his collection to SCP Auctions would have a pack or wrapper.
Be glad you did not hit the buy it now on the Rose PSA 9 for $600. It would have been a great buy at that number considering it is a $6000 card, but there has never been a TRUE Rose PSA 9 offered on Ebay. Only three of them exist and all three were purchased either in an auction or directly from a dealer. All three Roses have only had one owner since being graded.

Shane

seinbigd

Shane,

Thanks to you and all who replied to this thread for the kind words of recognition of my Set. I may have the top-rated set on the Registry, but as demonstrated by your posts here, you are "The Man" if anyone needs any info about the 1971 Topps Greatest Moments Set or help locating a needed card.

Seems that the first time I saw these cards was in Joe O'Brien's shop. He had maybe a dozen Bunning's in his display cabinet; I eventually bought them all for something like $25 only to later learn you had already cherry-picked the best cards he had!!! I later recall about the time PSA first started grading Tallboys and we began building the set us discussing how we would be happy to get to a 7.0 GPA...I really never expected to see anyone break the 8.0 barrier. It goes without saying I couldn't have done it without your help.

With regard to uncut sheets, I do recall Steve W. winning the uncut sheet set you mentioned in the Leland' auction at a bargain price of $3,200+/-. I also recall a second uncut sheet set subsequently offered in a Robert Edward Auction that went for approx. $9,000 without hammer. And yes our west-coast based friend acquired the box at the price you quoted.

I may be mistaken, but I vaguely remember an unopened pack offered on ebay 10-12 years ago going for around $1,800.00...

What a great set! The newspaper- facsimile design of the card's reverse has as much eye-appeal as the b&w deckle-edged photo capturing the 'Greatest Moment" and the color player portrait situated on the cards black-bordered frontside. As much as I like the set, it still seems to be an over-sight to not have included a Clemente card...wonder if there is a story there.

I've learned to "never say never" about the 1971 Greatest Moments Set. The first PSA-8 Jim Perry was recently added to the population report leaving only the #1 Munson, #2 Wilhelm and #27 Lou Brock to be graded no higher than PSA 7 without qualifiers.

Will there ever be a PSA 10 1971 Greatest Moments card? Never say never...

bobsbbcards

Here's a scan of the box:

rvc

was the uncut sheet from the lelands auction the 2 sheets that make up the set or something to do with the box?
the rea had 2 different sheets that make up the set .
thanks for posting that box pic bob

seinbigd

The complete set was printed on two uncut sheets. One sheet has 22 cards with a layout of 2 columns withs 11 cards. The other sheet has 33 cards with a layout of 3 columns with 11 cards. Both auctions mentioned above were complete uncut sheet sets.

TheWoodman

You might enjoy this memory. Around the mid 70's I was at a card show in Cincinnati. I bought a number of Babe Ruth Fro-Joy cards. In order to "keep them from getting damaged" the dealer packed each one of them between two Greatest Moments cards! I remember that my friends, and I, had never before seen the Greatest Moments cards...but we figured they must be of no value if the dealer was using them as "packing"...I don't remember what I did with them...I fear that I just threw them away!