Why Do the Same Cards Always Show Up on eBay?

69topps8

It seems that the same cards always show up on eBay while others never do. For example, in the 1969 set I can't count how many League Leaders, Al Lopez and Woodie Fryman's I've seen but I never see the Ellie Rodruiquez (or Rodriguez) or Mike Ryan show up. I don't have access to the population report at the moment (need to rejoin at the show tomorrow) but I'd venture to say that some commons have populations over 50 while many others have populations under 10. I can't believe there are that many off condition rarities in the 1st series with all the vending and unopened packs that were busted over the past several years. There may be a few chronically O/C commons but not that many.

Does anybody know the reasoning behind the descrepancy?

mikeschmidt

It is a matter of population.

With 1968 and 1969, some great vending was found, cracked and submitted over the past 30 months. With 1968, for example, cards #505 - #512 have populations in 9 and higher of over 75. Many other cards in the set have populations of only one or two...especially since they were not in that particular vending run...

mcastaldi

John> With the 75s and 79s, I often see the same cards showing up in 9s - and often in 8s. My take on this is that a dealer will submit say 10 examples of the same card. When he gets them back, he will auction them off. If he's smart, he won't auction ten of the same card all at the same time. He'll spread them out some which makes it seem like you're always seeing them available. Perhaps it's different with the 69s, but with some of the newer stuff I've seen it too.

Mike

69topps8

I can understand if a bulk lot of a particular card hits the market in a short period of time but what confuses me is if you were to look at the cards auctioned over the past 12 to 24 months, you'll see that there's not much variety (particularly in the '69's) in what was listed. It seems hard to believe that about 1/2 the cards in a particular set are condition sensitive while the other half are very plentiful in high grade. It seems dealers would be submitting the low pop commons since they would pull in a much higher price than a pop 50+ common. I just wonder if the low pop cards are truly scarce or if they just haven't been submitted yet.

FB

John,

I'm betting that the 69 set has a high percentage of cards off-centered in their vending runs. I know that I've ruled out quite a few because they would be hit or miss as to whether they would come back a marginal 8 or nice 7. I also believe that most dealers that submit in bulk, don't check out Pop counts but simply send in best available. I bet we'll see that change eventually when people start realizing that there is more money to be made on specific cards rather than in bulk submissions.