Why is vintage football so undervalued?

zendude

Just seeking opinions on why vintage football is still so affordable. For example Jim Brown's cards (excluding his rookie) are reasonably priced considering how dominant a player he was and how popular football has become over the last 20 years or so. Vintage football HOFers are downright cheap compared to baseball.

Big80s

Great question. I'm interested to hear opinions on this, as well.

thehallmark

SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

fkw

Its simple... because they picture players playing football a simpleton sport....

IMO a good factor... Football, its so hard to compare players, you have so many positions that have such different stats...... baseball has 2 main stats hitting and pitching so its very easy to compare players to each other. How the heck can you compare Larry Allen to Jerry Rice, or Ray Guy??

Low demand for a sport with lower historic interest and vintage player recognition overall


Football, along with Hockey and Basketball are always going to lag far behind Baseball with sports nuts into history of sports...... its been that way for 100+ years and hasnt changed at all since Ive collected last 30 years.
Heck, Golf and Boxing rank higher than Football at times, especially because of the prewar history of those sports.

IMO Vintage Collectors usually are well aware of games with alot of history ie Baseball, modern collectors (usually young and new to the hobby) usually lack that History knowledge and often collect all sports with players they see daily on TV.

thehallmark

<< <i>Football, along with Hockey and Basketball are always going to lag far behind Baseball with sports nuts into history of sports...... its been that way for 100+ years and hasnt changed at all since Ive collected last 30 years. >>



That's a pretty liberal use of the world "always". I bet in the 1920s, someone like you was making the exact same argument AGAINST baseball overtaking Tiddlywinks as America's greatest new pastime.

As more ADHD kids are born and the baby boomers die off, baseball interest will dip and then plateau like all things do. Football interest and football card interest continues to grow all the time. It may never catch up with baseball, hobby-wise, but that has much more to do with the history of the hobby itself than the ability to compare players or the complexity of the sport.

onebamafan

For whatever reason the interest/demand for vintage football just isn't there. I do not not think it will ever be there. Baseball however has been woven into the fabric of being an American just like Mom and Apple pie, i see the demand for vintage/pre-war baseball remaining solid. Just my 2

RookieWax

by contrast, modern football is overpriced. An example is the 1992 Stadium Club Brett Favre card. That is a second year card(not a rookie), and even though there were only 300 cases produced, that still works out to about 12,000 of the Favre cards. Many of the Topps/Bowman/Score Tiffany baseball ROOKIE cards of that era, with production numbers under 12,000, sell for much less than the $60 to $80 price tag on the Favre.

itzagoner

a football season has always been shorter than a baseball season and they only play once a week.

although many football teams were stocked with perhaps MORE players than the average baseball team, a lot of guys performed in anonimity and rarely, if ever, even appeared on a gum card.

conversely, it sometimes seems as though there are endless amounts of baseball cards featuring guys who barely touched the field in the majors.

i'm not so sure vintage football, or basketball, or even hockey is so undervalued as much as vintage baseball is OVERvalued.

mccardguy1

My dad was always into the 50's and 60's football but he sold off his collection years before he passed. Only recently did I find some of his 59 Topps cards that were decent shape and I had them graded. While these cards came back 7's and 8's I was intrigued by them as I never collected a football card in my life. I did a little research and found that the 59 Topps set is relativly small and fairly inexpensive when compared to baseball. I decided, in a tribute to my dad, to do a PSA graded set all in 7's and 8's. I am not doing this for invstment but just the fact I like the design, the cards are cheap and it reminds me of time spent with my dad and how ticked I would get when he would trade our baseball stuff for football!! LOL. (Now I would give left arm to have him back to trade away anything he wants for his football cards).

I have no idea why football is so much less expensive than baseball but to be honest I dont mind. I find myself looking at other sets to complete after I am done with this one and I am actually getting excited about collecting again. These sets are easily within a collectors budget and provide an opportunity to own a 50+ year old set at a fraction of the baseball set prices.

wallst32

I think the answer is pretty simple, and it applies to basketball and hockey as well; collecting football cards simply isn't as popular as baseball cards. It's always been this way and hasn't changed. For those of you who collected in the late 80's, remember when Beckett first rolled out monthly price guides for football, basketball, and then hockey; and how those cards suddenly took off? Prior to that nobody cared about those cards and how often did you see them displayed at shows? They were an afterthought to baseball, somewhat like how non-sports are to sports cards today (not exactly the best analogy but you get the idea). Even with big mega stars emerging like Jordan and Lemiuex in the mid 80's, there was very little demand for these cards until the Becketts came out.

So let's say you have long time collectors trying to complete their baseball sets from the 50's and 60's. They're probably more likely to stick with those the to add other sports to the list.

wallst32

<< <i>by contrast, modern football is overpriced. An example is the 1992 Stadium Club Brett Favre card. That is a second year card(not a rookie), and even though there were only 300 cases produced, that still works out to about 12,000 of the Favre cards. Many of the Topps/Bowman/Score Tiffany baseball ROOKIE cards of that era, with production numbers under 12,000, sell for much less than the $60 to $80 price tag on the Favre. >>



But who in those baseball sets has anywhere near the stature of a Brett Favre? Maybe Sosa could have been up there if not for all the PED scandals in baseball.

SidePocket

Things have probably changed, but when I was a kid part of the fun of collecting baseball cards was reading the players stats on the back. We would memorize batting averages, HR's etc. With football cards only QB's, RB,s and WR's have stats worth reading. I mean what do you do with the card of an offensive lineman?

itzagoner

<< <i>I mean what do you do with the card of an offensive lineman? >>



i would gather a bunch of them together and stack them in front of my Bart Starr and Johnny Unitas cards for protection.

Fabfrank

I don't believe there is any one specific reason. I think generally, when people think of collecting cards, the first thought is baseball cards. My collecting focus is mostly football (vintage and modern), and prices have recently slowed (last year or so). But when something comes up that is hi grade or rare...look out.

MULLINS5

fans.

r00kies101

It's OJ's fault!

Seriously though, I also think it is the lack of fan base. With only 16 regular season games (even less back in the day), fans didn't really get to see and become attached to the sport/player(s).

diamondman

I think there are just fewer collectors of football, basketball & hockey matter of fact if you put all 3 sports together there would still be more baseball collectors.
as pointed out basketball , football & hockey really didn't take off in price until 1989-1993 when beckett started producing a bi-monthly price guide. I remember in 1988 buying a 79-80 hockey sets NMMT for 30.00 each and 86 fleer bskt sets w/stickers for 5 to 8 dollars a set and boxes for 15 to 20, bought a complete 69-70 basketball set w/unmarked checklist which graded PSA 7 in 88 for 45.00.

prior to 1990 when someone walked in my store with FB,HCKY or Bskt cards you could buy them for 1 to 5 cents a piece as commons and if they had baseball with the other 3 sports , I would just figure out how much I would pay for the baseball and the rest was free.

why buy something that had no demand at all, I remember in 1989 buying closeout cases of football for 50 to 120 a case could have bought up to 5 cases of each only bought 1 case of each except for 1984. then had trouble selling them for 3 packs for 1.00 or 9.99 a box. the most expensive Junk FB case I bought in 89 was 1989 score FB at an outrageous price of 250.00/12.50 a box.
was also offered hockey cases but didn't even ask the price who wanted pieces of cardboard with a bunch of goons and wood sticks on them.LOL

1980 FB case 60.00
1981 FB case 120.00
1982 FB case 80.00
1983 FB case 50.00
1984 FB case 120.00
1985 FB case 70.00
1986 Fb case 90.00

Baseball is King and always will be, even though fb bskt & hcky were produced in minuscule amounts compared to baseball, to bad mintage figures were not kept like they are in coins. 1909-s VBD 484,000 minted 1913 V nickel five minted,
1951 bowman Mantle 2,000 printed or was it 2,000,000 printed to bad we will never know? enough rambling, now if I could just find that dag nabbit HG wells time machine, yes sir, I will take all 2 boxes of your 1952 Topps high number packs at a nickel a pack.

Statman

<< <i>Things have probably changed, but when I was a kid part of the fun of collecting baseball cards was reading the players stats on the back. We would memorize batting averages, HR's etc. With football cards only QB's, RB,s and WR's have stats worth reading. I mean what do you do with the card of an offensive lineman? >>



I've got to agree with Sidepocket - in baseball, you have stats for every player on the back of his card. But in football, you've got linemen, linebackers, etc... So, I think for that reason, back in the "old days" of the 60's and 70's, there probably wasn't as much FB collecting as baseball ( I know I certainly collected baseball a lot more). While football cards are much bigger today, there still may not be that base of collectors for the vintage stuff.

However, having not collected as much football when I was younger, it's more fun going back and getting that stuff now.

cardsnbeads

Everything pre-Super Bowl Era is undervalued. An NFL Championship is valued for less than a Super Bowl. Look at Otto Graham and his cards and Certified Autographs. He may be the most Undervalued Player of all-time. He has been dead for many years and won many championships yet his autograph is lower in price than even most living Hall of Fame Quarterbacks. TV made Football what it is today. The 1958 NFL Championship between the Colts and Giants was really America started watching football and the Super Bowl is when it became massive. Everything pre-1958 is ignored, forgotten,or undervalued.

recbball

The avg age of vintage card buyer - baseball or football is what, 35 and up.
Baseball was king when these buyers were kids, but baseball isn't as popular as football is today, basketball also became much more popular.
It will be interesting to see what happens when the next generation of vintage card buyers arrives.

Morgoth

I think mainly its due to the history of sports card collecting in general.

The first highly organized collectors starting cataloging these issues in the 40's I believe and began at this time looking all over the US to find the rarest cards for their sets through the help of early collector newsletters.

Baseball at this time was the only major (US) sport that was popular enough to have a long history of production to collect. It was these older issues and the pursuit of them that led to the modern collecting hobby.

The creation of a standard baseball card catalog unveiled this long history of cards to collect from that in turn became a bible for new collectors to study and make plans from. Having a checklist is a powerful thing and those first catalogs were powerful drugs for the growing hobbists. Collectors were able to see all of these rumored or never before seen cards be actually verified and with new finds being discovered all the time, it was truly a great moment in hobby history.

During this time the current crop of cards being produced Late 40's, 50's and 60's era cards were not treated as special or vintage and that is basically when other sports started having their cards produced with any regularity.

These issues were collected by the hard core collecting base but not valued and not pursued or cherished like the pre war and the early 1900's issues were. To them they were newer junk cards or like their version of 1988 Topps when compared to finding early E cards or T218's.

So you can see that most of the most popular today's Football and Basketball cards were produced at the time and for many years afterwards, considered to be from sets that were not special or cool or rare. Couple that with the difference in popularity in the sports compared to Baseball and you have a hobby world that looked at these issues with disdain at worse and curisosity at best.

The other real issues with Football is the players career spans. Its really hard to build up fan bases of players when a "long" career is 6 to 8 years while in baseball its 16 to 20 years.

Also it doesn't have the allure of historical statistical values that mean something to all players and fans. In baseball everyone knows 3,000 hits is a great career mark that can be said about players today and players from the 1900's. In football there aren't many numbers that fans remember.

itzagoner

the numbers fans remember is the number of games they attended....baseball has been and quite likely always will be played every day for over half the calendar year....there is a draw and an allure to something that occurs perpetually, at least in the sense that news never dies down while the game is being played.....there must be a natural interest to gather information for something that requires strong knowledge of such.....baseball cards will always be a place to find it.

football games - played once a week, sometimes in frigid or uninhabitable temperatures and conditions....how is possible to know anyone if they're buried under helmets, parkas and snow???

JoeBanzai

Even though football has surpassed baseball in some markets, baseball is still the national pastime, and been around for a lot longer. Plus the fact that many of the players look like regular people. Football and hockey players are covered from head to toe with equipment and basketball players are mostly giants.

Just my .02

Joe

itzagoner

another point to consider: football had the audacity to begin its season in the midst of baseball's most exciting period - pennant races and playoffs....they lost almost half a season to people who presumably had to choose.

baseball makes no such compromise, beginning during a period of time when Opening Day surpasses the importance of an average NBA or NHL game, and ending when the same leagues begin their new seasons.

markj111

Who says they are undervalued? Supply and demand is the name of the game.

TheCARDKid

I would say it's a combination of factors...

-Lack of tv clips/education. In memory lane's auction, they've got some 48 bowmans. Who's ever seen these guys play. Sid Luckman? Bob Waterfield? Most people have seen Stan Musial clips or Warren Spahn. When was the last time you watched a football game from the 50's?

-50's and 60's baseball (and earlier) is somewhat "romanticised" (i.e. when it was a game). I think baseball has more of an emotional pull. More of an emotional pull from mantle, than some guy in a helmet from 1953.

-The career issue. You can follow Musial for 20 years, or Mantle or Mays for 162 games a season. Vs Jim Brown, 9 seasons. And only 16 games a season.

-I agree about the stats. Everyone knows about 3,000 hits, 500 homeruns. Football is more about athleticism. Yards in football is totally different.

I think what makes baseball attractive. There's a level playing field. Anyone can get 3,000 hits or 500 home runs. If only 1 player in 3,000 does it (i.e. Mantle) he must be good. In football, you don't really know what goes into a success, it's more "hidden". The condioning is somewhat "boring", i.e. a jerry rice. I think its something you can't see yourself doing. You could be mantle growing up, but could you be a wide reciever or running back?

-The positions in football are more specialized than in baseball. Can't identify with it as much as a fan.

rexvos

I now only collect Slabbed football rookie cards. Vintage and Modern. I used to do baseball, but for the stuff I really liked it was cost prohibitive. I am glad fb is under-valued. A lot of the HOF rookies are not, but they are worth every penny to me. I think another thing that killed me collecting baseball stuff is most of the heroes of my early teen years are now tainted or their cards are worthless and usually both.

Southsider

Football has only recently seen a surge in popularity, so I would expect the effects of that increased popularity to be felt further down the line when kids of the 80's & 90's reach the age when they can start spending their children's inheritance on silly things like pieces of cardboard. Until that day, I'll be enjoying the ability to collect vintage football without breaking the bank.

stevek

<< <i>Just seeking opinions on why vintage football is still so affordable. For example Jim Brown's cards (excluding his rookie) are reasonably priced considering how dominant a player he was and how popular football has become over the last 20 years or so. Vintage football HOFers are downright cheap compared to baseball. >>



Could be simply because that as we get older, we sometimes long for things from our youth that gave us pleasure, and I think most of us already clearly understand that. But baseball cards from the 50's and 60's were much more popular at that time than football cards, and I do mean much more popular.

That being said, I would agree that vintage football high grade cards are undervalued, and have nice upside potential.

CollectorAtWork

I've thought about this before also since football now is like 10X more popular than any other sport for Americans. So shouldn't the football cards eventually catch up with this popularity? However, in the end, I don't think football cards will come close to the other sports for a variety of reasons. First the career of football players is so much shorter than other players. So you can enter the HOF after a relatively short time, say 7-8 years. Then there are so many different positions in football, where each is eligible for the HOF. For example, these days, it's pretty hard to recall that so and so was a dominant nose tackle in the 60s. These last two reasons result in a lot of football HOFer's that no one has ever heard of. This dilutes the cards compared to the other sports. In the other sports, although there are different positions, practically everyone has a standard that you can compare other players with. That is, you can contribute to scoring. For basketball and hockey, you can score or have assists. For baseball, you have runs, RBI's, batting average, etc. Therefore, you can still somewhat compare a shortstop in baseball to a left fielder because both of them still have to bat. There are few non-scoring positions such as goalie in hockey and pitching in baseball, but there are still enough statistics for a lay person to understand why that person was HOF material. For football, it's a different story. You still have the skill positions like QB, RB, WR who can score so those are relatively easy. However, how about left guard? How did you determine that guy was a HOFer other than some stories or some weird stats like pancake blocks? If you are a dominant corner, you can have a lot of interceptions or returns for TDs. However, if you are extremely dominant, no one will throw the ball in your direction, so you might actually have low numbers for these. Anyway, these all lead to issues where it can be harder to collect the cards. The best bet is probably just to stick to HOF QB's and RB's since these guys have the actual stats and for QB's the reasonably long careers. Still, I don't think football cards will ever eclipse baseball cards in the future no matter how big the disparity the sports have in the current day.