1972 Topps numbers being held back?

billpack

I have been collecting the 1972 's for some time now. It seems to me that within the last two months, certain numbers have been unavailable for auction.
Some of these numbers are low population cards, but some are not that low in population. Some of these numbers never seem to come up for auction. I am wondering if there is a good reason for this? When I look at the population provided by PSA, it seems that there should be more of these numbers available.
Anybody got any ideas? Also, what caused the big rise in prices for some of the PSA 10's? Even four corners has gotten in to outrageous prices for some of their tens?

billpack

An example is #412 Kelley card. There are 32 nines and 1 ten...I haven't seen this card listed in a 9 for over a year. Then there's the Bill Lee card #636.
The card,over the years, had sold for $50.99 in 2006, $49.65 in 2007, $41.39 in 2009, $42.47 in 2010 and $52.99 in 2010. All of a sudden 4 sharp corners has it up for sale at $137.00 a few weeks ago. Then it "dropped" to $118.00 presently. Got to wonder???

cards651

Pretty standard market, IMO. The tougher condition/short printed/low population cards are often collected and simply do not go up for sale that often. Some collectors have been paying a lot for PSA 10's and 4sc figures that is what the market will bear. I have seen some of these 10's in other sets sell at what appear to be crazy prices. If you can be satisfied with 9's or 8's depending on the card, you can save money and they are readily available. There's a PSA 8 1972 Lee #636 on eBay for $20 from Joe H., a registry member. That's pretty good relative to the $120 for the 9 on eBay. Good luck. - Kevin

parentfan

Bill,

I keep a pretty good track on the 1972 Topps Baseball PSA population and its changes. For example, you state the population of the 412 Kelley card as 32 nines and 1 ten, which is accurate. However, since 11/10/2009 only 1 card has been graded PSA 9 or better and this card was graded sometime in 2010. I happen to have this card in a 9 and acquired it from a set break sometime last year. Because I track changes in the population, I knew this card was relatively rare in terms of recent population changes when the auction came up.

Here's some other interesting statistics for all PSA submissions for this set: since 11/5/2010 4,636 PSA 8s have been graded, 453 PSA 8.5s, 2440 PSA 9s have been graded, and 309 PSA 10s have been graded and there have been 12060 total submissions during this period. I would suspect 4SC is responsible for most of these submissions. I wonder how many more vending boxes he still has to crack for this set. It's a little scary sometimes if you happen to be in possession of a high grade 72 set. For example, 4SC submissions of the 482 Hoerner card in the past couple of years blew away the scarcity of this card. I could see the change in the population and waited for a later auction to pick up this card at a lower price.

It would be interesting if PSA would publish a number for the registered population of each card. This would give you some idea of what portion of the population is potentially currently available in the market. This would be great for high population star cards and would truly indicated their relative scarcity in the market, even with the high total populations they have. I suggested it to PSA, but they just don't seem to get it.

I currently track population changes using a spreadsheet. I am in the process of writing some software to automate this process and give a little more day-to-day type granularity for population changes. If anyone is interested in beta-testing what I come up with, let me know.

Dave

billpack

Hi Dave,

That is a great answer. Thank you. It seems to me that if there are around 700 graded 8's for Willie Mays, around 100 9's and only six tens, that other cards like the #412 which has only around 70 8's and 31 9's and only 1 ten just haven't been submitted either because many collectors just didn't care to have PSA 9 of Dick Kelley, or someone has many of them and just hasn't submitted them for grading. Because 4sc submits so many 1972 topps from vending boxes, I was wondering if they were just holding back to get higher prices.

Also, there has to be a number of collectors who just don't list their collection on the Registry. I know of a few who have large numbers of PSA 10's and who probably would have a similar collection to Spence's. That's why it's so difficult to determine the value of a card.

Psa seems to keep the same value for cards once they are listed. So some "common" cards that psa has valued at $45.00, sell for $9.99(#424). Other cards that are valued at $45.00 sell for $330.00 to $500.00(#170). Yet I never see the value change in their listing. A few +'s or a few -'s. I can't believe that they
aren't aware of the scarcity of the population affecting the price. I talked with one of their staff at Collector's Universe, and they basically had no clue.

parentfan

Bill,

I think its pretty clear 4SC has gotten wiser with low-pop common cards and are trying to see just what someone will pay for a low or lower pop PSA 10. That's why they went exclusively to the Buy It Now format. I think there is a lot of dumb money going after cards from '74 and later. Its hard to tell what kind of vending supply he has from those years, which is what scares me as he seems to keep coming up high quality cards even going back into the 60s.

Since they grade so many cards, I'm not sure if they are actually holding back cards. I hope not.

bens4778

I have noticed what you are talking about, going back even farther than two months. Cards of #463 Bernie Carbo and #490 Dave McNally are very hard to find despite being pop 30 and 33, respectively. Meanwhile, you can have as many #149 Gary Neibauer cards as you want, even though it is supposedly "lower pop" than the other two. I have watched the Ebay listings on 1972 Topps PSA 9 every day for at least three years, and I honestly can't remember any Bernie Carbo cards going up for auction during that time - only BIN. Come to think of it, a lot of these cards are in the 400's: good luck with Phil Regan, Al Downing, and Mark Belanger, as well.

While I'm on the 1972 hot stove, I've noticed that the flow of new 9s onto to Ebay has slowed considerably in the past month or so. 4SC has listed almost nothing in the past few weeks, and there's very little on the website. As a result, star cards have been fetching pretty good prices: two Fisks for $708 and $585; two Ryans for $585 and $500; several Clementes into the $280-290 range after sitting from $220-$250 for a long time. There was also that John Odom PSA 9 card that went for $115. I don't know what was happening there. I think that Bill Lee card you were talking about also topped $100. Maybe some people know something that I don't, like that most of the boxes from certain series have now been cracked. Or maybe a couple of people just have no idea what the historical prices of the cards have been. But the prices have been getting a boost recently that I can't quite explain. Billy Williams IA going for around $60? More than once? The economy is doing better.

Learning to read the pop report is certainly no easy task. There's a lot more than meets the eye. Someone mentioned awhile ago that certain pops might be inflated because of people who just kept sending the same card in, hoping to get a 10. I wonder how much there is to that.

-Ben

parentfan

Ben-

The lack of 463 and 490 in PSA 9 coming up for auction can be explained by the changes in the populations over the period you refer to. Since November of 2009, no cards have graded PSA 9 or better for 463 and only 3 cards graded PSA 9 or better for 490. In contrast, since November of 2009, 11 cards have graded PSA 9 or better for 149, which took this from being a very rare card to a rare card and comparable in population to the others mentioned. As a result you do see few low opening bid auctions for 463 and 490 and only see resales at high minimum bids or BINs.

Most of the population change in 149 is probably attributable to 4SC cracking vending boxes. If you happened to follow the population changes in the 482 Horner card, 4SC submissions took this from a fairly rare card in PSA 9 to an easily attainable card in a short period of time a couple of years ago. I agree, the recent flow of new 72 cards from 4SC seems to have slowed and many listings are being reshuffled as new listings. Possibly they are starting to run out of 72 vending boxes? This could be good news or bad news, depending on how far along you are in completing your set. I have also noticed the recent rise in final prices for PSA 9 and better cards, star or otherwise. There appear to be a few buyers out there, both new and old, putting together high grade sets.

Dave

tigerdean

I needed a #490 for my set and a PSA 9 came up for $75 BIN. I didn't want to pay that much but lumped it as I hadn't seen an 8 for a long time.

gemint

I think another factor is one I mentioned in my thread about the 1969 Earl Weaver RC in PSA 9 that went for over $600. It had previously sold for no more than $200 as far back as VCP goes. It's a pop 51 as well, so not that rare. However, it had been over a year since one had been auctioned off. I think eBay's changes have just destroyed the auction format listings for PSA graded cards. It's not that certain cards have become rarer recently or that set collectors are hoarding them and not selling. I just think eBay is no longer the place you can go to find just about any card you need, at least not at reasonable starting bids. I'm not sure where else cards are being moved. To some extend the smaller auction houses are picking up the slack but I still don't think they have the breadth of offerings to fully make up for the reduced listings on eBay.

jeff8877

Hi guys,

I don't collect 72s but absolutely loved reading this thread. The information and analysis was outstanding. I take a very similar approach to my vintage collection with some pretty sophisticated spreadsheets. Nice to see others who put the time in and are educated buyers. Good luck with your sets.

Jeff