Hockey guys - 1990 Bowman Tiffany set (opinions needed)

Big80s

Hello friends,

I've been looking at a lot of the 80s/90s lower production parallel sets for different sports. I've heard 5,000 and 3,000 for production numbers on 1990 Bowman Tiffany. It seems to contain a pretty strong group of rookies, as well. I'm not a huge hockey collector, but I love low production sets. Is there a big market for this set? From what I know of Hockey - OPC is always the standard, but I'd be curious to know if a low production set like this would appeal to hockey collectors, as well.

Thank you for our input!

miwlvrn

Lots of good rookies in the set, but a lot of the time they don't sell for more than grading fees, so I decided it wasn't worth breaking up my set. Sold it for $150 which is/was about going rate.

Frozencaribou

In my opinion it is ho hum design with a terribly designed back. Nobody cared about that set in 1990 and I doubt the tiffany set will ever take off in value. That said, it will hold some value because of its scarcity unlike the regular 1990 Bowman, which you couldn't give away, unless a person had to choose between 1990 Bowman and 1991 Bowman hockey.

-Nathanael

Big80s

Thank you for your feedback guys. I guess a better question would be - do Hockey collectors care about low production sets like Baseball collectors do? Or does it just depend on the set?

MinorLeaguer

Jeff, 1990 Bowman Tiffany Hockey is definitely /3000 as each set is numbered xxxx of 3000 right on each factory set. How big a market, I can't help you. I love 1990 hockey but lots of guys on here simply don't collect hockey. As for rookies, the 1990 rookie class, as a lot, including the old Russians that came to the NHL, should go down in history as one of the all-time best RC class as there may be over a dozen HOF RC's produced in 1990. Unfortunately, all the limited sets blew a big chance to have an enormous killer set as the Topps and Bowman sets (regular or Tiffany) do not have Brodeur, Jagr, Federov, Sundin, Lindros or the old time Russians that finally came to the NHL. You have about 5 now or future HOF'ers covered by Tiffany sets (Mogilny, Recchi, Modano, Roenick, Belfour) does one try and get the other HOF'ers with Score Canadian PSA 10? Upper Deck French PSA 10? OPC Premier PSA 10? The OPC premier just has way too many produced. So what does one do? It's a quandry a collector has to figure out to satisfy their own taste I suppose. For example, for a 1990 Jagr, I went with the local Foodland issue to try and be somewhat rare as only 19 have been graded by PSA to date. The 1990 OPC Premier was the iconic Jagr card but over with 1400 in PSA 10 and growing, it just doesn't interest me. For Brodeur, I went with the 1990 7th Inning Sketch PSA 10 from the Quebec Junior League. More appealing card to me than the 1990 Score. Again, no right or wrong, just my taste. Cheers.

Big80s

<< <i>Jeff, 1990 Bowman Tiffany Hockey is definitely /3000 as each set is numbered xxxx of 3000 right on each factory set. How big a market, I can't help you. I love 1990 hockey but lots of guys on here simply don't collect hockey. As for rookies, the 1990 rookie class, as a lot, including the old Russians that came to the NHL, should go down in history as one of the all-time best RC class as there may be over a dozen HOF RC's produced in 1990. Unfortunately, all the limited sets blew a big chance to have an enormous killer set as the Topps and Bowman sets (regular or Tiffany) do not have Brodeur, Jagr, Federov, Sundin, Lindros or the old time Russians that finally came to the NHL. You have about 5 now or future HOF'ers covered by Tiffany sets (Mogilny, Recchi, Modano, Roenick, Belfour) does one try and get the other HOF'ers with Score Canadian PSA 10? Upper Deck French PSA 10? OPC Premier PSA 10? The OPC premier just has way too many produced. So what does one do? It's a quandry a collector has to figure out to satisfy their own taste I suppose. For example, for a 1990 Jagr, I went with the local Foodland issue to try and be somewhat rare as only 19 have been graded by PSA to date. The 1990 OPC Premier was the iconic Jagr card but over with 1400 in PSA 10 and growing, it just doesn't interest me. For Brodeur, I went with the 1990 7th Inning Sketch PSA 10 from the Quebec Junior League. More appealing card to me than the 1990 Score. Again, no right or wrong, just my taste. Cheers. >>



Thank you, Chris - lots of good info there.

miwlvrn

<< <i>Jeff, 1990 Bowman Tiffany Hockey is definitely /3000 as each set is numbered xxxx of 3000 right on each factory set. How big a market, I can't help you. I love 1990 hockey but lots of guys on here simply don't collect hockey. As for rookies, the 1990 rookie class, as a lot, including the old Russians that came to the NHL, should go down in history as one of the all-time best RC class as there may be over a dozen HOF RC's produced in 1990. Unfortunately, all the limited sets blew a big chance to have an enormous killer set as the Topps and Bowman sets (regular or Tiffany) do not have Brodeur, Jagr, Federov, Sundin, Lindros or the old time Russians that finally came to the NHL. You have about 5 now or future HOF'ers covered by Tiffany sets (Mogilny, Recchi, Modano, Roenick, Belfour) does one try and get the other HOF'ers with Score Canadian PSA 10? Upper Deck French PSA 10? OPC Premier PSA 10? The OPC premier just has way too many produced. So what does one do? It's a quandry a collector has to figure out to satisfy their own taste I suppose. For example, for a 1990 Jagr, I went with the local Foodland issue to try and be somewhat rare as only 19 have been graded by PSA to date. The 1990 OPC Premier was the iconic Jagr card but over with 1400 in PSA 10 and growing, it just doesn't interest me. For Brodeur, I went with the 1990 7th Inning Sketch PSA 10 from the Quebec Junior League. More appealing card to me than the 1990 Score. Again, no right or wrong, just my taste. Cheers. >>



Not sure who Federov is, but Fedorov was quite a player (j/k, it is a common mistake, I don't mean to pick on you for that one)

You're exactly right as far as how amazing the RC class from 1990 is Not all of them are in all the manufacturers. None of the sets had all the rookies. In addition to all the great names you already mentioned, you could also include HOF members Scott Niedermeyer and Pavel Bure, plus other greats like Rob Blake, Rod Brind'Amour, Curtis Joseph, Mike Richter, and even more if you looked one notch down from their tier, such as Owen Nolan, Kris Draper, Felix Potvin (kind of a shout out joke to the Felix Potvin thread, but still...) etc. (Remember how Kevin Stevens was one of the absolute biggest cards you could pull during 1990? And for about a week, Ken Hodge Jr.? Funny how that turned out...) Good news on 1990 is that it is probably extremely unlikely you could open a pack from that year of any brand and miss getting at least one great rookie if not more. Bad news is the production may as well have been about a billion per card because that's how many it feels like each of us own or owned at some point or another. FWIW, the 1990 Topps Tiffany hockey set is not all that expensive to purchase. The latest sale on ebay was $36 this summer from Probstein. Bottom line is that you won't ever find more rookie cards of HOF members from a single year in any sport, any year before or after 1990 hockey, but the cards are so common that it almost doesn't matter.

Mapleleaf

I remember 1990 and all the new sets. After twenty five years of just OPC and or Topps, everybody went crazy and bought everything many times over. The cards were nicer and more glossy and they were some crazy prices paid. I remember $700 for a box of upper deck french that a friend of mine paid at Costco. The whole pallet sold out in hours. After the fad, everything just crashed and you can't give the stuff away, even today. What used to be an easily identifiable rookie card turned into several options from different companies and everyone has their favourite.
Most like the OPC premier because it was the most popular at the time and had the nicest cards. Upper deck was popular as well.
None are currently worth grading unless you have a knack for getting 10's as most sell for just above grading fees, even the top stars.

As for short print cards, I'm still burned out on all the early 90's issues and have boxes of them in the basement. Maybe in another 20 years I'll go through them.
If I do, I'll collect the regular OPC series because they still came with gum and I'm a traditionalist. Maybe they will be worth something then.

Frozencaribou

There are some excellent points here. Jeff, it is hard to put hockey and baseball into a comparative apples to apples perspective, but there are a number of things to consider. There isn't a Donruss aquious test equivalent in the 90's era hockey. There are 1989 OPC tembec parallels, which were printed on different stock than regular 89 OPC, but they don't create much of a buzz in the hockey community. Topps didn't make tiffany sets for hockey in any other year than 1990. There wasn't a culture of collecting tiffany sets like in baseball, which started in 84 and continued annually.

It seems like hockey is an order of magnitude lower than baseball for comparative pricing. Perhaps two orders. Guys aren't paying thousands of dollars for low pop 70's semi-stars. There are crazy prices for scarce items, but it is not like baseball at all. In vintage there still are many that don't care about grading and aren't as interested in PSA standard condition as they are in collecting visually appealing cards.

I guess the big difference in hockey is that if you collect a rare set you usually know everyone else that collects the set. I mean every last person. 66 Topps Test. 55 Parkhurst quaker oats. 1971 Bazooka. Our community is so much smaller and depends on so much fewer people to maintain the prices usually reserved for low pop vintage cards that not many are drawn in. Too much risk and too much money to get in the game.

Same with registry player collectors in hockey. How is it that I was the first person interested in creating Maurice Richard, Jean Beliveau, and Ken Dryden basic and master sets in 2009??? Because not many people who collect vintage hockey have justified the additional $$ necessary in buying into the PSA philosophy.

Thanks,

Nathanael

miwlvrn

<< <i>There are some excellent points here. Jeff, it is hard to put hockey and baseball into a comparative apples to apples perspective, but there are a number of things to consider. There isn't a Donruss aquious test equivalent in the 90's era hockey. There are 1989 OPC tembec parallels, which were printed on different stock than regular 89 OPC, but they don't create much of a buzz in the hockey community. Topps didn't make tiffany sets for hockey in any other year than 1990. There wasn't a culture of collecting tiffany sets like in baseball, which started in 84 and continued annually.

It seems like hockey is an order of magnitude lower than baseball for comparative pricing. Perhaps two orders. Guys aren't paying thousands of dollars for low pop 70's semi-stars. There are crazy prices for scarce items, but it is not like baseball at all. In vintage there still are many that don't care about grading and aren't as interested in PSA standard condition as they are in collecting visually appealing cards.

I guess the big difference in hockey is that if you collect a rare set you usually know everyone else that collects the set. I mean every last person. 66 Topps Test. 55 Parkhurst quaker oats. 1971 Bazooka. Our community is so much smaller and depends on so much fewer people to maintain the prices usually reserved for low pop vintage cards that not many are drawn in. Too much risk and too much money to get in the game.

Same with registry player collectors in hockey. How is it that I was the first person interested in creating Maurice Richard, Jean Beliveau, and Ken Dryden basic and master sets in 2009??? Because not many people who collect vintage hockey have justified the additional $$ necessary in buying into the PSA philosophy.

Thanks,

Nathanael >>



Great points again. If you look at the master set registries for players like Gretzky, Howe, and Orr, there are approx. twice as many participants for the master sets of Aaron, Clemente and Mays, and three times as many for Mantle. That is not to say there aren't huge prices being paid for hockey cards though. True enough, thousands are not being spent on low pop semi-stars from the 70's and 80's, but the cost of high grade 80's, 70's, 60's, and 50's rc's are very very high. The 90's just weren't real good for any of the sports' cards due more to production volume than popularity. I think the hockey sets you'll find that seem to have the most passionate following aren't necessarily the most relatively scarce ones, like the 1911 C55, 1964 Topps, and 1971 Topps/OPC.

I wonder if the PSA set registry participation level has anything to do with the majority of hockey card collectors being in Canada and not wanting to deal with shipping to and from PSA in California, and KSA not being an equal company with which to establish a similar registry system, more so than there just not being the interest in the concept in general?