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1986 Fleer Jordan PSA 10 Analysis

thunderdanthunderdan Posts: 3,036 ✭✭✭

So, I hadn't done any excel work in a while, so I thought this would be a fun little exercise to look at the sales trends of MJ's Rookie card in PSA 10 over the recent past during the market run up to the current.

Sales data of the PSA 10 and PSA 9 (and comparative view) 1986 Fleer Jordan covers 1/1/14 through 12/31/17. It looks like this.

The first move upward appeared in July 2014 but then came back down by December 2014. Starting in January 2015, there was a steady upward climb and at some point speculation (or "other" factors) took the price up up and up until it peaked in June 2016.

As you'll see below, the PSA 9 prices follow a very similar path, and if you like double axis graphs like I do, check out how closely their prices follow each other. And if you look really closely you'll notice a 1 month lag between PSA 10 pricing vs. PSA 9 pricing, making the PSA 10 somewhat of a leading indicator of future PSA 9 prices. Notice PSA 10 price changes (up or down) in July 2014, Decemer 2014, Feburary 2016 and June 2016. PSA 9 is right behind those price changes--but a month later. It's fascinating how closely they follow each other.

The dotted line is the PSA 9 values (which can be found on the secondary Y axis to the right). The solid line is obviously PSA 10 values.

The run up in PSA 9 and 10 prices occurred after the run ups in the Clemente and Aaron RC (those spikes occurred in mid 2015). For reference, current PSA 10 VCP is $19,561 and current PSA 9 VCP is $3,060.

Values have been pretty stable since November of 2016. One of the other interesting things was that during this period, there were a number of buyers who obviously believed prices were going higher, so they not only bought, but bought multiples. There were rumors that one or more people were looking to corner the market on the population in order to control prices. But with the ever rising pop of that card (200+ at this point), that was an expensive proposition which I never believed would come to fruition due to the size of capital outlay required.

And then there were 10 buyers who were buying 9s, but no multiple 10 buyer bought 9s. Only the single buying 10s bought 9s. As you'll see in a sec, some people were seriously buying 9s. Like bigly.

So the speculation was not limited to 10s. There were some huge 9 buys. 5 buyers bought 10 or more copies in this period and one buyer purchased 48 copies. And a couple of them have very high average costing. Likely some of them are purchasing for reviews/bumps as well.

Interesting how many buyers bought multiples. You can see that many felt this card was undervalued in the mid 20's and even into the mid 30's. Same with the 9s. I was always skeptical of that viewpoint because of all the supply out there. Some buyers really went hard after the MJ into the high 30s and even 40s. Lots of speculation on the 10

Anyway, thought it was interesting data to share and discuss. The pricing looks to have stabilized--I once owned a couple of these but sold them on the way up. Might be time to get back into the market.

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Comments

  • initialDinitialD Posts: 1,624 ✭✭✭

    Thanks for taking the time and putting this together to share. It's cool to see it laid out like that
    Was the 2/16 pricing the same as the mid 2015 pricing? Also, how many of the multiples buyers do you really believe actually bought the cards and didn't just shill the bag out of the auctions and ended up high bidder

  • thunderdanthunderdan Posts: 3,036 ✭✭✭
    edited January 18, 2018 8:38PM

    No, by 2/16 the run up had already started. Back in mid 2015 prices were in the 15-17K range. Jordan's run up occurred after some of the other notable rookies. No idea how many of these were actually paid for. It's certainly possible some were not. It’s also interesting to note that many of these multiple Jordan buyers were under bidders in many other auctions so there was definitely price pushing going on. Most of these sales were via PWCC so Brent could tell us for sure regarding payment/non payment.

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  • maddux69maddux69 Posts: 2,130 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I would expect the PSA 9's to follow that pretty close. It would be interesting to see how many PSA 9's were purchased by the same ones that purchased multiple PSA 10's.

  • secretstashsecretstash Posts: 1,393 ✭✭✭✭

    Ladies and Gentlemen, we have discovered the buyer group!

  • KendallCatKendallCat Posts: 2,962 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Dan

    Some great info there. I wonder if you did the same analysis of Clemente, Koufax, Rose, and Ryan rookies during the same time how it would match up to underbidders and winners. That would have some potential. Some of the bids and winners for a few of these cards is very suspect - just check VCP and there are some glaring irregularities and prices paid for Clemente and Koufax rookies that don't match up to the mean selling price.

    KC

  • grote15grote15 Posts: 29,463 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Very insightful and intriguing data indeed! Thanks for putting all that together, Dan.



    Collecting 1970s Topps baseball wax, rack and cello packs, as well as PCGS graded Half Cents, Large Cents, Two Cent pieces and Three Cent Silver pieces.
  • thunderdanthunderdan Posts: 3,036 ✭✭✭

    Updated data to include 9s and crossover buyers. If I get a moment later today, I may try to run something similar for Koufax and Clemente to try to understand that data a little better.

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  • Did you do any research to determine how many different cards were being purchased(were some re-sold multiple times or is every purchase a different card)? Also, were you able to verify that the transactions closed? Cool analysis, though.

    I actively collect Kirby Puckett. I have collections of Michael Jordan, Emmitt Smith, Roberto Clemente, Dwight Gooden, Tom Seaver, Errict Rhett and Evan Longoria.

  • thunderdanthunderdan Posts: 3,036 ✭✭✭

    No way to verify if any of these purchases closed. That's obviously a huge question. Most of these auctions are no longer live on eBay, so it's tough to tell about shilling and underbidding in a quantifiable way. I just know from having looked at 10 after 10 and looking at who was bidding on them during this time, these same encrypted usernames came up again and again and again.

    On your other question, these are all just purchase transactions, so the same card absolutely can (and does) show up multiple times using this approach.

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  • ReggieClevelandReggieCleveland Posts: 3,854 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Dan, is this strictly eBay transactions? If not, I'd be curious to see an overall average from the different venues. Perhaps one or two venues are able to achieve higher prices than the others.

    Arthur

  • thunderdanthunderdan Posts: 3,036 ✭✭✭

    Arthur, this is every transaction recorded in VCP which includes other auction houses. It obviously does not capture any private sales.

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  • ReggieClevelandReggieCleveland Posts: 3,854 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Thanks Dan. I was going to make a joke at an AH's expense but it turns out they only sold one PSA 10. In fact, looking over the history of the PSA 10 I was rather surprised how infrequently the card gets moved through one of the hobby's auction houses. The overwhelming majority of the PSA 10s have been sold on ebay. Nothing to infer from that, just found it weird that so few have been sent to auction houses.

    Arthur

  • erikthredderikthredd Posts: 8,031 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Here is another MJ collector that has been following & comparing market prices for many different Jordan cards if anyone wants to check his stuff out.
    https://www.instagram.com/90sbasketballcardstash/

  • olb31olb31 Posts: 2,883 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Bottom line is the Jordan card has been graded a "10" too many times for the card too really expand in price. Or the market needs to expand the volume of collectors/investors. I think at even $10,000, that is really high compared to the supply.

    Work hard and you will succeed!!
  • Dand522612Dand522612 Posts: 417 ✭✭✭

    Wow 48 PSA 9’s for almost 184K for one guy legit or not!!!! Yes that is bigly!!!!!

  • RipublicaninMassRipublicaninMass Posts: 10,051 ✭✭✭

    Now let's remove the same cards that weren't paid for, but relisted weeks later!

  • KendallCatKendallCat Posts: 2,962 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I would imagine that high end 9's do very well price wise with people buying them for potential bumps to a 10. If you buy 4 PSA 9's and one bumps you are in good shape. There is a seller on eBay right now (legendary airness) with 3-4 PSA 9's for sale that he most likely tried to bump and they stayed as 9's, and now he is trying to sell them for $5999 each - VCP is about $3200-3400 so good luck with the goal of getting 80-90% over VCP average on those.

  • HighGradeLegendsHighGradeLegends Posts: 1,693 ✭✭✭✭

    @KendallCat said:
    I would imagine that high end 9's do very well price wise with people buying them for potential bumps to a 10. If you buy 4 PSA 9's and one bumps you are in good shape. There is a seller on eBay right now (legendary airness) with 3-4 PSA 9's for sale that he most likely tried to bump and they stayed as 9's, and now he is trying to sell them for $5999 each - VCP is about $3200-3400 so good luck with the goal of getting 80-90% over VCP average on those.

    Centered 9s go above vcp...they are hard to find...but...they do well

  • KendallCatKendallCat Posts: 2,962 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @HighGradeLegends said:

    @KendallCat said:
    I would imagine that high end 9's do very well price wise with people buying them for potential bumps to a 10. If you buy 4 PSA 9's and one bumps you are in good shape. There is a seller on eBay right now (legendary airness) with 3-4 PSA 9's for sale that he most likely tried to bump and they stayed as 9's, and now he is trying to sell them for $5999 each - VCP is about $3200-3400 so good luck with the goal of getting 80-90% over VCP average on those.

    Centered 9s go above vcp...they are hard to find...but...they do well

    No question that is the case with centered 9's, but when only 1-2 PSA 9's sell for over $4k in the last 9-10 months would you not agree that trying to sell 3-4 of them by the same buyer for $5800-5900 is a little out of touch with the market. Trying to sell one double VCP average is rich, it trying to sell multiple examples is a little out there. I guess as the saying goes it is only worth what someone will pay for it still stands.

    KC

  • Dand522612Dand522612 Posts: 417 ✭✭✭

    Yes, those 6K Jordan’s are nice, however not at 6K. Yes a premium to be paid for a nicely centered, no print, little to no rough cut. Card is clearly readily available just such a demand.

  • erikthredderikthredd Posts: 8,031 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited January 21, 2018 7:33AM

    @KendallCat said:
    I would imagine that high end 9's do very well price wise with people buying them for potential bumps to a 10. If you buy 4 PSA 9's and one bumps you are in good shape. There is a seller on eBay right now (legendary airness) with 3-4 PSA 9's for sale that he most likely tried to bump and they stayed as 9's, and now he is trying to sell them for $5999 each - VCP is about $3200-3400 so good luck with the goal of getting 80-90% over VCP average on those.

    That seller pretty much lists all of his Jordan graded stuff much higher than previous sale prices not just his MJ rookies. I have about 10 of his cards in my watch list (not rookies) that have been there for months waiting to see if he lowers to a more realistic price.

  • GoDodgersFanGoDodgersFan Posts: 1,391 ✭✭✭

    Thanks thunderdan. Execellent data points on the 1986 Jordan PSA 9s and 10s. Some folks just have the money to speculate on sportscards. Buying 48 PSA 9 Jordans is just crazy !

  • HighGradeLegendsHighGradeLegends Posts: 1,693 ✭✭✭✭

    @Dand522612 said:
    Yes, those 6K Jordan’s are nice, however not at 6K. Yes a premium to be paid for a nicely centered, no print, little to no rough cut. Card is clearly readily available just such a demand.

    agreed, but if you have about 6k into it, then you price it where you want in the hope someone will pay for centering...of which...they do...but not often at that price point with alternatives out there.

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