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1970s O-PEE-CHEE baseball is like gold. Will it ever draw any interest ?
1970s
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Gold is only appreciated by those who love it. It has value, but very few people seem to like to enjoy
the value it gives. You love gold because it's a rare commodity, only enough ever mined to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool, yet most people would rather put their money elsewhere. They don't see the beauty in the shiny metal, and some would rather chase a newer item like bitcoin because of the ups and downs of the market.
While we understand that the opportunity to mine more gold is more likely then to discover vintage, mint O-PEE-CHEE baseball, we will probably see stagnated prices in both.
Will vintage O-PEE-CHEE baseball ever get any love ?
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Rarity doesn’t equate to demand. Honestly I’m surprised so many people here seem so enamored with OPC. For me there is no nostalgic appeal, and the cards themselves are generally less aesthetically pleasing than the Topps cards, so I would personally never pursue them. I think many Americans feel that way, and up north hockey cards were always more popular.
I love 70s/80s OPC baseball...so challenging to find in high grade!
I would think you would need to see 1960s O-Pee-Chee get some love first.
Arthur
I heart OPC. I find the colors richer on '69s and '75s, the backs infinitely better on '71s, and the player photos more than infinitely better on '77 Canadian players. And don't even get me talking about those rough cuts (#ILIKEITROUGH).
bobsbbcards SGC Registry Sets
I have loved opc for 25 years. I find the colors more vibrant, especially on the 75's and I like the card stock they used better. I'm ok with them not being more popular, keeps the prices down so i can buy more
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
There is simply very little demand for 1970s OPC baseball for other than HOFers and star cards. This has been the case for many years. I used to open quite a few OPC wax packs when prices for those were reasonable but the rise in value for unopened OPC wax from the 1970s has not been followed by 1970s graded cards, even in high grade. I will no longer open 1970s OPC wax for that reason.
If there are any 1972 OPC collectors here, I have a really nice, low pop #492 Mel Stottlemyre Boyhood Photos card in PSA 9 grade that I will sell here for $25 shipped.
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.
I once had delusions that 70's OPC would see value increases in line with their scarcity. I put together the first 100%graded 78 set. Really beautiful cards in high grade. When I sold the set (took a bath) I quickly realized that there was just no demand for commons, and collecting OPC in set form was a terrible idea.
So I started and finished the only graded 77 set
Anyone want to buy it? lol
CDsNuts, 1/9/15
I have to agree with everything said here, especially the bolded part
Oddly enough, 1980s OPC has made the move and overtaken Topps. Perhaps that generation has less brand loyalty?
Arthur
Tim, ever the opportunist LOL!! Great looking card even though this belongs on the BST forum
(just kidding, you can do whatever you want 
)
I was merely illustrating my point, David, LOL...did I mention the card was pilled by me from a pack and self-submitted to PSA?
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.
No but you did just now lol!!
I love OPC baseball. Have almost completed 1965, 1967, and 1971 sets. And 1980's OPC seems to be gaining popularity. Look at the price for a 1987 OPC Bonds rookie... it blows the Topps card out of the water in pricing.
The 87 OPC Bonds cards is far tougher to find in high grade vs the Topps version, though. While prices are generally strong for OPC HOFers and Rookies, the bidding pool is very thin for commons and semi-stars with the vast majority of cards in PSA 8 and even PSA 9 grade selling for prices below what it costs to grade the card. Take a look at completed auctions on ebay to see what I mean, at least as far as 1970s OPC cards are concerned. The demand simply is not there and hasn't been for at least the past 15+ years I've been collecting PSA graded cards.
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.
I recently listed ten 1975 OPC PSA 9's, all with pops between 5 and 8 and no PSA 10's in existence and starting bids at $15 or $20 depending on pop. Not only were there no bids, but average views over the 10 days of the auction was about 5 per auction. The ONLY cards that seem to sell are those in player master set registries. A PSA 9 Minnesota Twins team card (no 10's) with a $100 minimum bid and a $130 buy-it-now was bought at the buy-it-now price before any bids. This card was needed for Carew, Killebrew, and Oliva Master sets.
As a side question, what is the proper listing terminology for OPCs? I put both "OPC" and "O-Pee-Chee" in the title, maybe I need to use "OPEECHEE" instead. I'm guessing no one searches for "O-Pee-Chee".
You're covered with O-Pee-Chee and OPC.
All (at least every one I can think of) 1980s stars/rookies sell for a significant premium in OPC over the Topps equivalent. In most instances, it's not even close. But the print runs are so polar opposite. I had no real trouble putting together wax boxes of OPC from 1980-1994 with the exception of, oddly, 1989 and 1990. I know 1980 has gotten tougher but other than that I think you'd have to maybe go back to 1976 to find an OPC box that I've seen less of than 1990.
For those here who are not super in touch with OPC vs. Topps, I will provide this summary:
For the OPC cards, there is a much smaller group of potential buyers / collectors. When a high grade item comes up for sale, its prices will be very significantly exponentially higher than the Topps version, as long as you have 2 conditions met: (1) at least 2 or 3 of the appropriate people are notified that the item is in fact on the market; and (2) at least 2 or 3 of them do not yet have that item. If the item is poorly listed (by way of search terms in the title for example) or poorly marketed (failing to make its availability known), then it will sell for way below the value it commands due to the demand. Once the people who are really into acquiring said item already have one, the market shifts and the card does not hold up the super-premium it formerly had as compared with its Topps counterpart, and its price comes way down to no more than Topps level, if not even below it, despite the much much more limited print run and difficulty in finding high grade copies due to inferior QA/QC from the factory.
So to put it another way, a high grade card in Topps that sells for $100 might see the OPC version sell for $1,000 by comparison until the right people have theirs, and then future copies of the OPC will come down to $75 or so, and the owners will be complaining about the value being only a small fraction of the VCP or auction history of others, while the Topps one will hold that $100 value consistently.
OPC demand is much more acute, but limited, and the demand with Topps is broad. With OPC, the only ones who truly cash in big time are the ones who are first in landing the highest-pop examples. After that, there is a huge drop off. So if you want to make money on OPC, it is absolutely a race to find the best of the best cards. With Topps, there is no rush as the demand is larger, but so is the supply.
All that being said, I happen to like collecting the OPC cards over the Topps ones. Yes, like almost everyone here, I grew up opening Topps packs and they hold the youth nostalgia, but I do get bored a bit with seeing the same old ones and enjoy having something different with the OPC cards. There is also thrill of the hunt in finding quality OPC cards, and like some others have said, I particularly much prefer the backs of the 1971 OPC cards instead of the Topps ones.
An odd thing happened in 1989: it is the only year when production on Topps and OPC swapped in hockey too. There are tons more 1989 OPC hockey than there are of 1989 Topps hockey, despite being the other way around previously.
Great thread....I love OPCs.....IMHO the rough cuts make a more impressive mint card then regular issue Topps. Like little knives peering out saying "look how untouched this card is"...LOL
I own a 75 OPC Aaron #660 that is one of my personal favorites.
I like OPC's. I have a few HOFers and the 1978 baseball set. I really like the '78 set because it is very small, less than 1/2 the cards of the Topps set so a high % of HOFers (and tons on Expos and Blue Jays if you're into that scene).
I will take some credit for the 1980's OPC lift. About a year ago I put up my Bonds 1987 OPC PSA 10, for a buy it now of $1250. The highest one had sold at that point was $400. Once I sold that card (which I was very shocked I received that amount), the puckett, mattingly, gwynn, sandeberg's of the wold started flying of the charts.
But, that one sell started a small trend. That's all it really takes is a couple of big sales here and there and all of sudden there is a larger audience. I don't really care if a card is topps, opc, fleer or what, if it's the hardest to get as a 10, then that's my favorite one. (see my posts about the 1982 fleer ripken vs all others).
I got a chuckle or 3 when doing an Alomar search the other day
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1989-TOPPS-OPC-O-PEE-CHEE-206-ROBERTO-ALOMAR-PADRES-HOF-PSA-10/332645143400?hash=item4d73321368:g:G2gAAOSwIIha8fOl
Had to look that one up. With a total pop of 14, even split of 9s/10s and nothing lesser, even 10% of that asking seems aggressive.
Have been starting to dabble in 70s HOF. Think they are underpriced. Hard to predict hobby trends. Could definitely see a scenario where demand ticks up and prices do to.
I remember a member here, rbdjr I believe his user name was (his name was Bob), felt similarly and invested heavily in buying 1970s OPC baseball cards in high grade. Years later, he sold off his entire OPC collection and took a bath on it. Things haven't changed since then.
As mentioned before by miwlvrn , there is demand for those cards that master player set collectors need, and HOF rookies and HOFers in general. But if you're going to embark on set collecting, be forewarned that you should be collecting due to personal enjoyment not potential return on your investment. The lack of bids or even views is the standard for OPC baseball card listings.
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.
It's a shame OPC didn't replicate the entirety of the Topps sets from 1965-1970. It would have helped the OPC mystique to have had Reggie Jackson, Tom Seaver, and Nolan Ryan rookie cards.
Here is my theory- OPC cards don't get much respect in relation to Topps from the 1970's but hold their own in the 1980's. Perhaps it can be attributed to the fragmentation of the investment card market in the 1980's, especially post-1985. Collectors assigned overarching value to all sorts of non-traditional cards in the 1980's that previously were only pursued by small subsets of the collecting world. Traded sets, Classic games, Score, Fleer, Donruss, Panini. If you look at investment-grade cards prior to 1980 but after OPC started in 1965, Topps dominates. After 1980, things fracture. We've all been told for almost 20 years that 1980's baseball is ridiculously overproduced and so what do we do as collectors? Go find the rare investment grade items of our beloved 80's stars wherever those opportunities lie. If rarity cannot be happened upon through scarcity, we will find ways of manufacturing that rarity through condition sensitivity.
And therefore, Barry Bonds OPC PSA 10 rookies are doing just fine at $2500+ because they are relatively scarce (overstatement but perceived truth) and condition sensitive in a marketplace of buyers who didn't just own 1987 Topps Barry Bonds rookie cards and nothing else. It's just too bad that there are so many uncut sheets of 80's OPC everywhere...
From what I have seen in recent raw card sales, and the sky high prices realized on the relatively common Topps versions (1965-1976), I think these will eventually garner exponentially higher values than the Topps cards, with some exceptions. Either way, if you collect any of the sets or stars of this era of OPC, I would buy them as soon as possible. They are going to get quite expensive, and without a bunch of "follow up" supply to soak up sales from unsuccessful high dollar bidders (See, Rickey Henderson Topps RC PSA 10). Because their offer for sale is sporadic, and in some cases, quite rare (71 Brock, Clemente, Yaz, Baker RC) , the occasion appearance of high grade cards of Aaron, Mays, Mantle, Ryan, etc and the limited number of HOF RCs might bring values that could be shocking. You do see some resistance to bringing them into mainstream for reasons that escape me, but the market will decide. .
I am very glad to let interested persons know that we will have a significant answer to the Title Question of this thread over the next month. A significant graded OPC collection has started bids for the Heritage Sunday Collector's Auction currently and some of the frontline Rookie Cards (Palmer, Schmidt, Gary Carter) in high grade (mostly 8s) will be included in the Heritage Catalog Auction ending May 14. Several HOF and Star graded cards groups will also offered by year will give set builders a chance to obtain some of the most expensive cards from the respective sets in one shot. Available now are 1965 (Mays, Mantle, and 4 others); 1966 (Rose, Koufax, Mantle and Catfish Hunter), and 1975 (Bench, Ryan HL, Ryan K Ldrs, Yaz, and 6 others). The Catalog Auction will have groups from 1972, 1973, and 1974.
Obviously I am biased but the plain facts are (1) the estimated print runs were between 1-5% of Topps, they were generally unavailable in the US prior to the internet age, and the percentage of OPC graded compared to Topps cards for the "vintage and full set era" is about 2 percent. The 1974s, which were short printed due to a factory worker strike that year are much lower; and (3) overall auction prices for cards of the era have sharply risen, with big money collectors now seeking elite grades and paying elite prices based on the scarcity of the higher graded vintage cards of otherwise readily available and widely printed issues. Finally, as a serious collector of these, they have virtually disappeared from the market over the last few years. Several Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, and other high dollar star cards have not even been seen in high grade (NM-MT) at major auction in 3 years or more. Check the PSA Auction Price Realization Reports.
Either way, if you are a fan of the 60s-70s era and/or you do specific player collects, get any you want sooner rather than later. Assuming the points made here about "nobody cares about french and colored backs and short supply," the extreme scarcity of these and the price trends are going to render these unaffordable in short order. I recommend buying them raw if you can inspect them.
I am going to post some pics if i can figure out how to upload. Feel free to ask for a scan if you are interested in any from the era or you just want a pic of one. Keep up the constructive, positive discussions folks. Its great that people are discussing it, there are some very interesting nuances to these things.
C:\Users\ewolf\OneDrive\Pictures\img021 (2)