Share your Wins and Observations from Sunday Night BBCE and REA...
mintonlypls
Posts: 2,485 ✭✭✭✭✭
My first observation is that prices were very strong for vintage and vintage unopened. Here are a few highlights which caught my eye.
- 1968 Nolan Ryan RC PSA-8.5....$33,600 (a record for the assigned grade)
- 1969 Reggie Jackson RC PSA-9 (gold diamond)...$93,000 (very close to a record for the assigned grade)
- 1948-49 Leaf Jackie Robinson PSA-7 (gold diamond)...$150,000 (double the most recent sale for the assigned grade)
- 1957 Frank Robinson PSA-8.5...$18,000 (a record for the assigned grade)
- 1958 Ernie Banks PSA-9...$9000 (my card...2nd highest price for the assigned grade)
- 1958 Topps Baseball Wax Pack PSA-6...$135,000! (BBCE)
Here is my lone pickup...
mint_only_pls
12
Comments
That 1958 pack price is crazy with a pop of 6...3 graded higher plus the few gai examples floating around.
Great pickup Monte! The REA auction was insane. I went 0 for 91 on my bids. Almost every card I was following went for 20% - 100% higher than recent sales. Nuts!
I did pick up this card in the Leland's auction though. Pop2 with no10's.
Late 60's and early to mid 70's non-sports
Great card of the Great One! Strong 8.5 and I like how clear the image is.
I went 0-for-3, Monte. A 1967 OPC Mantle PSA 8 pop 18 went for $8,100! PSA APR says last sale was $2,200.
buying O-Pee-Chee (OPC) baseball
Congrats on the pickup Monte! I love the 8.5's! I agree, I thought that prices were strong for a lot of items for vintage baseball and unopened. The 58 baseball pack is basically a unicorn. There are only a few that are PSA graded. I can never remember one coming up for sale in the past 10 years.
I'm a big fan of the REA auctions.
A 75 Brett (PSA 9) went for over $7,000 which seems like a pretty big jump. PSA 10 Gwynn rookie for over $3K too.
I was watching several sets from the 70s and they were unusually affordable early in the weekend but were really bid up the last day.
I found autograph'd cards to be going for very strong prices.
The 50 bowman Jackie 2/8 stood out to me along with the red heart Mantle. There was a 84 Fleer Puckett which had a terrible signature, but a 6 card grade, went for a strong price. There was a 9/8 which closed on eBay (Hoodys) last night for 23K. Quite a few autograph'd star/HoF lots on REA which went for way more than I thought they would.
I went 0/25 bc I fell asleep and forgot to bid. Really wanted and liked the 1957 Cello Pack and the 1971 FB cello.. 1971 BB Cello went for over 10k seemed insane. Also really liked the Dizzy Dean autographed matchbook. I would have gone after that one harder as well. Summer heat beats me down and I need my rest. Oh well. They had a nice variety of stuff for sure!
REA had some pretty nice complete sets - particularly 1957-1973 topps. I bid pretty hard on a few and was a little surprised to wake up to only one win, a partial 1964 set. I probably should have gone a little harder on an all raw '73 set - my only regret - congrats on your wins.
Bosox1976
I was watching those too. I'm thinking about selling my sets (72, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78 & 79) from the 70s and was very curious about how they'd go. I thought sets were kind of not as popular but those prices made me feel better.
I got the 1969 Ryan 8, slightly overpaid but not too much for a real nice one. Underbidder on the 1969 PSA Mantle 8
and went to $3000 on the 69 Jackson 8 which was top dollar with the 20% added, the winner paid $4000 with the vig .
Bought a few of the unopened that I don’t have. The 84 Fleer rack box, the 78 Topps Basketball vending box.
I’m going to do an UFFAH on the vending box
I bid on that 78 Vending and was definitely ripping. I got busy at home in the evening and just forgot to keep bidding. Glad I didn't bid you up on it.
Good for you and good luck on the pulls. I hope all the stars are 9s and 10s for you.
I also was a bidder on that bkb vending box
anyone have a link to the rea final prices? I went onto their site and could not find it.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
I was bidding on the 71 Vending box and was going to do an UFFAH on that one too but I was told by a good source that I’ll regret it so I backed off.
https://bid.collectrea.com/lots?sortBy=Lot_Number:asc
I had to login to get to it, but if you login and hit the Auction button along the top it's still showing the results.
https://bid.collectrea.com/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=REA&utm_campaign=Jan25&sortBy=Lot_Number:asc
Late 60's and early to mid 70's non-sports
I got my ass kicked on that but based on what you are saying I guess I am glad I was outbid!
Late 60's and early to mid 70's non-sports
thank you, perfect!
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
The 58 pack is the exact same one that sold in Heritage on 1-31 when it resided in a GAI 7 holder--it sold for a mere $15,860 (yes you read that right) so whoever won it 6-1/2 months ago obviously cracked it out of the GAI holder and submitted it to PSA, got a 6 and consigned it to BBCE where it sold for $118,542.58 more than what they won it for in HA😲. So depending on what Steve took as a consignment fee the consignor probably made around 100k on it😲--a pretty hefty profit in such a short period of time. And even more remarkable, such a huge price change just from the pack changing holders😆
1958 and 1956 nickel packs are the toughest unopened packs to find if you are trying to complete a run.
There's a guy on Youtube who filmed his break of a Frisch '71 vending box. He only pulled a small group of cards at a time, so there are a few dozen videos to watch if you want to see the full break. I too haven't heard good things about those '71 boxes. It doesn't take much handling to damage the corners on that year. Even the rack pack I ripped several years ago didn't yield anything better than a PSA 8 but at least one of the 8's was the Pete Rose.
I wonder what Larry was looking for in that "unopened" vending box?
How much did it sale for is one of the funniest and most ignorant things I've ever heard.
Searched box! Searched box! Steer clear of Larry’s boxes…
luckily he has thousands.
thank you also for the link. really great cards and prices on some of the lots.
Shipment arrives today by Fed Ex!
Mine too!
Bosox1976
Very nice looking '64T set. Congrats!
Those are super clean and nice.
I think the 64 set is my favorite of the decade. Such a clean minimalist design with so many great portrait photos.
This is why having the person verifying the packs having an auction house is a huge conflict of interest. I do not think anything nefarious went on. However he made $10 to $20K by saying it was real.
Being a defunct company…GAI holdered packs and cards sell for much less than in PSA or SGC holders. That is a very difficult pack to find…
My booty from BBCE arrived.
Late 60's and early to mid 70's non-sports
Cool unopened, small stocks!
I like the 60's TV cards. I never collected any but find them to be very collectible. If that makes sense.
Totally. Kind of been my thing for a number of years. Both the cards and unopened . . .
Late 60's and early to mid 70's non-sports
I opened the 1978 Topps Basketball vending box from the “Fritsch Vault” today that I won in the REA auction and wrapped by BBCE.
Upon opening the box, everything looked good. The vending stripe was there and looked intact.
I opened from the side like you see UFFAH do and started searching.
I didn’t expect 500 gem mint cards but this is what I found. Some cards were backwards in the box and others upside down compared to the others. I don’t know if that’s normal or not but ok.
ZERO Bernard King rookies, 1 each of the following, Jabbar, Maravich and Dennis Johnson, ALL were badly OC and worthless. A lot of OC but I expected that. With 132 cards in the set, I should have been able theoretically to make 3+ sets. Can’t do that when there are no King rookies.
I knew it was a huge gamble and I’ve had worse nights at a casino but it was fun and disappointing as well unless you are a Dave Meyers fan because there was 9 of those in the box.
My opinion? Stick with FASC vending because it’s pretty obvious to me that the box had been looked thru to some extent I believe
The photo of Larry searching a box in this same thread probably was yours…most likely plucking your Kings! Caught in the act…by security cameras.
It’s always a bummer when you open BBCE product and it’s trash. I was excited to see pictures.
I expected a lot of OC cards as the set is cut horribly but to not even have the main rookie in the box hurts. It looked good when I lifted the lid but I’ve been warned about Fritsch boxes and took a gamble. Oh well.
I had one of my horses race and win tonight so the sting is fading.
Ugh! I opened a 1977 Topps football Fritsch vending box earlier this year. Roughly 480 of the 500 cards were OC. That ended that game for me.
Late 60's and early to mid 70's non-sports
I used to have fritsch send vending boxes to GAI back in the day.
Yeah, sorry to hear that. I bought a bunch of 77 Baseball vending years ago that were partial cases. I sold many off but broke many too. Still have thousands of the cards all really nice.
I will never buy a Fritsch box ever again
i bought a 1975 topps bb set from him and about 2/3 of the cards were way off center including the brett and ryan. way off. the yount looked ok maybe a 7.5 or 8.
How many is many? Some 20 years ago I busted several vending boxes of '76 and '77 Topps Baseball with rather amazing results. Were you auctioning them as far back as the late 90s? I acquired them in a large haul which came from a third party on consignment at the time. I still have thousands of nice cards, less of course anything that was imminently gradable. Lots of 10s. Good ol' days.
To be honest I want to think I bought them at around $30 a box. Made a few sets. Then sold many in a bulk deal to a gentleman in the late 90s. Didn’t have 76s. All my 76s came from opened vending when Capital Cards liquidated. I bought all there 74’s thru 76s. All the stars were pulled from those and bought in groups of a few hundred.
A lot of the majors we gone like Ryan, Brett Yount etc.
I did get hundreds and sometimes full 800 count boxes of certain stars like 74 Killebrew, 74 Seaver (200-300), 76 Lou Gehrig All Time are a few.
In fact most of these PSA 10s were submitted by me to PSA. Wish I still had them.
69 Koosman
75 Seaver
75 Yaz
75 Jackson ( only 1-10, lots of 9s)
76 Gehrig
Just to name a few.
I remember getting 5-1975 Seaver 10s in one submission and thought people were nuts paying $1200-$1500 each. This was around 2005 or so.
The 69 Koosman’s were in a binder and there were like 10 pages of them. Stunning they were. Who knew they would be a $10000 card now.
10s of thousands of 1968 and 1969 high numbers. All the leftovers from Galasso.
I was 16 when I helped clean out Woody Gelman’s storefront basement in Queens. All those cards went to Capital, Galasso, Al Rosen and another gentleman but I can’t remember his name but he was associated with Tosen for a time. I reminder little white boxes with 1968 series sets, most were the Ernie Banks series. They had a rubber band on them so the first and last few cards were ruined. It’s funny what you remember
Wow Harnessracing….thanks for sharing. We all have sales that we regret. Who knew?
We were somewhere further along the distribution chain, but I know we had similar results to what you've described, particularly on the 70s stuff with major stars pulled out, then plenty of second tier stars and commons in monster boxes which seemed endless. You and I were probably competing for a time on eBay during '05 and onward, as I recall you had quite a few 1974 Topps Baseball gems being sold back then. You might remember Ron Oser, an auctioneer whose name was attached to the labels on the monster and 800 count boxes we had. I think that's where most of it was sourced. Another name you might know is Joe DelGrippo, who also was a distributor at the time. We thrived on 1972-73 Topps Basketball and 1973 Topps Football acquired from him. Those are still a couple of my favorite sets to chase to this day thanks to that experience. I also handled a lot of '68 & '69 Topps Baseball commons, so we must have been somehow linked just by accumulating the same merchandise that was actively being marketed by wholesalers.
It IS funny what we remember. One last thought: Negotiating with Al Rosen, MR. MINT, was also something unforgettable. It was never boring dealing with him. I really miss that part of it.
Joe D is a friend of mine. Haven’t talked to him in a few years. I used to go to his townhouse in Pt Pleasant Beach on the canal. He bought from me and I from him for years.
Ron Oser may be the gentleman whose name I can’t remember.
I have chemo head and have a hard time remembering names at times.
Also bought tons of stuff from Martucci in SI and bought quite a bit when he left for Las Vegas . The last items I remember were unopened sets of 70 Kellogg’s Football sets. Dozens of them. I might even still have some also at least 20 cases of 90 Topps Traded. Cases upon cases of 86 Sportflics wax, sets all kinds. I’m trying to remember some other items. I sold all the cases of regular and traded sets of Tiffany 84-91 last December to a real good guy in NYC. He came down and bought a truckload of items. He even loaded it as I’m not able too.
Oh how can I forget John Hom and his wife. Super nice people. Did a ton of business with them too. Remember getting a couple of 1971 Munson’s and Blyleven’s from old man Galasso. Pulling those away from him was a chore. Would never sell more than 1 or 2 at a time
Thanks for the explanation and sharing a few good memories. I have noticed a wave of activity lately with the Tiffany cards being sold on eBay, so your buyer must have unloaded that truck.