What Price Perfection?

I get Sports Collector's Digest in the mail every couple weeks.  I enjoy it for the articles on vintage cards and oddball issues, as well as for the show calendar, and other stories on varied parts of the hobby.  I like the print version, but they do have an electronic version available as well.  I'm old school and like reading from a page better than a screen, especially since I get plenty of screen time elsewhere (including blogs, of course.)

One subject they cover regularly is auctions.  There seems to be a steady increase in the volume of articles that are dedicated to upcoming auctions as opposed to card products, shows, and collecting in general.  I suppose it falls in line with the fact that they get a lot of ad revenue from auction houses and are obligated to feature them to a degree, and I'm OK with that.  I'd rather see them talk about the cards themselves, but so be it.

A regular feature in SCD is the top 10 auction sales, which usually includes a couple 1952 Mantles, Michael Jordan rookies, Gretzky rookies, and maybe Tom Brady or Aaron Judge, or whoever is trending up at the time.  Those particular items kinda make sense to be going for ridiculous sums, but if you look at some of the auction house results or ad pages, you'll be amazed at the sale prices.  They're routinely five and six digits!  Who are these people who are paying out five-digit sums for the graded superstar cards that are listed in the magazine? 

I found the examples below on a popular auction house site.  They are typical of some of the exhorbitant amounts that are paid for cards that I know I could get (in slightly less than pristine condition, but totally acceptable to me) for at least 10% or less of what these people paid.

Here's the first one.  A 1960 Carl Yastrzemski rookie card.  I just got one for about $100, which I don't have yet, but only because a friend is shipping it in with other stuff.  That's about the going rate when you look at COMC....

These are ungraded and going for 75 to a bit under 100.  Par for the course for a Good to VG condition range.

Here's what eBay has to offer at the moment:

You have typical eBay listings here.  The bottom one is actually a 2001 reprint.  It's the refractor version, so that bumps it up a bit.  But it doesn't really count. 

The other guy is out of his frikkin' mind.  He's seen the other auctions and thinks he's got Gem Mint MOJOZZ or something incredibly earth-shattering.  But at least he put in "or Best Offer".  There were plenty of PSA 7's and 8's of the actual 1960 card to be had.

Here is the auction result I saw.  The eBay crazy guy kinda steals the thunder, but anyway....

Same PSA 9 rating.  They started at FIVE THOUSAND.  And the nuttiest part is, they got FOUR TIMES that for it!  So you can get a decent one for a Franklin, or one that some guy decided to submit to a company to put in a plastic prison for the price of a 2018 Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, or Ford Focus.

Now OK, that's a superstar Hall Of Famer rookie card.  The guy is a legend, so there is a certain fanboy zeal associated with him.  There were a few other examples of PSA 9 '60 Yaz cards going for much less in their other auctions.  So this is an extreme case.

How about a newer card of a fan favorite type guy who wasn't quite a HOF'er, or even really a perennial All-Star?  Consider this card....

COMC has a couple raw examples of the 1969 Topps Bobby Bonds rookie for (surprisingly) double digits, and a graded one for about seven times the raw price.  A lot higher than I would expect for this one, though it is still a high number (though this set didn't have the scarce high number series), and a rookie, and is also related to Barry Bonds, so there are a couple hype-inducing characteristics at work here.  Beckett shows semistars in this range as three to eight bucks each.  Bonds is listed as $12.50 to 30.00.  So the raw ones fall right in between, which is fine.

I will never understand or support the idea that a graded card is worth many times more than a non-graded one in the same condition.  It's just corporate interference and an artificial increase based on the whims of random collectors and grading companies.  But I digress....

EBay has a few PSA 9's at varying rates.

The $79 one is reasonable if you cast aside my complaints.  A perfect-ish specimen for $80.  OK, I'll give it a pass.  Certified perfection might be worth that to someone.  Same thing for five times more?  No thank you.

OK, so what did this card sell for at the big auction house?

Almost three grand!!  Started at seven hundred and fifty!  That's ten times the starting price of the auction above.  Now this is a GEM MINT 10.  But all I can say is Child, Please....  That's still about $2810.00 too much!

Who are these buyers?

Are they twenty-something children of billionaires who are sports fans?

Rich middle aged guys who just try to outdo each other on crazy auction bids?

Card or grading company executives who just keep selling these to each other?

I really have no idea.  I've come a long way since I started collecting back in the late 70's.  I've got stuff now that I never envisioned having back in the day, but it's mostly because I live cheap and have no life otherwise.  I can't imagine becoming one of these high rollers, though.  I'll take my slightly off condition superstars for one percent or less of what these nutbars are paying every time.