Vintage Set Needs

Friday, February 5, 2021

Paying Too Much

I'm the last guy who should be weighing in on the current state of the hobby but since when has that stopped me from opening my mouth? I see tweets and read blogs about guys sitting in lines for hours, not for COVID vaccines, but to buy boxes of cards at Target. I'm guessing they are trying to hit it big on shiny stuff. 

I used to buy a pack here and there, baseball and football mostly, just to see what the companies were up to. Then I stopped seeing anything on the shelves. One thing leads to another and card prices are way above where they were just a year or so ago. Where this leaves the hobby, how it affects kids trying to collect...I don't know. I have opinions but as someone who doesn't care about new cards my opinions aren't worth much. 

What does mean something to me is that the 'bubble' has tricked down and elevated the prices on almost everything. Pre-War cards shot up and not long after I noticed the prices of the cards that interest me, mid-50s thru late 70s stuff, followed the upward trend. I saw it in the cost of the 1967 Topps high numbers I am lacking. Run-of-the-mill raw cards in that group went from about $15/$18 to $27/$35, sometimes much higher, for anything better than VG-EX. I wish I had been more aggressive when I began the set because now, unless I get lucky with a bid group, I grab anything under $25 that doesn't have a chunk missing. 

Even the prices for 1962 Post Cereal cards, those that were 'short printed' (issued on the backs of unpopular cereals) have risen quite a bit. It kills my soul to spend big bucks on cards that appear to have been sliced off the boxes by seven-year-olds with a butter knife. But I'm too close on this set (and the '67T) to turn back or abandon the build. So here we are.

For the Post set I'm long done with the easy cards. Most of those are still available for 79 cents to a few dollars. But the ones in this post were somewhat tougher. That's why I was okay with paying for the Jerry Lynch card up top even with the penciled-in team change. Lynch, btw, was traded from the Reds to the Pirates in May of 1963. So either the box was on the shelf awhile or some kid liked updating his cards.

This Joe Amalfitano card was, believe it or not, the better of the two available on SportsLots. I've blocked out of my memory what I paid for it. LOL It's hard impossible to read but the card has a notation that he had been drafted by the Houston Colts.

Marty Keough had a younger brother and a son who played big league ball. At nearly 87 years old Marty has outlived them both.


 Then there's this Early Wynn. His card is a 'tweener', somewhat tough but not crazy overpriced. I'm always impressed by the fact that Wynn pitched his first big league game in 1939 and his last one in 1962. The card mentions that he's 'Seeking the charmed circle of 300 major league victories... He hit that goal in July, 1963 in his second to last career start. He was 43 that year and had a nice season overall with a 2.28 ERA and a 1.175 WHIP in 20 games (5 starts).

Wynn was also a pretty good hitting pitcher with a .214 average and 17 career homers. here is his Hall of fame plaque. He was elected in 1972 with 301 of 390 possible votes.


But back to my rant...I've been able to throttle back my usual urge to complete sets as soon as I can. I'll get these two done when I get them done. The '67T, in particular, will take some time because I'm going to wait out the bubble I think. 

And I doubt I'll start another set chase anytime soon.


11 comments:

  1. It's hard to buy stuff I enjoy right now... as well as complete some of the sets I'm building due to insane card prices. But honestly... I'm not complaining. I needed to slow down and start appreciating what I already have instead of on my wants.

    As for those Post cards... I remember picking up a small lot of the football ones and it included a pair of the SP's. I was blown away how much they were selling for at the time.

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    1. Enjoying what I have is something that I don't do enough of. Need to make that part of my plan. And if I pick up new stuff it'll likely be cheap oddball sets like the Swell Gum football Hall of Fame sets and maybe some inexpensive postcards.

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  2. I addressed the current state of the hobby in my most recent post, too. While the scarcity of 2021 cards doesn't concern me, being priced out of vintage does. The one benefit of my collecting style is I have so many interests that I can find stuff that the "investors" don't know about and be just as content. Let's just hope it stays that way. I can put my '67 and '70 quests on the back burner for 5 years if I have to.

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    1. I glanced to my blogroll as I was typing my reply to Fuji just now and saw the title of your post. I wondered if you were talking hobby or western NY State weather. ;-) I posted the comment and yours appeared. Gonna read your thoughts on this right now.

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  3. Yeah it's getting hard out there. One thing I've found with the SP Posts is that the Jello versions can be cheaper and if you don't care about mixing the two you can find deals that way.

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  4. Cepeda, Mays, McCovey, and Marichal were easy finds for my 1962 Post SF Giants (world series) team set. Joey A still eludes me. It's interesting to note (as Vin Scully would say) that the Colt .45s traded Joey back to the Giants after the '62 season so he missed the entire world series year, but got a card depicting him as a Giant.

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  5. As a low-budget set collector, these rising prices are really hitting me where it hurts. I can't wait for this bubble to burst.

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  6. Right there with you about pricing. I'm most interested in how this all pans out.

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  7. Ugh, and I need that Jerry Lynch too! I hadn't seen what it's currently selling for, and now that I have, I wish I hadn't :(

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  8. I'm having the same problem in Japan, the prices of singles for vintage sets I am working on has risen significantly over the past year here too. I'm torn between whether this should motivate me to purchase more now (for fear that the prices will keep rising and I'll miss out) or to stop purchasing completely (in the expectation that this will blow over and prices will go back down).

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  9. I agree, I've opened exactly 1 box this year (Allen and Ginter X, got it at MSRP from Topps). I usually open quite a bit more but I can't justify it. I've spent most of my dollars on chasing a master set of 2000 upper deck ionix. It's been fun.

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