Baseball Card Market Report for August 18-24, 2022 - Top eBay Sales

PLUS -- Do baseball card prices care about playoff droughts?

Aug 26, 2022

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The Sky Is Falling(?)!

Take a look at our list of top-selling baseball cards on eBay from last week (see bottom of post), and you just may get the idea that the entire market is in a helter-skelter scramble for …

For what, exactly?

Direction?

A leader?

Magic Motion lenticular technology?

Could be any of the above. Or none of them.

There definitely isn’t much of a theme to discern down there, and even the mighty (read: Mickey Mantle) have fallen (first Mick in the 11th spot).

Mostly, though, it’s just the baseball market being its usual quirky, eclectic self, favoring superstars and rarities and other plums wherever they may spring up.

Heck, we even get a couple doses of Shohei Ohtani, he of the nonexistent playoff appearances.

Which reminds me …

Does the Market Care About Playoff Droughts?

The calendar will flip to September before we meet here again next week, which means we’re sprinting head-first into pennant-drive season. Of course, these days, when so many teams are still alive for at least a Wild Card slot, it’s more like pennant-jockeying season, wherein contenders get themselves aligned for October.

Still there’s bound to be an exciting finish or two, and even in MLB’s Age of Participation Prizes, there are still some compelling human interest stories to watch.

One is Philadelphia Phillies second baseman Jean Segura, who has played 1280+ games in the majors without ever making it into the postseason. As of this writing, the Phils look like a pretty good bet to snag a Wild Card spot, but you never know.

A playoff drought that looks even more certain to end is that of New York Mets closer Edwin Diaz, who is coming up on 400 appearances in his seven-year career, and who has similarly never tasted October baseball.

But as rough as the going has been for those stalwarts (and others) among current major leaguers, they just can’t hold a candle to all-timers like Ernie Banks and Buddy Bell when it comes to baseball stars who never played in the postseason.

Those guys are in a different class entirely, and you know what we like to do with players who form their own special cases around these parts … right?

Yeah, we like to see if their distinguishing characteristic(s) hold any sway in the marketplace.

In this case, let’s try to find out if the card values for star-level (and above) players who never made the October scene have been affected by their summertime-only status.

To get us going on this quest, I found five of those “No October” guys and then identified a roughly equivalent player for each one (by measure of Baseball Reference’s Similarity Scores).

Then, I applied our familiar algorithm …

Find the top rookie card for each of the two players, by measure of number of graded card sales
Find the Card Value Multiplier for each of those cards
Find the Multiplier of Multipliers (MoM) for the two cards, with the non-playoff player in the numerator and the has-playoffs guy in the denominator

Here is what I found out …

(The below sections contains affiliate links to eBay and Amazon listings for the card being discussed. Stats culled from Baseball-Reference.com.)

Ernie Banks v. Robin Yount

1954 Topps Ernie Banks (#94) - PSA 6

WAR: 67.7
Value: $3800
Common Value: $35
Multiplier: 109

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1975 Topps Robin Yount (#223) - PSA 8

WAR: 77.4
Value: $375
Common Value: $5
Multiplier: 75

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Multiplier of Multipliers (MoM): 1.45

Buddy Bell v. Sal Bando

1973 Topps Buddy Bell (#31) - PSA 8

WAR: 66.3
Value: $35
Common Value: $10
Multiplier: 4

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1967 Topps Sal Bando (#33) - PSA 8

WAR: 61.5
Value: $150
Common Value: $14
Multiplier: 11

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Multiplier of Multipliers (MoM): 0.33

Adam Dunn v. Pat Burrell

1999 Bowman Chrome Adam Dunn (#369) - PSA 10

WAR: 17.9
Value: $10
Common Value: $2
Multiplier: 5

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1999 Bowman Chrome Pat Burrell (#175) - PSA 10

WAR: 18.9
Value: $10
Common Value: $2
Multiplier: 5

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Multiplier of Multipliers (MoM): 1.0

Rocky Colavito v. Dave Parker

1957 Topps Rocky Colavito (#212) - PSA 7

WAR: 44.8
Value: $175
Common Value: $20
Multiplier: 9

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1974 Topps Dave Parker (#252) - PSA 8

WAR: 40.1
Value: $160
Common Value: $4
Multiplier: 40

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Multiplier of Multipliers (MoM): 0.22

Jim Fregosi v. Bert Campaneris

1962 Topps Jim Fregosi (#209) - PSA 7

WAR: 48.7
Value: $75
Common Value: $9
Multiplier: 8

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1965 Topps Bert Campaneris (#266) - PSA 8

WAR: 53
Value: $105
Common Value: $14
Multiplier: 8

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Multiplier of Multipliers (MoM): 1.11

—

As you can see, avoided matching Hall-of-Famers with non-Hall-of-Famers to avoid a discrepancy in their “Greatness Bumps.”

And I should also mention that I really wanted to compare Adam Dunn to Dave Kingman, but Kong himself appeared in just one playoff series, way at the beginning of his career, with the 1971 Giants.

He’s pretty much a “No October” guy himself.

Anyway, what do we see here?

Well, as is often the case with these small-sample-size comparisons, this is pretty much a wash.

Banks handily takes down Yount in this comparison, but Colavito and Bell lose out to their more decorated counterparts.

Dunn and The Bat tie, as do Fregosi and Campaneris (virtually, with the former maybe benefitting from a slight manager nudge).

One thing to note here, though, is that Parker and Bando were both very visible members of very memorable championship teams — that may very well be the key takeaway here.

Maybe Reggie Jackson or Bob Gibson cards could give us some more insight here, but for now it’s time to move on to the …

Top Baseball Card Sales on eBay for August 18-24, 2022

(Quick note — this list contains affiliate links to the original eBay listings.)

If you want to see updated 30-day market toppers anytime, we have a couple of resources over on WaxPackGods.com:

Most expensive baseball cards sold in the last 30 days
Most expensive football cards sold in the last 30 days
Most expensive basketball cards sold in the last 30 days
Most expensive hockey cards sold in the last 30 days

Now, on with the show …

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