Baseball Card Market Report for August 22-28, 2024 - Top eBay Sales

PLUS -- Checking in on 1952 Topps baseball cards

Aug 30, 2024

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A Lead-In from The King

The top of the baseball card market always gives us more variety among players, companies, era, and themes than any of the other sports.

You can (almost) always count on finding a nice mix of hobby classics and the latest in whiz-bang gadgetry, enough to satisfy any collector who decides to chip in the bucks to “play.”

But another thing you can always count on in the baseball card market is that there is at least one constant in the market, across the decades, through booms and busts, in pandemic times and in health.

And that one thing is that collectors always flock to Mickey Mantle, at least in a collective sense.

For proof just check out the list of the most expensive baseball cards sold on eBay last week (bottom of post). The Commerce Comet appears a whopping ten times, easily besting the likes of Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto, Aaron Judge, and everyone else.

And that latest spike of The Mick’s cards fits right into our topic of the week…

Checking in on 1952 Topps Baseball Cards

Last week, we took a look at how Will Clark baseball cards have performed on the market over the last five years, the latest in a line of player-card retrospectives.

I thought we’d shift gears a bit this week and do the same sort of exercise, but for a set that rewrote hobby history — 1952 Topps@

These were the first “big” cards of the post-war era, and the checklist was huge at 407 cards. And, of course, the first Topps cards of Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Jackie Robinsons are the stuff of dreams and out of reach for most mere mortal collectors.

But what I wanted to know this time around was, how have these icons performed over the last five years, from just before the pandemic through this summer.

Below are the ten most valuable 1952 Topps cards, as gauged by selling prices for copies in PSA 6, the most common graded condition for this set (via the PSA Population Report and Auction Prices Realized tools) from both late 2019 and from this more recently (2024).

Here is what I found:

1952 Topps Mickey Mantle (#311) - PSA 6

2019 Value: $65000
2024 Value: $135000
Profit/loss: $70000
% change: 108

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1952 Topps Willie Mays (#261) - PSA 6

2019 Value: $4500
2024 Value: $15000
Profit/loss: $10500
% change: 233

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1952 Topps Jackie Robinson (#312) - PSA 6

2019 Value: $6000
2024 Value: $15000
Profit/loss: $9000
% change: 150

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1952 Topps Eddie Mathews (#407) - PSA 6

2019 Value: $6000
2024 Value: $14000
Profit/loss: $8000
% change: 133

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1952 Topps Andy Pafko (#1) - PSA 6

2019 Value: $1400
2024 Value: $5000
Profit/loss: $3600
% change: 257

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1952 Topps Roy Campanella (#314) - PSA 6

2019 Value: $1500
2024 Value: $4000
Profit/loss: $2500
% change: 167

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1952 Topps Hoyt Wilhelm (#392) - PSA 6

2019 Value: $1400
2024 Value: $4000
Profit/loss: $2600
% change: 186

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1952 Topps Tony Bartirome (#332) - PSA 6

2019 Value: $1500
2024 Value: $2700
Profit/loss: $1200
% change: 80

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1952 Topps Pee Wee Reese (#400) - PSA 6

2019 Value: $1100
2024 Value: $2900
Profit/loss: $1800
% change: 164

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1952 Topps Bill Dickey (#400) - PSA 6

2019 Value: $900
2024 Value: $2000
Profit/loss: $1100
% change: 122

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—

Overall, these cards have seen a 124% increase in the last five years, more than doubling in price during that time. Mays and Pafko were the big winners, more than tripling in value, while Wilhelm nearly joined them in that group.

And in case you were wondering how Bartirome could crack this lineup, it’s a high-number card with a relatively low population. And it’s also been the subject of an intensive family buy-up.

I came into this exercise mildly expecting these cards to have seen more modest increases in the last half decade than the market as a whole. After all, 1952 Topps has been an expensive proposition forever, so maybe they didn’t have as much room for expansion.

Looks like I was dead wrong about that!

Good news is, that’s a familiar feeling. :)

And speaking of stuff that looks and feels familiar, it’s time to tiptoe through the…

Top Baseball Card Sales on eBay for August 22-28, 2024

(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

Now, on with the show …

Baseball Card Values Newsletter

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