Baseball Card Market Report for July 18-24, 2024 - Top eBay Sales

PLUS -- Check in on Ron Guidry baseball cards

Jul 26, 2024

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Hobby King Bookends

The list of the most expensive baseball cards sold on eBay last week (bottom of post) starts out with Mickey Mantle and ends with … well, Mickey Mantle.

In between those 1952 and 1953 Topps entries from the Commerce Comet, though, you’ll find … well, yes, more Mickey Mantle baseball cards. But also cards featuring players with names like Ohtani, Henderson (no, not Rickey), Mays, Ruth, Gehrig, Ryan, Reggie, and Maris.

Heck, there’s even a Big Hurt card down there, something that would have been commonplace on these kinds of lists 30 years ago but not so much recently.

But if you want to talk about another one-time superstar whose cards you almost never see on “hot” or “most expensive” lists these days, you’ve come to the right place.

Let’s go…

Checking in on Ron Guidry Baseball Cards

The Hall of Fame induction ceremonies this past weekend featured four new inductees — Adrian Beltre, Todd Helton, Joe Maurer, and manager Jim Leyland.

Among those, Maurer probably had the most frustrating, tantalizing career — he was among the best hitting catchers of all-time when healthy, but that became harder and harder for him to do as time went on.

The result was a great peak, a move to first base, and several shortened or merely good campaigns to round things out.

Ron Guidry had a career with that same general “shape” — he was one of the great starting pitchers of the late 1970s and maintained All-Star level production, regularly contending for the Cy Young Award, through the mid-1980s.

Then, the bottom dropped out and Guidry was gone after three injury-riddled and mediocre seasons from 1986 through 1988.

Before that point, it looked like Louisiana Lightning was headed toward the Hall of Fame, but his overall numbers in a 14-year career left him short of Cooperstown. The Yankees lefthander still has plenty of collectors interested in his cards, though, so I thought it would be fun to take a look at how the Guidry market has shaped up over the last few years.

Below are ten key early Guidry base cards, spanning from his multiplayer 1976 Topps rookie card through his 1983 Topps card. For each card, I found selling prices for copies in the most common graded condition (via the PSA Population Report and Auction Prices Realized tools) from both late 2019 and from this spring (2024).

Here is what I found:

1976 Topps Ron Guidry (#82) - PSA 8

2019 Value: $40
2024 Value: $110
Profit/loss: $70
% change: 175

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1977 Topps Ron Guidry (#656) - PSA 8

2019 Value: $25
2024 Value: $30
Profit/loss: $5
% change: 20

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1978 Topps Ron Guidry (#135) - PSA 9

2019 Value: $15
2024 Value: $30
Profit/loss: $15
% change: 100

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1979 Topps Ron Guidry (#500) - PSA 9

2019 Value: $18
2024 Value: $42
Profit/loss: $24
% change: 133

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1980 Topps Ron Guidry (#300) - PSA 9

2019 Value: $5
2024 Value: $15
Profit/loss: $10
% change: 200

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1981 Topps Ron Guidry (#250) - PSA 8

2019 Value: $5
2024 Value: $5
Profit/loss: $0
% change: 0

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1981 Fleer Ron Guidry (#88) - PSA 10

2019 Value: $18
2024 Value: $30
Profit/loss: $12
% change: 67

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1981 Donruss Ron Guidry (#227) - PSA 10

2019 Value: $15
2024 Value: $35
Profit/loss: $20
% change: 133

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1982 Topps Ron Guidry (#9) - PSA 8

2019 Value: $6
2024 Value: $10
Profit/loss: $4
% change: 67

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1983 Topps Ron Guidry (#440) - PSA 9

2019 Value: $12
2024 Value: $20
Profit/loss: $8
% change: 67

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—

Overall, this group of Guidry cards saw an increase in selling price of 168% over the last five years — higher than we’ve seen in recent “studies” for Dave Parker and Dale Murphy, slightly lower than what Al Oliver showed us last week.

Just goes to show that, even though the Hall of Fame is the ultimate hobby measuring stick, nostalgia carries the day for many collectors — Cooperstown plaque not always required.

Speaking of “strong” baseball cards…

Top Baseball Card Sales on eBay for July 18-24, 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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