Baseball Card Market Report for June 22-28, 2023 - Top eBay Sales

PLUS -- Do teams with big first-half records make for expensive cards?

Jun 30, 2023

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Do It All, Rule Them All

Scroll through the list of the top-selling baseball cards on eBay last week (bottom of post), and you may notice a pattern.

Here, I’ll list out some of the names you’ll find a LOT down there:

Mickey Mantle
Babe Ruth
Shohei Ohtani
Mike Trout
Hank Aaron
Ronald Acuña, Jr.

See the pattern?

Yeah, they’re all many-tooled players. And in the case of Ruth and Ohtani, there about as close as we’re likely to come to true do-it-all players.

Which just goes to show that, even smack dab in the middle of another thrilling baseball season, all-time talent — and results — never goes out of style in this hobby.

Some things are a bit more ephemeral, though, and engender questions like ….

Do Big First-Half Teams Have Expensive Cards?

We’re right at the halfway mark of the 2023 season, where most or all teams have played 81 games or more.

We’ve seen some fast starts and some terrible starts to the season for both teams and players. There’s bound to be some regression both ways from here on out, but for now, there are good feelings swirling around the Rangers and Rays, and for players like Elly De La Cruz and Shohei Ohtani.

To celebrate this seasonal milestone, I thought it might be fun to see what fast starts mean in the baseball card market over the long haul.

I could have approached this any number of ways, but I decided to look at team cards of clubs that had the fastest starts ever. Of course, that’s a self-limiting population since team cards were only a thing during a relatively thin slice of MLB history — about 25 years.

That’s good for us, because no one wants to be here all night, right?

So what I did was find teams with great first halves who also had team cards that year. So the fast-starting 1970 Reds show up here on their 1970 Topps card, not the 1971 version (which actually depicts the 1970 team).

Then, I found the value of that team card in the most common PSA condition (per their population report) relative to a common from the same set/series. I used card multipliers to do that.

Here is my team lineup:

1970 Topps Cincinnati Reds (#544) - PSA 8

1st half record: 58-23
Value: $70
Common Value: $15
Multiplier: 4.67

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1976 Topps Philadelphia Phillies (#384) - PSA 9

1st half record: 56-25
Value: $20
Common Value: $6
Multiplier: 3.33

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1978 Topps Boston Red Sox (#424) - PSA 9

1st half record: 56-25
Value: $35
Common Value: $4
Multiplier: 8.75

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1974 Topps Los Angeles Dodgers (#643) - PSA 9

1st half record: 55-26
Value: $80
Common Value: $8
Multiplier: 10

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1966 Topps Baltimore Orioles (#348) - PSA 8

1st half record:: 55-26
Value: $50
Common Value: $20
Multiplier: 2.5

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—

So, every one of these team cards checks in well above the commons from the same series.

But is that just a consequence of these being team cards in general, and not because of the teams’ fast starts?

Could be, and if so, you’d expect more common teams to also carry similar multipliers.

To check that possibility, I took the team card in the middle of our multiplier heap — it’s that 1970 Topps Reds card, with a multiplier of 4.67.

Now, thanks in part to their strong first half, those Reds won the National League West over the Dodgers, then downed the Pirates in the NLCS before losing to the Orioles in the World Series.

Instead of looking at a “common” team card, let’s look at these three winners from the same season:

1970 Topps Pittsburgh Pirates (#608) - PSA 8

1st half record:: compare
Value: $25
Common Value: $15
Multiplier: 1.67

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1970 Topps Los Angeles Dodgers (#411) - PSA 8

1st half record:: compare
Value: $15
Common Value: $15
Multiplier: 1

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1970 Topps Baltimore Orioles (#387) - PSA 8

WAR: compare
Value: $25
Common Value: $15
Multiplier: 1.67

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—

Uh-oh.

None of the Reds’ main competition in 1970 can hold a candle to them when it comes to card multipliers.

Not even the world champs!

Now, could the disparity be because that 1970 Cincy team was the first to win a pennant and would form the springboard to the Big Red Machine years.

Certainly could be.

But the Orioles, Pirates, and Dodgers teams of the era weren’t exactly fungo bats, either.

So, more than anything else, this little study opens up more questions, like …

Is there really a fast-start premium?
If so, does it bleed over into individual player cards?
How might that play out for clubs who hail from non-team-card eras?

Questions for another time, maybe, or maybe forever unanswered.

If you like these deep dives into the card market, you might enjoy our Wax Pack Gods YouTube channel.

There, we give you a snapshot of a different segment of card sales, all sure to whet your appetite for even more cardboard!

Check It Out!

Now on to something we know with a little more certainty. Specifically, we know which were the …

Top Baseball Card Sales on eBay for June 22-28, 2023

(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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