Baseball Card Market Report for March 2-8, 2023 - Top eBay Sales

PLUS -- How much do multiple 50-HR seasons boost card values?

Mar 10, 2023

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In Like a Lamb

The first full week of March 2023 is behind us, and if you like big, gaudy numbers … well, March came in like the proverbial lamb, at least at the top of the eBay market.

As you can see from the list of top-sellers last week (bottom of this post), the big winners were mostly young guys causing some stir in Spring Training, or at least causing some mild conversation around whatever hot stoves remain warm to the touch.

For the first time in a good while, too, there’s no card of a young chap named Mantle.

But that’s OK, because you know he’ll appear when we ask …

Do Multiple 50-HR Seasons Boost Card Values?

With the new baseball season bearing down on us (finally!), we also have a new home run king … at least to some degree.

In 2022, Aaron Judge became just the third American League slugger to connect on 60 homers in a season. Not only that, his 62 topped both Babe Ruth’s 60 (in 1927) and Roger Maris’ 61 (in 1961) to become the new high-water mark in the Junior Circuit.

And not only that, but the latest Yankees dinger champ — Judge, that is — now has two 50-home run seasons under his belt. His first came when he tagged 52 long balls in his Rookie of the Year campaign in 2017.

So there’s some hype surrounding All Rise as he embarks on his age-31 season, made all the more hype-y by the huge free agent deal he signed over the offseason to remain in the Bronx.

But this is the Basebal Card Market Report, and we have sideways, pasteboard questions.

And what we (or I, at least) want to know as 2023 looms is, what can we expect from Judge’s cards, value-wise, now that he’s become the tenth member of the Multi-50-HR Club?

Sure, he has a lot of other stuff going for him (awards, records, etc.), and against him (age, primarily), but those two big-homer seasons are the differentiators I want to dig into for today.

Here’s how we’ll do it …

First, we’ll find the top rookie card for each of the multi-50 guys.

Then, we’ll find the value multiplier for that card.

Then, we’ll rank our Terrific Ten by that multiplier, starting at the top and stepping downward from there.

Here are the results, lickety-split:

1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle (#253) - PSA 7

50-HR Seasons: 2
Value: $92000
Common Value: $70
Multiplier: 1314

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1951 Bowman Willie Mays (#305) - PSA 7

50-HR Seasons: 2
Value: $55000
Common Value: $70
Multiplier: 786

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1933 Goudey Babe Ruth (#53) - PSA 4

50-HR Seasons: 4
Value: $25900
Common Value: $75
Multiplier: 345

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1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey, Jr. (#1) - PSA 9

50-HR Seasons: 2
Value: $200
Common Value: $1
Multiplier: 200

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1994 SP Foil Alex Rodriguez (#15) - PSA 9

50-HR Seasons: 3
Value: $200
Common Value: $2
Multiplier: 100

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1985 Topps Mark McGwire (#401) - PSA 9

50-HR Seasons: 4
Value: $95
Common Value: $2
Multiplier: 48

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2017 Bowman Aaron Judge (#32) - PSA 10

50-HR Seasons: 2
Value: $70
Common Value: $5
Multiplier: 14

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1933 Goudey Jimmie Foxx (#29) - PSA 4

50-HR Seasons: 2
Value: $750
Common Value: $90
Multiplier: 8

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1948 Bowman Ralph Kiner (#3) - PSA 6

50-HR Seasons: 2
Value: $350
Common Value: $80
Multiplier: 4

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1990 Leaf Sammy Sosa (#200) - PSA 9

50-HR Seasons: 4
Value: $12
Common Value: $3
Multiplier: 4

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—

First, a couple notes about the choice of “rookie cards” here…

Early Babe Ruth cards have made a lot of waves in recent years because they’re really old and pretty darn scarce. I sidestepped those to avoid the wild pricing game, opting instead for a widely known and fairly well distributed 1933 Goudey.

Same deal, though not quite as pronounced, for Jimmie Foxx. And his “rookie” as defined here probably suffers somewhat by being in the same set with Ruth.

For Mays and Mantle, I took their true RCs, which both happen to be 1951 Bowman numbers. Their 1952 Topps cards are classics, but they’re not rookies, and they suffer from the same sort of blown-out market pricing as the early Ruths.

Now, with all that said, what does the above list show us?

Well, it doesn’t seem to matter how many times you hit 50 home runs once you’re on this list. Mantle and Mays lap the field with “just” two half-century seasons each.

Sammy Sosa and his four 50-dinger summers read the map wrong and ended up in Cooperstown, Illinois.

As for Judge?

Well, with a value multipler of 14, he’s in sixth place on this list for now … way, way behind the top tier, all of whom have multipliers of 100 or more.

That seems sort of right, too, because …

All his cards are “new” and pretty easy to come by in top shape.
He’s “old” by slugger standards and doesn’t figure to have many more 50-homer seasons left in tank, if any at all.
His career numbers are relatively slight at this stage of the game. With 220 home runs, it’s a long road to 500. By comparison, Mantle had 404 dingers entering his age-31 season. Mays had 319.

On the other hand, Judge is a monstrous physical presence, the likes of which we’ve never really seen before.

And he’s a Yankee fresh of a home run record, so you can never discount that combo.

At the very least, the other guys in the Multi-50 club give you some guard rails for thinking about Judge’s future card values.

There’s little chance he’ll ever drop below being five times as expensive as commons from whatever set he’s in, and 10 seems a more likely floor.

And on the high end, McGwire’s 48X looks achievable, but Judge probably needs to keep up the power barrage a few more seasons to make the jump to a triple-digit multiplier and the top tier of this exclusive group.

Speaking of top tier, time for our dive into the …

Top Baseball Card Sales on eBay for March 2-8, 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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