Baseball Card Market Report for May 11-17, 2023 - Top eBay Sales

PLUS -- Do great managers make for valuable baseball cards?

May 19, 2023

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A Crackerjack of a Set Break

“Crackerjack” is a sort of archaic term that means something like exceptionally good in its adjective form and an exceptionally good person or thing as a noun.

Since I’m sorta archaic, too, I really like crackerjack. You don’t hear it often, and it adds some flavor to the language.

And, really, there’s no other way to describe the set break that dominates our list of the most expensive baseball cards sold on eBay last week (bottom of post).

It’s a crackerjack of a set break.

In fact, it’s a crackerjack of a Cracker Jack set break.

Totally amazing.

And sort of weird timing, since Cracker Jack also plays a role in answering …

Do Great Managers Have Valuable Baseball Cards?

Last week in the Wax Pack Gods weekly newsletter, I had some fun with a few “old” manager cards that always strike my fancy.

You can read that piece here if you’re interested.

I thought I’d continue the theme here in this space by taking a look at the cards of the top managers of all time, by measure of wins.

Yeah, that’s not a perfect barometer, but it’s handy and gets us a solid group of skippers.

So…

I’ve done a somewhat familiar thing below.

Specifically, for each manager, I found his rookie card, or something approximating his RC.

Then, I found the Card Value Multiplier for each card, based on the most common graded condition (per PSA).

My sorta loose goal here is to see if there are any trends and, maybe, to try and identify a bargain here and there.

Note that Joe McCarthy is missing from the list below because I had a devil of a time pinning down a card that sells at any kind of volume.

Anyway, here’s the list …

1914 Cracker Jack Connie Mack (#12) - PSA 5

Wins: 3731
Value: $2500
Common Value: $600
Multiplier: 4.17

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1964 Topps Tony La Russa (#244) - PSA 8

Wins: 2902
Value: $100
Common Value: $14
Multiplier: 7.14

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T206 John McGraw (#150) - PSA 3

Wins: 2763
Value: $140
Common Value: $90
Multiplier: 1.56

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1969 Topps Bobby Cox (#237) - PSA 8

Wins: 2504
Value: $150
Common Value: $13
Multiplier: 11.54

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1962 Topps Joe Torre (#218) - PSA 6

Wins: 2326
Value: $160
Common Value: $6
Multiplier: 26.67

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1959 Topps Sparky Anderson (#338) - PSA 7

Wins: 2194
Value: $85
Common Value: $15
Multiplier: 5.67

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1936 Diamond Stars Bucky Harris (#91) - PSA 4

Wins: 2158
Value: $65
Common Value: $25
Multiplier: 2.6

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1971 Topps Dusty Baker (#709) - PSA 8

Wins: 2110
Value: $300
Common Value: $12
Multiplier: 25

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1956 Topps Walter Alston (#8) - PSA 7

Wins: 2040
Value: $125
Common Value: $30
Multiplier: 4.17

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1979 Topps Bruce Bochy (#718) - PSA 9

Wins: 2023
Value: $40
Common Value: $5
Multiplier: 8

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—

Holy recency bias, Batman!

If we order these cards from the largest multiplier to the smallest, the years of issue read like this:

1962, 1971, 1969, 1979, 1964, 1959, 1914, 1956, 1936, 1909

Torre is a special case since he had a superstar playing career.

No surprise he’s at the top.

Baker, too. He’s also helped by sharing a rookie card with Don Baylor.

The dropoff is steep after those two, but ALL of the top six are guys many of today’s fans remember watching in the dugout.

If there’s anything approaching a bargain here, it might be Alston.

He was around recently enough (1976) that there are still plenty of fans who remember him. And his 1956 Topps card looks like a player card — if you didn’t know who he was, you’d have to squint to figure out that Alston was the manager and not an infielder.

This was an interesting exercise, if nothing else. It makes me wonder how guys further down the list would line up — Terry Francona, Casey Stengel, etc.

But that’s an exercise for another day.

Now, for some numbers that won’t make you squint at all …

Top Baseball Card Sales on eBay for May 11-17, 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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