Baseball Card Market Report for November 16-22, 2023 - Top eBay Sales post

PLUS -- Is the top of the card market "soft"?

Nov 24, 2023

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Everything Old Is New Again!(?)

Well, maybe that’s not quite right, but it doesn’t seem all that far off here on Black Friday. I mean, if you take a look at the list of the top-selling baseball cards on eBay from last week (bottom of post), you might be forgiven for thinking you’ve just entered a time warp.

Four (4) George Brett rookie cards?

A 1982 Topps Traded Cal Ripken, Jr.?

Even a 1971 Topps Jim Palmer, for goodness sakes!

The point is, the list down there is loaded with old-school, time-honored classic baseball cards that have kept chugging along all these years, weathering the storms of chrome and one-of-ones and “breaks” and all the other hobby fads to still be plucking at collector heartstrings and wallets.

Sure, the current slow baseball news cycle plays into how the market is behaving right now. But maybe — just maybe — collectors/investors who are looking to sink some money into cardboard want something a bit more sure-footed than the shiniest card of the latest prospect.

Maybe.

It all at least begs the question…

Is the Top of the Market ‘Soft’?

One thing you hear a lot in hobby circles these days, and something I’ve said in this space in passing a few times, is that the market seems “softer” in terms of prices than it did during the heart of the pandemic.

Or even a year ago.

But is that really true?

I think there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that many segments of the hobby have slowed down in terms of the pace of both sales and price increases. And, while the bottom hasn’t really fallen out anywhere (yet) there are plenty of cards selling for less today than a year or two back.

Luckily, we have our catalog of weekly discussions here in this space to fall back on when it comes to pulling cold, hard numbers for one particular part of the hobby — the most expensive baseball cards sold on eBay.

So I went back to the last couple weeks in October of 2022 and pulled a handful of the top-sellers that we looked at in those weeks: here and here.

For each card, I then found more recent sales of the same card in the same condition, aiming for transactions from October of 2023, but sometimes settling for the summer of 2023 if trade volume was light.

Then I compared the selling prices for those cards, roughly a year apart. Here is what I found…

1951 Bowman Willie Mays (#305) - SGC 3

2022 price: $8000
2023 price: $7800
Profit/loss: -$200
% change: -3

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

1954 Topps Hank Aaron (#128) - PSA 4

2022 price: $5115
2023 price: $3716.69
Profit/loss: -$1398.31
% change: -27

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

1952 Topps Mickey Mantle (#311) - PSA 1.5

2022 price: $32269
2023 price: $36100
Profit/loss: $3831
% change: 12

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

1968 Topps Nolan Ryan (#177) - PSA 8

2022 price: $7399
2023 price: $6777
Profit/loss: -$622
% change: -8

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

1933 Goudey Babe Ruth (#53) - PSA 1.5

2022 price: $6700
2023 price: $6585
Profit/loss: -$115
% change: -2

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey, Jr. (#1) - PSA 10/DNA 10

2022 price: $6860
2023 price: $15001
Profit/loss: $8141
% change: 119

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson (#79) - PSA 2

2022 price: $6512
2023 price: $7790
Profit/loss: $1278
% change: 20

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1961 Topps Mickey Mantle (#300) - PSA 8

2022 price: $6507
2023 price: $5600
Profit/loss: -$907
% change: -14.

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

2022 Topps Chrome Gold Wave Refractor Auto Julio Rodriguez (#RAJRO) - PSA 10

2022 price: $5300
2023 price: $2739
Profit/loss: -$2561
% change: -48

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2018 Topps Chrome Gold Wave Refractor Auto Shohei Ohtani (#RA-SO) - PSA 10

2022 price: $7900
2023 price: $14201
Profit/loss: $6301
% change: 80

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—

First, a word or two about card selection here…

This wasn’t a random sampling or even the top so many cards from each list. Instead, these are the cards for which I could find actual year-over-year comparisons.

As it turns out, the cards with the highest selling prices on eBay (and probably most other venues) are something like cardboard unicorns — they just don’t change hands all that often.

Second, at least one of the specific PSA cards sold last year (the Hank Aaron rookie card) doesn’t show up in the PSA Auction Prices Realized database, at leat that I can find. Does that mean the deal eventually fell through?

Not sure, so feel free take that one with a grain of salt.

Overall, though, we see that 6 of the 10 cards above sold for less in 2023 than they did in 2022 (if you include Aaron).

The ones that increased in value? You might recognize them: Mantle rookie, Griffey rookie (autographed!), Jackie rookie, Ohtani rookie (rookie year, at least).

The huge percentage jumps from Ohtani and (especially) Griffey seem a bit flukish, but they help offset the also-odd Aaron drop. More than offset it, in fact, to the extent that this group as a whole saw a 15% increase in selling price from 2022 to 2023.

Throw the four juggernauts out, though, and the six “losers” dropped an average of 15%.

So it does appear that the top of the market has gotten softer in terms of selling prices over the last year unless you were betting on absolute hobby classics or the guy who is about to rewrite the free agency record book.

Now for some cards that don’t care about last year — they’re the winners in the here and now!

Top Baseball Card Sales on eBay for November 16-22, 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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