Baseball Card Market Report for November 23-29, 2023 - Top eBay Sales post

PLUS -- Is 1989 Upper Deck different than all the rest?

Dec 01, 2023

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Black Borders and “The Mack”

Over on Twitter this week, I asked what folks thought about the asking price for a 1971 Topps Bobby Grich rookie card. The responses and discussion were fun, especially in light of the Black Borders falling roughly in line with the ongoing Black Friday mania.

I bring that up here because a couple of spiffy 1971 Topps cards show up in the list of the most expensive baseball cards sold on eBay last week. They live in a much pricier neighborhood than that Grich does, at least for now.

There’s plenty of other interesting fodder down there in that list (bottom of post), including the much coveted “Mackey” Mantle rookie card.

So that’s different.

That leads us to this week’s question, which also deals with the “different”…

Is 1989 Upper Deck Different Than All the Rest?

Last week on YouTube, we took a look at recent sales of 1989 Upper Deck baseball cards. You can check out that video right here, or below:

That set — 1989 Upper Deck baseball — is usually hailed as a hobby changer, and it’s hard to argue with that. But the intervening years have shown us that 1989 UD is just about as plentiful as most other sets from the Junk Wax Era.

Maybe not quite as overblown, production-wise, as, say, the 1990 Fleer mess, but not in a totally different league, either.

So how do those competing forces of iconic set v. overproduction play out in the card market all these years later?

Or, to put it another way, are 1989 Upper Deck cards different — better — than all the rest when it comes to holding or increasing in value?

We can gather some clues by looking at card prices before and after the pandemic, as we’ve been doing recently for several different sets and several different players.

In this case, though, I want to compare a handful of Hall of Famers (and a near Hall of Famer) across their rookie cards in the various 1989 base sets. The players I’m going to look at are:

Ken Griffey, Jr.
Gary Sheffield
Randy Johnson
John Smoltz

In each case, I found selling prices for PSA 10 copies of their RCs in October 2019 and compared them with selling prices in October 2023, by way of the PSA Auction Prices Realized tool.

The sets I considered were Upper Deck (duh), Donruss, Fleer, Score, and Topps base issues. Not every guy appeared in every set.

Here is what I found, card-by-card, with some analysis to follow after the full listings:

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

2019 price: $500
2023 price: $1800
Profit/loss: $1300
% change: 260

Baseball Card Market Report for November 23-29, 2023 - Top eBay Sales post

PLUS -- Is 1989 Upper Deck different than all the rest?

Black Borders and “The Mack”

Is 1989 Upper Deck Different Than All the Rest?

Top Baseball Card Sales on eBay for November 23-29, 2023

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