Baseball Card Market Report for October 13-19, 2022 - Top eBay Sales

PLUS -- Are 1977 Topps commons really more valuable?

Oct 21, 2022

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(Hot) Cornering the ‘Stache Market

The list of the top-selling baseball cards on eBay last week (see bottom of post) starts off like plenty of others have …

1952 Topps Mickey Mantle
1933 Goudey Babe Ruth
2013 Shiny-Gaudy Super-Duper Limited Aaron Judge

All pretty ho-hum stuff from the usual jaw-dropping price perspective of how these lists usually play out.

But then something unexpected — a PSA 10 copy of the 1974 Topps Mike Schmidt second-year card that hammered down for $16,598 on the strength of 30 bids.

As great as he was, Schmitty doesn’t make this sort of honor roll very often these days, so it’s sort of eyebrow-raising when he does.

And then, if you scroll down further, said brow still cocked, you find a “perfect” 1976 Topps Schmidt, followed closely by a PSA 9 copy of the 1973 Topps Ron Cey/John Hilton/Mike Schmidt rookie card.

A hot corner trifecta!

If you click through to the listings, you’ll see all three came from the same seller, who seemed to have cornered the market on early high-end Schmidt sales, if only for an instant.

Probably no trends to note from this type of point-in-time occurrence other than to appreciate it as it flies by. It might be a long time before we see three (four, actually if you include the one-bid 1999 Upper Deck piece) Mike Schmidt cards on this list again.

As is also the case with 1977 Topps cards in general. We don’t see them here too often.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have questions about them, though.

Questions like…

Are 1977 Topps Commons Really More Valuable?

A couple of weeks ago in this space, we looked at how “old” commons had fared during the pandemic and came to the conclusion that, for the most part, they’ve lagged far behind their star counterparts in terms of exploding prices.

No real surprise, but maybe an opportunity.

What was surprising was a haphazard discovery we made along the way — 1977 Topps commons seem to be more valuable than other commons from the same era.

Or, at least that’s how the PSA Price Guide presents it. To wit, as of this writing, PSA lists the following values for 1976, 1977, and 1978 Topps commons in PSA 7-10 condition, respectively:

1976 Topps: $2, $3, $6, $40

1977 Topps: $5, $10, $15, $30

1978 Topps: NA, $2, $4, $20 (no value listed for PSA 7)

Not only that, but PSA lists all of the PSA 7-9 values for 1977 Topps as increasing, while the rest remain unchanged (recently, at least).

This list spurs all sorts of questions, the most prominent being:

Are 1977 Topps commons really more valuable than 1976 Topps and 1978 Topps commons?
Why don’t PSA 10s show the same outlier behavior?

The second one could just be a matter of small population sizes and few sales at the PSA 10 level not affording fresh data.

We’ll skip that one for now and focus on the first one. Stated another way, is there any reason for 1977 Topps commons to be more valuable than their 1976 or 1978 counterparts?

One place we can turn to try and find answers is the PSA Population Report.

As of this writing, the pop report shows the following breakdown among the three sets:

1976 Topps (153,220) — PSA 7 (17,142), PSA 8 (57,405), PSA 9 (54,820), PSA 10 (9114)
1977 Topps (108,361) — PSA 7 (10,552), PSA 8 (40,286), PSA 9 (39,048), PSA 10 (1269)
1978 Topps (178,094) — PSA 7 (15,409), PSA 8 (51,304), PSA 9 (74,381), PSA 10 (18,629)

The bolded numbers in parentheses are the number of cards PSA has handled from each set: in total (first number) and for each grade from PSA 7-10.

So it’s pretty obvious that PSA has seen far fewer 1977 Topps cards come through its doors than 1976s or 1978s. Does that mean there are fewer of them running around out there in the wild, though?

Maybe, though it could also be selection bias at work. For instance, are 1976 Topps and 1978 Topps so much more popular than 1977 Topps that they entice collectors to submit them 50% or 80% more frequently?

Well, 1976 has a design that many collectors do love, but then there aren’t many compelling cards driving it forward — the Dennis Eckersley rookie is probably the top draw, with some key second-year and late-career cards sprinkled in.

On the other hand, 1978 Topps has ticked up a few notches in visibility in recent years with Jack Morris, Alan Trammell, Paul Molitor, and Lou Whitaker rookie cards joining Eddie Murray as key drivers.

That, coupled with what might have been greater production (that used to be the general consensus — that card makers bumped up their runs year after year) could account for at least some of the disparity.

For its part, 1977 Topps offers rookie cards of Dale Murphy and Andre Dawson, with the normal gaudy array of superstars from the era as a supporting cast. It’s a lineup not far off 1976’s, though wrapped in a different design.

So, selection bias could be at work here, though the gap in population between 1977 and its neighbors looks pretty big on a gut-check level.

Alright, but what about actual prices? Do real sales back up with the PSA Price Guide is telling us?

Well, let’s hop over the to the PSA Auction Prices Realized tool and find the most recent sales for guys who appear in all three sets to see if that yields any clues.

Now, finding guys who spanned all three issues and who have seen recent sales in the same grades is a bit like finding a Don Denkinger t-shirt at Busch Stadium.

So we sort of take what we can get …

Jim Hughes - PSA 9

1976 Topps: $29.55

1977 Topps: $10.50

1978 Topps: $33.09

Fran Healy - PSA 8

1976 Topps: $5.63

1977 Topps: $14.49

1978 Topps: $13.30

Larvell Blanks - PSA 9

1976 Topps: $10

1977 Topps: $11

1978 Topps: $10.49

—

Uh … well, Fran Healy seems to live up to the rhetoric, though more along the lines of “1976 Topps ain’t worth squat” than “1977 Topps is priceless.”

To be fair, these cards weren’t all sold at exactly the same time or place, and “recent” was again what we could get — mid-to-late Pandemic Era, basically.

Caveats aside, these three commons (sorry to anyone who counts Jim Hughes as their favorite star) do nothing to support the notion that 1977 Topps commons are more valuable than their neighbors.

Before we give up the ghost entirely, though, let’s head over to eBay.

(Note: The discussion below contains affiliate links to eBay listings for the cards being discussed.)

First, we’ll just run three basic searches — “1976 Topps”, “1977 Topps”, “1978 Topps” — and see how many results we get. So, here you go:

1976 Topps: 47,000 listings
1977 Topps: 34,000 listings
1978 Topps: 33,000 listings

So, progressively fewer cards listed from 1976 through 1978.

How about sales?

Well, if we flip to the “sold” listings, we find:

1976 Topps: 7300 listings
1977 Topps: 4000 sales
1978 Topps: 4500 sales

So, demand for 1977 Topps cards on eBay seems to lag behind that for 1976 and 1978 Topps overall, though that doesn’t directly address the “common” question here.

And, if you go to those sold listings and drill down to just graded cards, you won’t find very many commons at all amongst the 1977s (or the other sets).

Stick with raw cards, and even most of the stars and superstars can be had for a buck or few.

All in all, it’s tough to see any evidence from the resources we have readily available to suggest that the 1977 Topps commons should — or do — command any real premium.

Now, if you want to see what a premium really looks like, take a gander at our list of …

Top Baseball Card Sales on eBay for October 13-19, 2022

(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
Most expensive hockey cards sold in the last 30 days

Now, on with the show …

Baseball Card Values Newsletter

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