Baseball Card Market Report for October 12-18, 2023 - Top eBay Sales post

PLUS -- Checking in on The Big Hurt of Error Cards

Oct 20, 2023

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Counting on the Commerce Comet

Last week, we saw some old-timers start to reclaim the top-seller list on eBay, with Babe Ruth surpassing Shohei Ohtani in terms of the sheer number of cards on our unofficial leaderboard.

This week, with teams racing through the playoffs and players falling out of the limelight left and right, a hobby staple — maybe THE hobby staple — makes a big showing.

To wit, Mickey Mantle appears on our list of the top-selling cards on eBay last week (see bottom of post) a whopping 8 times.

Other names of yore making a good showing include Barry Bonds(!), Nolan Ryan, Jackie Robinson, and others.

And if you’re really in the mood for some old-time hobby memories, you’re in luck. Because next up, we’ll be…

Checking in on The Big Hurt of Big Hurt Cards

This week on YouTube, we checked in on recent big sellers among 1990 error cards. That year came near the end of full-blown Error Card Mania, but Topps left us with a doozy for the road. Here’s the video rundown:

So, yeah that doozy — the 1990 Topps Frank Thomas rookie card with No Name on Front (NNOF, aka blackless) — carried the day up there.

But how has that monumental error card held up the last few years? I decided to answer that question by comparing selling prices for the card right before the pandemic to where they are now, AND to selling prices over the same period for a few other variations of the Big Hurt’s rookie card.

Here is what I found, based on selling prices reported in PSA’s Auction Prices Realized tool:

1990 Topps Frank Thomas (#414) - PSA 10

This is the base Thomas card, with no errors at all. Though it shows up most often in PSA 9 condition, there are enough 10s selling on a regular basis to get a handle on that top-of-the-heap market:

2019 Value: $40
2023 Value: $65
Profit/loss: $25
% change: 63

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

1990 Topps NNOF Frank Thomas (#414) - PSA 8

This is the star of the show, and where the most hobby dollars have always flowed in terms of Thomas rookie cards. PSA 10s are nearly nonexistent, and 9s don’t sell frequently enough to cover our target time periods here.

So we’re left with the story of PSA 8s:

2019 Value: $6000
2023 Value: $12000
Profit/loss: $6000
% change: 100

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

1990 Topps Tiffany Frank Thomas (#414) - PSA 10

Unlike the error card or even the base card, we have a pretty good idea of how many Tiffany versions of the Thomas RC were made. According to Topps themselves, a scant (by the standards of 1990) 15,000 of each Tiffany card made it into the wild.

With their high gloss and premium white cardstock, these have always garnered more favor with collectors than the mushy-stock base cards. Here’s the tale of the tape:

2019 Value: $600
2023 Value: $2400
Profit/loss: $1800
% change: 300

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

1990 O-Pee-Chee Frank Thomas (#414) - PSA 10

This is the Canadian parallel to the standard Topps set. Unlike most other OPC sets, this one kept the Topps logo. Bilingual text and the O-Pee-Chee name in the copyright on the back are the only real differences. This set is also notable as the first OPC issue since 1976 to include all of the same cards as the Topps set.

2019 Value: $20
2023 Value: $50
Profit/loss: $30
% change: 150

Check prices on eBay (affiliate link)

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Note that there is also a so-called “partial blackless” version of the card that has part of the box around Thomas’ name on the card front missing. But since PSA reports no sales of that one before 2021, there are no pre-pandemic numbers — it’s out!

Overall, the Thomas RC saw very nice returns over the last four years…just like most other cards during that timespan.

But if we compare the versions above to each other, the Tiffany laps the field in terms of a percent increase. The OPC card is second, followed by the big kahuna, and then, finally, the brown mush of the base card.

That all probably makes some sense because…

There’s nothing remarkable about the base card beyond being Big Hurt’s rookie.
NNOF was already super expensive before the pandemic, and it’s harder to sustain bigger and bigger price increases as you compress the number of collectors who can afford a card.
OPC is harder to come by than its Topps counterpart but entered the pandemic at just half the price — it’s made up a lot of ground, now sitting at about 77% of the Topps value.
Tiffany is a well-defined, semi-premium entity in a sea of Junk Wax.

You would have come out smelling like a rose if you had bought into any of these at the beginning of the pandemic and sold this fall. But not so much if you bought at the peak of the market sometime in 2021.

That’s a topic for another day, though.

For now, let’s look at some other cards that hit another sort of peak last week…

Top Baseball Card Sales on eBay for October 12-18, 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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