Baseball Card Market Report for September 8-14, 2022 - Top eBay Sales

PLUS -- Legendary September callups in The Investment Corner

Sep 16, 2022

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Staying Power

What happens when a guy the baseball world has given up for dead (in a baseball sense) hangs on too long (by conventional wisdom, at least) … and then has a mini-breakout?

Well, Albert Pujols can help us answer that question on the power of a swan-song season with the St. Louis Cardinals that has the team looking like a juggernaut, Prince Albert on the verge of 700 home runs as I write this, and even some whispers swirling about whether he’ll actually walk away this fall.

And in the card market?

Pujols’ 18-dingers-and-counting showing helped an autographed copy of his rookie card land at Number 2 on our list of the top-selling baseball cards on eBay last week.

It’s been awhile since we’ve seen Pujols light up the cardboard like this, but it’s really nothing too new, as The Machine has been a hobby staple almost since the day he debuted at the opening of the 2001 season.

You might consider Pujols to be the springtime (and better) version of some of the guys in our …

September Callups in the Investment Corner

Last September, we used our visit here to The Investment Corner to check out the cards of some guys who had played historic roles in pennant races over the years.

We’ll check up on those “purchases” below, but first … well, it’s September again.

And, while we could use the return of cooler temperatures to once again check out some headliner pennant guys, September offers us plenty of other splendors.

Take the callups, for example. We jumped into some of the most impactful September cups-of-coffee from my own years of fandom over on the Wax Pack Gods newsletter the other day, and let me tell you, the nostalgia flowed hard and fast.

Two simple words tell you that: John Stefano.

Yeah, I know your interest is over-piqued now, and you can check out those guys later, but hang in here for a bit longer.

Because, here, we’re going to run through our own set of big-time September callups and use those as the inspiration for our fake-grand spend here in The Investment Corner.

The usual rules apply:

We can lay out about $1000 in funny money, give or take a Mookie Wilson rookie card or two.
We have to “spend” our fake bucks on cards that have actually sold in recent weeks (typically on eBay), faux-paying the same price as the actual buyer did.
Our goal is to “make money” when we pretend-sell our cards down the road, likely next September, right here.

Got all that? Cool!

Here are our cash-y callups:

1981 Topps Dodgers Future Stars (#302) - PSA 10 - $224.50

You might think the callup in question here is Mike Scioscia or Jack Perconte, but that would make you as silly as my senior picture. I mean, come on — Fernandomania, anyone?

Truth is, the Dodgers’ lefty shook the world the next summer, but Fernando gave a nice preview in 1980 with a 2-0, 0.00 showing in ten innings.

His rookie card has been hobby royalty ever since, and there is even a chance Scioscia will add some Hall of Fame shine (as a manager) to this one.

See listing (affiliate link)

1986 Donruss Jose Canseco Rated Rookie (#39) - PSA 9 - $59.65

Talk about hobby royalty!

Canseco smacked five home runs for the A’s in September of 1985 after a power breakout in the minors that summer, a performance that had us all frothing for his RCs the next spring.

This one popped out of the pack like a Jose longball and didn’t slow down until the last needle was plunged. Even with that PED taint, though, Canseco’s Rated Rookie still makes the collector heart skip a beat and has held it’s value well in relation to the market at large.

See listing (affiliate link)

1988 Score Glossy Gregg Jefferies (#645) - PSA 10 - $52.02

Jefferies was even more hyped than Canseco, thanks largely to the New York factor.

The Mets youngster never quite lived up to the advance billing — who could? — but a couple of September callups, in 1987 and 1988, lit the hobby on fire and kept Jefferies on hot lists for years.

Like the Canseco RC, this one maintains a healthy hobby profile thanks to a hefty dose of nostalgia.

See listing (affiliate link)

1978 Topps Lou Whitaker (#704) - PSA 9 - $212.50

Now we come to the Hall of Fame portion of our program, where Whitaker remains on the outside looking in but will get there someday (soon, says I).

And, while his initial callup wasn’t all that impressive, his debut on September 9, 1977, came alongside fellow youngster Alan Trammell and signaled a new (great) era for Detroit Tigers baseball.

Sweet Lou’s rookie card is pricey, but it still has the Cooperstown bump to look forward to.

See listing (affiliate link)

1963 Topps Stan Musial (#250) - PSA 7 - $261

This card is an outlier on our list, as it’s the only non-rookie to make the cut.

Stan the Man fits right in, though, as he slashed to the tune of .426/.449/.574 in 12 games for the 1941 Cardinals when he was still just 20 years old.

That, of course, was just the beginning of one of the greatest careers the game has ever seen, and THIS is Musial’s very last regular-issue baseball card — a bona fide blue-chipper.

See listing (affiliate link)

2008 Topps Joey Votto (#319) - PSA 10 - $90

Votto has had an up-and-down career, mostly due to injury problems that have cost him something like a season-and-a-half (not counting the 2020 pandemic mess), but also because of some inconsistent power numbers.

Still, Votto is a legendary Red and a likely Hall of Famer, so it’s unlikely his rookie cards will drop in value, at least relative to the rest of the market.

And, oh yeah — his four homers and 17 RBI in 24 games for Cincy in 2007 bought his ticket to this list.

See listing (affiliate link)

1987 Topps Traded Greg Maddux (#70T) - PSA 10 - $112.5

Maddux weighed 47 pounds when he debuted for the Cubs in September of 1987 but still managed to go 2-4 with a 5.52 ERA for the last-place club. A miracle showing, all things considered.

Topps whiffed on including Mad Dog in its rookie-bloated 1987 base set, but they made up for it with this Traded version.

You really can’t go wrong with a “perfect” FTC (First Topps Card) of a legend.

See listing (affiliate link)

—

Alright, so we shot right past our budget with this list, landing at a grand total of $1012.17.

Consider it inflation.

Besides, when we’re raking in our fake profits a year from now, you’ll be thanking me for spending the college fund to make sure we could include Jefferies here.

And, speaking of profits, it’s time to do our red-black accounting for those pennant-race heroes we talked about earlier, and who we invested in this time last year.

Can’t Win ‘Em All

OK, so maybe these guys spent all their magic on the actual pennant races of yore and didn’t leave any behind to help out my mythical card investment portfolio.

What am I babbling about?

Well, here is the tally from the “sale” of the cards we “bought” in The Investment Corner last September:

(Card titles are affiliate links to current eBay listings for the cards.)

1987 Fleer Glossy Will Clark PSA 10

Bought (9/2021): $135.50
Sold (9/2022): $120.00
Profit/Loss: -$15.50 (-11%)

1986 Donruss Fred McGriff Rated Rookie PSA 9

Bought (9/2021): $36.00
Sold (9/2022): $46.67
Profit/Loss: $10.67 (30%)

1989 Upper Deck Randy Johnson PSA 10

Bought (9/2021): $155.20
Sold (9/2022): $120.00
Profit/Loss: -$35.20 (-23%)

1999 Topps Traded C.C. Sabathia PSA 10

Bought (9/2021): $150.00
Sold (9/2022): $132.50
Profit/Loss: -$17.50 (-12%)

1959 Topps Bill White PSA 7

Bought (9/2021): $37.00
Sold (9/2022): $37.00
Profit/Loss: $0.00 (0%)

1967 Topps Tug McGraw PSA 9

Bought (9/2021): $102.50
Sold (9/2022): $100.00
Profit/Loss: -$2.50 (-2%)

1972 Topps Cecil Cooper PSA 8

Bought (9/2021): $230.50
Sold (9/2022): $360.00
Profit/Loss: $129.50 (56.%)

1978 Topps Lance Parrish and Dale Murphy PSA 9

Bought (9/2021): $152.50
Sold (9/2022): $149.50
Profit/Loss: -$3.00 (-2%)
—

(The price we’d have to pay now - “sold” — is culled from the PSA Auction Prices Realized tool, generally taking the most recent sale of the given card in the given condition as our barometer and leaning on recent eBay sales in some cases.)

All told, we fake spent $999.20 last September and “sold” our bounty for $1065.67 this September. That’s a pretend profit of $66.47, or about 6.6 %.

Not bad compared to, say a bank account or that old Pogs collection you’re still clinging to. And certainly not a pace that will get you from here to crater-side condo on the moon any time soon.

That “profit” also comes with a couple of qualifiers, since there were exactly ZERO sales of the White and Tugger cards, in the condition we bought them in, over the last year. So for those, I just assumed the status quo.

And that Cecil Cooper jump has a hefty dose of Pudge mixed into it.

For now, let’s just consider ourselves lucky, take our 66 bucks, and pretend that’s enough to play in the land of the …

Top Baseball Card Sales on eBay for September 8-14, 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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