An Unexpected Baseball Legend Tops Vintage Card Market
Over the last few months I've been rediscovering my love for sports cards. It's been a lot of fun to connect with some old memories. I started collecting cards when I was really little, but I was obviously too small to understand what I was doing, but by high school was normally buying dealer tables at sports cards shows to sell and trade cards. I was able to make a little bit of money, have a lot of fun, and learn a lot of lessons.
Now I'm getting way back into sports cards, but it's not as easy as it used to be.
Back in the day, I was able to buy packs of cards for $3-$10 dollars each, and boxes for $100-$200. Today's sports card world is full of single packs of cards that sell for thousands of dollars. But that's because the value of the cards you can find right now are unreal.
There are currently players who have rookie cards that sell for over $200,000 regularly. Not just in one sport either. Modern day baseball, football, and especially basketball players have rookies that sell for six-figures on a weekly basis on eBay. Players like LeBron James, Zion Williamson, Patrick Mahomes, and Mike Trout top these lists.
Oddly, the vintage sports card market hasn't seen the same drastic increase in prices. There has been some increase to certain vintage cards, but it really hasn't been at the same levels that modern cards have witnessed. This past week, the most expensive eBay sale on a vintage card was roughly $180,000. That's pretty far below the weekly high in the modern card market.
This week's highest vintage card was also an interesting player. In week that saw multiple high-end Mickey Mantle cards sell on eBay, the player that topped the list was actually Ricky Henderson.
Here are the highest sales of vintage sports cards this week on eBay: