It has been known for many years now that collecting baseball cards is not just for kids with a few extra bucks. It’s now a serious money game. When sports collectors think of baseball cards and memorabilia selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, they generally are thinking about just a handful of players. Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Ty Cobb and only a few more occasional player cards or items reach such high prices when they sell in auctions. You can now put Willie Mays much higher on the list of most valuable baseball card prices.

Unless there have been private transactions or other auctions that have not been recorded elsewhere, the second week of May 2016 brought a new record for a near-perfect mint condition sample of the Willie Mays card from the prized 1952 Topps baseball set. The price tag, including the buyer’s premium, was a whopping $478,000.

After a slew of record-breaking sales prices in the past year or so in other player cards and memorabilia items, it seems that the high-grade vintage sports cards are quite obviously continuing to grow into more and more of an asset class. This trend has taken vintage sports cards and memorabilia into the league of rare stamps, fine art, jewelry, antiques, fine wine and so on. It is becoming ever more common to see items fetch tens of thousands — hundreds of thousands — of dollars when they come up for auction. A few other auctions, particularly in the case of the T206 Honus Wagner, have generated sales prices of $1 million or more for cards or memorabilia.

Heritage Auctions said going into the auction:

Those who have followed the past two years of Heritage auction offerings have witnessed the soaring ascent of the fabled Mickey Mantle #311 card, certainly the hottest commodity in the entirety of the sports collecting hobby at present. Let’s use three recent offerings of a PSA NM-MT example to illustrate the point: $179,250 (July 2014), $382,400 (July 2015), $525,800 (December 2015).

Another issue to consider here is that the Mays card at this high-grade level is even more rare than Mantle. Heritage noted that the Mint 9 Mays is almost four times as rare, according to the PSA population records.

As far as the investor appetite, investors have become increasingly involved in sports cards and memorabilia in recent years. That doesn’t mean that they all make money on their purchases, but it is not just people who grew up loving baseball cards and memorabilia driving up prices for the rarest and highest-graded collectibles. Here are three instances when investing has been referred to from auction houses:

• Heritage said:
  

  For each joyous consignor that has enjoyed beneficiary status of the 1952 Topps Mantle bull market, we’ve heard a dozen laments from those who missed an earlier opportunity to invest. We suspect this lot will be very attractive to collectors hoping to make up for past mistakes.

• Pre-War Card Collector Auctions (PWCC) told 24/7 Wall St. about a prior 1952 Topps Mantle sale:
  

  The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle is arguably the most recognized sports card in the world. It now transcends the hobby from which it sprouted to represent this nation’s most iconic sport during its golden age, and thereby signifies a true piece of Americana. What was once a pure collectible is now a valid portfolio diversification which rivals the historical performance of virtually any other investment tool available.

• Goldin Auctions told us in the past that one of the most famous cards, the T206 Honus Wagner card, sold for $2.1 million to a wealthy investor who has historically never been a buyer of baseball cards.

So, let’s think about this $478,000 sale price, again after the buyer’s premium paid (of 19.5%) to Heritage Auctions after just 10 bids. For a PSA 9 sample of the Willie Mays from the 1952 Topps set, the PSA website shows that its estimated value would have been closer to $225,000. Of course, there are very limited quantities here (less than 10) and you know records are meant to be broken from time to time. The website VinageCardPrices.com showed that the last PSA 9 Mays card sold for $24,850.80 all the way back in the year 2007 through the former Mastro auction house.

Heritage Auctions also sold a PSA 8 sample for some $50,190 after only nine bids, including the buyer’s premium. PWCC recently had a PSA 8 Mays sample sell for $45,100.00, and one PSA 8 sample in February sold for $39,600. The PSA pricing estimate was last seen at more than $38,000, but that will now be heading higher. PSA’s own pricing section in its SMR section for 1952 Topps showed:

• A PSA NM-MT 8 #261 Mays sold for $47,800 in 2015.
• A PSA Mint 9 Mays #261 sold for $38,561 in 2005 and $31,987 in 2004 respectively.

Now consider that the Mays PSA 9 grade has effectively just risen more than tenfold from 2004 to 2005 prices. None of the major stock indexes have done that. The S&P 500 Index has roughly doubled since the 2004 to 2005 period, but it’s up over 200% from the 2009 recession low. Gold may still be off its highs of recent years, but gold is up roughly 200% since the end of 2004. Again, there is a scarcity factor here.

When baseball card and sports memorabilia collectors hear the term “investor” it may bring music to their ears. It also means that the cost of collecting vintage cards and memorabilia is heading higher. Either way, just understand that there are very few individual baseball cards (and memorabilia) that ever reach levels this high.

Another issue to consider here is that the vintage card and memorabilia price gains have been seen the most frequent gainers are in the highest grades (8 to 10). These are considered “investment grade” now for unofficial purposes in vintage, particularly the cards with grades of 9 and higher. Another thing to consider is these massive price levels almost always pertain only to vintage cards, where there is scarcity and where the players cannot damage their reputations like so many modern-day athletes have managed.

To consider how a card from 1952 can still be graded with a 9 rating out of 10 is hard to fathom. Every time a card is physically handled there is the risk of damage. Consider how many times cards can be handled in a span of 60 years. This card certainly never once find itself in the common sports cards games like shooting them with rubber bands, flipping for the front or the back, flinging into hats, being used to make bicycle spokes louder and the like. Many cards would not have even been graded this high coming out of the wax packs that year, and many others might have not been centered properly on the card.

One last side note that true sports cards collectors know is that the prized 1952 Topps card is not actually the true Willie Mays rookie card. This was just the first mass production Topps set, and the prices of the top cards from this set have seen their prices rise and rise in recent years. The real Willie Mays rookie is the 1951 Bowman card, which is much smaller in size and is generally only a tad more common in the total graded population, according to PSA data.

Coincidentally, Willie Mays just recently turned 85 years old. If you went back in time, one interesting factoid from the Society for American Baseball Research shows that Willie Mays, from 1959 to 1970, was the highest major league baseball player in 11 of the 13 seasons, earning $75,000 in 1959 and rising to $135,000 in both 1969 and 1970. If you went back in time to the 1960s and told Willie Mays that a top sample of his best baseball card was going to sell for close to a half-million bucks, he’d probably (and understandably) go ask for another pay raise on the spot.

Sometimes records get broken. Sometimes by a long shot. The highest graded samples of the 1952 Topps Willie Mays have just taken a much more serious leg up for collectors and investors alike.

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