Pricing of Unopened Items
This entry was posted on 3/9/2007 10:55 AM and is filed under General.
As at least a few of you know, I have been keeping a database of pack prices for the 1970’s. At last count, it had over 20,000 pricing points in it.
From the numbers in the database, there is a crystal clear difference between the pricing for graded packs and non graded packs, specifically from 1970 – 1976 and maybe 1977. Whereas some median prices have gone down, many have increased over the last 12 months and continue to do so.
There are so many variables to pricing, the most reliable way to look at pricing is to look at shifts in the Median Price for a particular item. It is nearly impossible to compare apples to apples in pricing. Here are a few things that need to be taken into account when looking at specific years and specific median prices…
1. The Pack
a. Age
b. Physical Condition of the Pack
c. Scarcity – Real & Perceived
d. Series
e. The Popularity of the sport during the year of issue
f. Amount of cards in a pack
g. The Stars and Money Cards that are in that particular year
h. Stars / Money Cards showing on top or the bottom
2. The Marketplace
a. Reputation of the Seller / Third Party Grading
b. Sense of Urgency – Ability to Purchase
c. Ability to Resell
d. Low sales volumes to review – one high or low sale can skew some results
e. A mini hoard suddenly appears in a major non ebay auction and re-enters the market on ebay and takes a while to be absorbed by the market
3. Personal Traits
a. The Popularity of the Packaging
b. Filling a Collection Need
c. The Lottery Effect – AKA The Pack Ripper trying to pull a high dollar card
d. Personal Interest in the Particular Year
e. Other Intangible Feelings
The data I have suggests some pretty straightforward points:
** Grading has created a bifurcated market, with graded items clearly getting higher prices. Specific grades however do not consistently pull higher prices (for example a 7.5 may sell higher than an 8.5, etc). This suggests that the market generally values authentication more highly than grading.
** Market pricing is fairly complex with quite a few variables as noted above. Movements of median prices will result due to an impact of the aggregate of these variables and generally not just one variable.
I’ll end with this. Did you know that Topps had Revenue of $9.2 M for only BB cards in 1978?
Play with those numbers… I ran a hypothetical model on 1978 Topps production numbers for BB and estimated almost 827 M cards were made in that year. Then I tried to guestimate the form of distribution and came up with 60,000 wax cases, 3,050 wax tray cases and so on… My numbers are clearly only estimates but the point I am trying to make here is that a lot of 1978 unopened BB product was produced 30 years ago. When you think about how much is currently in the market when compared to those numbers, one key thing emerges, the number is tiny and only getting smaller. With a shrinking supply, and a better awareness of the characteristics for unopened items, etc, it would seem that the long term view of the unopened market will be quite favorable.
