New pickup / why was this so difficult
 

I was able to pick up mid-grade 1970 and 1971 baseball sets after a fairly considerable amount of looking. I originally collected them as a boy and I am sure I have never parted with them, however, they have gone AWOL. I suspect I'll find them at some point...but that's not the issue here.

Why is it so hard to find collector grade sets like this? When I owned a shop, there was virtually always someone coming in working on a set from the 50s, 60s, or 70s.Of course if I wanted to pay two to three times value, they are always on eBay. These very seldom come up for sale, say in an auction setting or at a reasonable price from a dealer at a show. Now you run into high grade fairly often. Why do you think this is? 1) are dealers purchasing the sets and breaking them down into singles or 2) are the collectors simply holding on to the sets?

I am a set collector and I have bought about 90% of mine full. I see plenty and still track prices. One thing I find when buying full is that the stars are normally a grade or two below the commons. This could either be from the original owner handling the stars more or the dealer swapping them out to sell the singles at a higher price. Therefore, I end up with a ton of upgrades to get alignment and consistency across the sets.

An example given to me was a 1968 set. A dealer buys for $800-850. They immediately sell Ryan and Mantle for between 350-400 dollars. They then sell Bench, Mays, Clemente, Rose and a few other high end HOFers for a couple hundred. Next, over time comes the second level HOFers, minor stars, team cards like the Tigers, multi player cards like the manager's dream etc this adds up to a couple hundred as well. Then, commons are parsed out and sold in lots. It seems like a '68 can net around $1200 after a lot of time, energy and wrapped up working capital. From what I understand, 68 is one of the tougher ones to turn around due to the lack of profit in the high numbers.

I have also found that the early 50's are much more preferable to buy card by card. There is a much smaller number of cards in the set - so a larger % are high dollar and HOF. If you buy as a set at collector grade, you will end up upgrading the stars anyway. In a 54 or 55, the HOFers make up a large % of the set price anyway due to Aaron, Banks, Kaline, Clemente, Koufax etc.

One guy's opinion but I have been living it the last 4 years. Best of luck in the quest.

PS - Todd, I am sure I have not given you any new insight based upon your experience and background - I just thought it an interesting topic and a question that I have asked many times.