9600 for a 6.5 West Rookie????
 

Yeah! I saw that....crazy!! It's a nice 6.5, and great centering, but that's a bit crazy.

It seems some cards with amazing centering are going for record prices based on their assigned grade. In the same Heritage auction a PSA 8 61 Topps Mantle sold for over $4k and it was very well centered...but that's double what a 61 PSA 8 would normally sell for....

No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't start this in basketball yet. I need just a few more cards then this bananas malarkey can get started.

Arthur

All vintage basketball tides seem to be rising in my mind, at least that's what my ebay watch list keeps showing me. Anything higher than a 7 and a star player is getting plenty of bids.

This shows it's trickling down. The mid-grade bigs like Wilt and Russell are ridiculous.

I disagree on the significance of this. It sold for 10x. That's not a trickle down, it's an aberration.

again it 'sold' Did money change hands...was something up with this... will get it regraded....manipulate market on other cards etc....lots of other factors perhaps than just one normal regular guy paying that amount and planning on keeping it unchanged for the next 2-3 years..

I don't think anyone would use an SGC 6.5 as a vehicle to manipulate the market. Either something is up or it's a card that guys thought they could alter favorably.

West 9600
 

Given the centering and colour I would vote for the latter.

I could see that train of thought of a crack out. That centering for a 61 is a damn good start.

It's just amazing the way PSA has changed our tastes. For decades collectors mostly focused on corners, surfaces, edges, etc. and didn't even care about centering. Then PSA came along and started giving out OC qualifiers to cards. In other words, the company said "all these cards that you thought were good, aren't good." Collectors then started to pay a premium for better centered cards. However, over the past few years, it looks like they've gone crazy over this.

Umm...anyone looking at something contained within a frame is going to find it more attractive if it is framed properly rather than being cut off. What does that have to do with PSA?

Centering is the first thing I notice when I see a card and I imagine that’s the same for anyone with normal visual processing.

Historically Samosa is right, it was not all that important back in the day. Hell, as I posted elsewhere, early SGC barely paid attention to it. There certainly wasn't the fetish there is today.

I agree, I even see it with commons I am trying to collect for my 52 Topps set.

My thought was, back when I first joined the site, that if cards like that came from the factory then they were good to go, but after a relatively short time on here, I quickly learned that centering is viewed as critically (almost) to creases and dinged corners to many.