A Noteworthy Pair Of Mantle RC Sales - Re: Grades & Eye Appeal
 

Last night's Memory Lane Auction featured a PSA 5 and PSA 4 Mickey Mantle RC.

The PSA 5 cost $6199, all in.
The PSA 4 cost $6190, all in.

To many, the PSA 4 had the superior eye appeal and centering, of the two offerings. It is interesting to note the effect of placing two cards in the same auction, with the lower grade card looking better, was not that the higher graded card sold for a depressed price (as the $6199 would be described as healthy).

Rather, the effect was that the market bid the lower-graded copy with superior eye appeal right up the the next full grade level.

Just thought this was an interesting case to observe. There was an interesting discussion as to how this would play out, in a thread over in another Net54 section a little ways back. It says a lot about how people are shopping, evaluating, and valuing cards these days, and the premium or behavior of a card in the market with strong eye appeal.

Editorially, I think it's great for a 'little old' card in grade X to command essentially the same price as the 'X + 1' grade. Congratulations go to the owners/sellers and also the buyers/winners of such a card. Likely a case of both parties being very happy, which is always nice.

If I recall correctly, didn't the PSA 4 have a noticeable crease? This makes the result a bit surprising, as I thought even though the PSA 4 was nice, the crease would've been a deal breaker for me. I wonder if the top bidders didn't notice the crease, but I doubt that was the case. Either way, that's an interesting result.

Funny thing, just found out I know the proud new owner; can say he definitely is a very educated, picky buyer. Just liked how it looked and knows few hit the eye well.

I think we were discussing these two cards on Peter Spaeth's wtb thread for the 51 Mantle and that it would be interesting to see if we could find one auction that had an off center card with a higher grade and a card a grade lower with great eye appeal to test if people are really willing to "buy the card not the holder."

The consensus was that these two would not work because of the crease. It appears we were wrong, that someone was still willing to step up and pay extra for the centering despite the crease. If that PSA 4 didn't have the crease I think it would have sold for more than that PSA 5.

I looked at these the other day, I didnt even notice the crease on the elbow, without zooming in on it.

We had a thread I started several years ago about eye appeal vs technical grade. While it ultimately gets down to specific cards and cases, eye appeal is tremendously important, and, I think, gaining ground. I have a 1935 Diamond Stars "Greenburg" error which is virtually perfectlty centered, with some corner wear, but no creases--a very nice raw VG. But I prefer it to the ExMt example I sold some years back due to the far superior centering of my current example. And just picked up a nice '34 Gold Medal Flour Dizzy Dean with four nice corners and superb centering which had been graded just "VG" due to a wrinkle in the card that you had to hold at just the right angle to even detect. I far prefer it to one graded SGC Ex which is still being advertised for sale on ebay, which has what I would call poor centering.

Always a good topic.

Regards,

Larry