It's been a while since we had a large group of highly graded mainline Mays pieces come to auction. In fact, I think the last time was also in ML, around 18 months ago. So it's time to take a look at how that market is doing.
Summary if you don't want to read the details: Prices are still high, although in some cases, prices are down 25-30% compared to the all-time highs during the pandemic. Compared to pre-pandemic, prices are still up by roughly 300%-500%.
A few caveats, since others will make these observations if I don't:
This is obviously just one player, and all of these grades are at or near the tippy top of the pop reports. So definitely not intended to be indicative of the whole market. At the same time, as a Mays guy, and as a set registry goon, these prices are indicative of values for my collection (for those I already have in these grades), or what I would have to pay to upgrade to these pieces (for those where I don't have them yet).
Most of these ML pieces were early certs, with a few exceptions, so read that as you will. And obviously every card is somewhat different, so it's often dangerous to compare pricing at the same grade without digging a lot deeper into the details. But being a lazy fellow with little imagination, I'm going to do it anyway.
More specifically, I will hasten to note that I didn't love the 1970T in PSA 10, because the edges looked a little wavy to me, and the corners didn't seem to form perfect 90 degree angles. Maybe I'm just seeing card doctors everywhere now, but I stayed away from that one for this reason, and I suspect others saw that too, because the price was relatively weak. Link here if you want to check it out for yourself:
https://memorylaneinc.com/site/bids/...e?itemid=81662
For that matter, some of you will probably assert that all high-grade vintage has been doctored. And that's always a possibility, although I suppose I hold out the impossible dream that some high grade vintage is all natural and unadulterated.
These cards don't trade very often, so pricing data is often very thin. For many of these pieces, they might only trade once per year, and sometimes might go years without trading. As a result, it's hard to tell whether these prices really mean much, because a single data point isn't much of a trend.
I took the liberty of rounding a lot of the pricing here, simply because it's easier than trying to take everything out to the penny. Hopefully that lack of precision doesn't drive anyone to distraction.
Let's look at some details, starting with the biggest gains:
1971T PSA 9 - $48k. Pretty strong price for a piece that routinely sold for $5-6k pre-pandemic. Basically up 700%. For that matter, the previous all-time high during the pandemic was $42k. So this was a new record all around.
1972T PSA 10 - $23k. Pre-pandemic this one routinely sold for $2-3k. So up around 700% too. Down slightly from the pandemic high of $25k, but not by much.
1953T PSA 8 - $186k (actually from HA a week ago, but I'm including it here just because ML didn't have this piece). Pre-pandemic around $25k-30k, so up about 500%. Down just a hair from the pandemic high of $195k.
1955B PSA 9 - $94k. Pre-pandemic usually around $15-20K, so up around 500%. Didn't actually have one sell during the pandemic, so this is an all-time high.
1957T PSA 9 - $55k. Up around 500% from pre-pandi, which typically was $7-9k. Down about 13% from the pandemic high of $63k.
1961T PSA 9 - $17k. Up around 500% from the pre-pandemic pricing of about $2-3k, but down 26% from the pandi high of $23k.
A few that were weaker:
1952T PSA 8 - $102k. With a little better centering, I probably would've been tempted to pick this one up myself. But with better centering, it probably would've gone a lot higher. Pre-pandemic around $30-35k, so up about 200%. But down a lot (about 60%) from a pandemic high of $258k. This was the biggest drop from the pandemic high, and centering (or lack thereof) may have been a factor.
1960T PSA 9 - $22k. Routinely sold for $7-9k pre-pandemic, so still up about 150%. But the pandemic high was $36k, so a drop of about 40%.
1970T PSA 10 - $38k. Pre-pandi this was usually $30-34k, so only a very small increase of around 10% here. Oddly, we haven't had one sell during the pandemic, so nothing to compare it to there. As noted earlier, the wavy edges may have scared off a few bidders.
One that was hard to compare:
1958T PSA 9 - $134K. Pre-pandemic, there aren't really any records of these selling in the last 15 years. We did have one sell during the pandemic for $115K, which makes this sale the all-time high. But hard to say how much it's up compared to pre-pandemic, since these are so rare (pop 5) that they sell very infrequently.
As for the rest, including 54T PSA 9, 55T PSA 9, 59T PSA 9, 62T PSA 9, 66T PSA 9, and 68T PSA 10, most of them are up about 250-350% over their pre-pandemic prices, and mostly down from their pandemic highs by about 10-20%, give or take.
Bottom line for me is that prices remain really strong, to the point where I'm mostly sitting on the sidelines, continuing to wait before I upgrade any of these pieces. Maybe we'll get there some day, and if not, then I'll be just fine with what I have.