1987 Leaf
 

I was hoping someone could help me with a question about 1987 Leaf

I have been trying to do a better job or cataloguing/"valuing" my spectacularly unfocused collection and I have just gotten to some of my unopened 80s stuff.

I don't remember there being anything rare or limited about this set...it just had most all of the rookies and star cards found in the regular donruss.

however, when I did ebay "sold/completed " and "for sale" searches, I am seeing unopened box prices/values from $350-650 range. Regular 87 Donruss in the expected sub-$100 range

When i do a similar search for individual cards (bonds, maddux, etc) I don't see any weird pricing spikes.

What am I missing?

thanks
Mike

I think a lot of the pricing on modern packs/boxes is the lottery ticket/treasure hunt thing.

87 Leaf is a bit tougher than the Donruss, but it's a smaller set, and still has most of not all the major rookie cards. With the smaller set and nearly the same number of cards in the box, the chances of getting a "good" card are much better.

If the collation is similar to Donruss, and it should be, someone searching for rookies would have about a 50/50 chance of getting 3-4 cards of Maddux or none at all.
When PSA was cheap, there were probably enough "good" cards in any box to make it worthwhile. (IF .... the centering was good, and the boxor case had never been dropped on a corner... )

thanks Steve. That makes sense generally...but the "multiple" vs. the regular donruss on this particular issue seemed out of whack. I'll just chalk it up to the quirks of the "market"...and maybe look to sell or trade them sooner rather than later :)

It's mostly about the potential for better cards to be in the box.

Donruss was 660 cards in the set, 540 in a box. The one box I opened had one or two of Maddux, and not really any other big rookies.

Leaf was only 264 cards, and 432 in a box. The chances of getting one of the four good cards is much higher, if it was like the Donruss box I had, there would be four Maddux cards. Some of the other cards do fairly well as 9s. Still pretty iffy at current prices, unless you get 10s.

For whatever the population reports are worth, PSA has graded about 9600Leaf and about 116,000 Donruss.

I attended Auburn University, about as "Deep South" i.e.; not Quebec as you can be.

Spring 1987 I was buying cards at the university bookstore the entire quarter, at some point I noticed the cards that day were Leaf. For maybe two weeks it was only Leaf, then back to Donruss. Nobody there had a clue why.

The answer lies in PSA 10 RCs of Maddux and others. Leaf is sort of seen now similarly to Topps Tiffany: same card with a much smaller print run. So people who collect HOF rookies would rather have a top graded Leaf than the base Topps.

https://www.psacard.com/auctionprice...summary/236746
PSA 10 Greg Maddux: $728 Leaf, $202 Donruss
PSA 10 Barry Bonds: $4000 Leaf, $200 Donruss
PSA 10 McGwire: $1000 Leaf, $100 Donruss
PSA 10 Bo: $500 Leaf, $200 Donruss

So the unopened is much higher.

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that Leaf is a Canadian release and Donruss is a USA release. In 1987 the population here in Canada was likely around 25 million people. The USA population was likely around 300 million.So for the Canadian market there is only a handful of this product as compared to the regular Donruss produced in the USA. Similar stats are true about OPC baseball. It took years for collectors to understand just how rare OPC is compared to the Topps.Plus with the OPC their equipment as not near as good as quality so to find a mint OPC card as compared to that same card in Topps is like a needle in a hay stack.The other product that a lot of people never talk about is the 1990 Fleer set.There was a version of that made also just for Canada. And I was told it was only about 10% of the print run of the regular Fleer made in the USA. So if you want any of the rookies from the 1990 Fleer set. The Canadian versions leaps and bounds more scarce then the USA Fleer. Just my observations over the years.

So, only 2 million or so of each card? :D

(picking on junk wax, not taking a swipe at you)

That would be about right. But still billions less than the USA version.:D