Quote:
Originally Posted by packs
Koufax really has gone up. Willie Mays too. Even 70s Hank Aaron is pricey now. Not sure it'll go back down for those guys. I'm just glad I bought early.
I do think Musial and Feller will stay relatively affordable for a long time. And those are two nice HOFers to be able to collect easily.
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The thing with Willie Mays is his market for quite sometime was supresed substantially by the flood of what, early on, were believed to be good autographs with the "Say Hey" hologram.
These were available via every major autograph channel pretty much whenever one wanted, for well under $200, even "inscribed". Once the fraud of all the Say Hey items was exposed (Steve Hoskins signing them vs Mays himself), and the TPAs caught on and have steadily invalidated old certs and the general information about them being fake was exposed to a larger proponent of the market, collectors flocked to the genuine items to replace their bogus ones. Inscriptions are far tougher on Mays than many realized and the prices of quality sweetspot balls pushed into the mid to upper 200s. Inscribed baseballs easily bring in 4x that number now.
The other portion is after watching so many of the "card show era" heavy hitters pass away recently (Aaron, Frank Robinson, McCovey etc), Mays is far and away the last generational level player left and at nearly 92 and in poor health probably doesn't have long left so you've got a lot of collectors buying in anticipation of that inevitable surge.