Quote:
Originally Posted by Exhibitman
True. I just looked at a 9 year history of the 1937 Ardath Louis on PSA's site and prices have basically stagnated throughout. Some stuff has gone very high:
--Johnson
--Tyson
--Modern RCs: Pacquiao, Holyfield
--early Clay/Ali
--PSA 10 1990s cards
Some stuff has been moving up but not spectacularly, mostly the heavyweight champs and legendary lighter fighters like Duran, Hagler, etc.
Makes me wonder what would happen if genuinely rare stuff was offered for sale.
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Your list is basically what I've noticed, it's this small subset of items going sky high. I've hardly seen any actually tough cards come up for sale since the pandemic response began, "don't see every day" cards that take some time and patience haven't moved on the whole, but I would suspect potential sellers are holding for now and that's why the listings have been dry. I just got a T225 G white border for $10, same price as my first one 15 years ago, but not a lot of stuff much tougher than this tier has been popping up at all.
Perhaps Johnson's prices will be sustained by the narrative around him, not sure anyone is really going to start caring about boxing history that much as the sport continues to generally be outside the mainstream. Glad I bought some Johnsons for my master sets when I did. Johnson T218 being 100X Jeffries T218 is insane to me, but what the heck do I know! The others seeing large price increases can be explained by the influx of free time + cash into the US, with a strong nostalgia element. Nobody who cared about Johnson is alive now, and unlike baseball history that remains a popular interest with people, almost none of the much fewer boxing fans care much about a century ago. I thought after his prices failed to change much in 2018, probably the last time he will be prominently pushed into the public eye much, that they weren't going to go up that much. I was sure wrong!
Still need both his Honest Long Cut T219's, and his common T218 Mecca S2-649 card. Those are sure going to hurt now.