Phantom Values of Baseball Cards

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Posted By: Jerry Spillman

With no sales history of the following baseball cards is this an ethical way to provide guide book values?


This lot of three different 1886 Hancock minor league baseball player cards were purchased through an online auction in November1999. The cards were not listed in any baseball price guides.

The cards have now been listed each year since 2001 in the Baseball Card Price Guide Catalog. Although the three cards are in about excellent condition a three-tier price structure of NM $10000, EX $5000 VG $3000 was used!! There is no foundation for these prices they are phantom values.

The owner of the cards supplied the guide prices that were printed in the catalog.

Due to this catalog listing the cards obtained 'legitimate' values. Afforded by this free advertising the owner of the cards consigned one of the three cards to a 2004 auction.

The auction catalog description of the consigned card was quite generous in its’ praise and contrived importance. A success! The consignor's four-year plus ownership of the card ends when the card brings $18306.85. Which is significantly more than the cost of all three cards.

How much influence did this price guide value have on the bidders? Would this lot have been bid as high if the catalog listing merely showed the existence of the cards without the bogus values? In other collectibles such as coins the space for the guide price is left blank, as it should be if there is no history of legitimate sales.

The price realized for this auctioned card can now be legitimately added to the baseball price guide. This in turn will allow a significant increase to the catalog value of the remaining two cards.

M12-04-810

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Posted By: john/z28jd

Usually when something is so rare the price guide is meaningless but i would say they were good estimates.I dont think the price guide influenced the sale because the cards have enough historical significance for bidders to decide on their own how much they want to spend to own a one-of-a-kind card.

In this case the guesses on prices arent misleading but if it were a common early 10'-20s player from an unknown set with no descriptive markings then a price guess would be irresponsible.

Those hancock cards were publicized numerous times on the board before they were ever for sale so they might not have had a sale price to go by but there couldve been numerous offline offers which influenced the price estimate.Guides are just that,not written in stone,they would be too tough to carry around at card shows if they were

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Posted By: davidcycleback

There's no question that pricing unique and never before sold items is problematic. I'm sure there are good arguments from both sides of the fence as far as whether a pricing should or not be published. However, it should be noted that many collectors, especially beginners, look to a price guide for pricing guidance and they would be dissapointed if there was no attempt at pricing.

On a site note: The first time I read the book values for these cards was when I looked at the linked article just now. So I can testify that I am one collector who was not influence by the price guide prices.

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Posted By: john/z28jd

I meant to say the cards were publicized on this board before they recently went to auction not before they ever went up for sale.

David is right about the lack of prices being disappointing.I remember when i got my last catalog and it had no price for the t231 fan cigarettes card of Carson Bigbee.I had no idea what that card could be worth and at the time i think id rather have seen an estimated price rather than nothing

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Posted By: Julie

Still don't know what the thinking behind that was (Not cards? He has priced many other things that aren't cards. besides, they are cards.)

Somehow I doubt that beginning collectors are going to be too disappointed by the lack of a one-of-a kind 19th century set of minor league players...