The same thing has happened here in Japan as I've kind of alluded to in a few posts. Prices just ain't what they used to be. One auction I was following which ended yesterday really drove that point home. It was for the above lot of 151 menko from the 1950s and early 60s.
This was a pretty amazing lot actually. Most of the cards weren't too hard to find, but the highlight was a big lot of 1962 Tachibana Seika (JF 31) cards, these ones here:
This is an extremely rare set, Engel lists it as R4, meaning that fewer than 10 copies of each card are known to exist. I don't have any cards from it in my collection, they almost never turn up in auctions, let alone a lot this size.
There are three key cards in this set: Sadaharu Oh, Larry Doby and Don Newcombe. The Doby and Newcombe cards are of particular interest since they played only briefly in Japan and only appear on a couple of cards, and this set basically has their "key" Japanese cards. The Newcombe in particular Engel says is even rarer than the rest, giving it an R5 designation (fewer than 5 copies known).
This lot had not one, but two copies of that Newcombe. See if you can spot it in the picture. It also had doubles of the Oh card, but no Doby.
This was probably a good deal given how valuable just the Newcombe cards alone are, if I had that kind of money I might have even been tempted to push it a bit higher. Probably to Americans this price seems pretty modest given the gobsmacking insane prices high end stuff there are going for these days, but for Japanese vintage this is a big deal. 341,000 Yen I think is a lot more than what this would have gone for a couple of years ago and a good piece of evidence that the same trend going on in the US is going on here too, albeit not to the same degree.
The pandemic has caused very uneven levels of financial harm. White collar workers who can work remotely have basically not suffered at all, at least financially. Whereas the effect on people who work as, eg., waiters in restaurants, has, I imagine, been catastrophic.
ReplyDeleteThe white collar workers don't have anything else to do with their leisure money any more: can't go to a ball game, or a movie, or a restaurant (not really). So they've got cash burning holes in their pockets, which they spend by bidding up old baseball cards to absurd levels. And given what green Cobbs (for example) sold for even before the pandemic, it's unlikely that waiters were bidding on them anyway. So the people who are actually being hurt by the financial fall-out of the pandemic aren't being taken out of the vintage market: for the most part they were never part of it. The result is runaway inflation on vintage baseball card prices. It will be interesting to see how much of this lasts. Once life goes back to normal, will collectors be willing to sell at a loss, or will they keep a large chunk of their collection money locked up in what they're buying now?
On another note: how much would the Newcombe card sell for on its own? This is a lot of cash for Japanese cards, but might you be able to make a profit splitting this lot up? I once saw a lot of those mask menko cards on ebay that went for a very reasonable (per card) price. I should have put in a strong bid and then consigned them to Prestige, where they would certainly have sold for more. But I, stupidly, couldn't talk myself into placing as large of a bid as it would have required, even though there was money to be made.
I agree completely with your analysis there about what is driving the rise in vintage cards in the US. Like you say, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the years ahead. I suspect that the roller coaster will end at some point, at which wealthy collectors who are just in it as investors will face a choice of holding them or cashing them in. If more opt for the latter, it'll probably spark a race for the exits that could see prices go down quite a bit. Not sure if it will go that way though.
DeleteThe buyer of this lot could probably recoup his whole investment just by flipping the two Newcombe cards alone. The last (only) time a copy of it came up for auction on Prestige it sold for over 1600$, and that was 10 years ago so I would imagine they would go for more today. The one they sold that time was in very nice condition though, its a bit hard to tell what shape the two in this lot are in from the scans (though I don't see any major damage on them at least). The two Oh cards could also fetch a pretty decent sum, and the other singles are worth something too.
Always blows me away... that there are vintage Japanese cards out there with less than 10 known copies in existence. Can't even begin to imagine what a 60's Topps card would sell for if there were less than 10 copies out there.
ReplyDeleteYeah I can imagine what a 1962 Topps set would be worth if there were only 10 copies out there!!
DeleteThat is crazy! Wonder if the seller knew what he/she had? Sumo card prices are way up as well. An interesting outcome when there is too much disposable income out there.
ReplyDeleteThe seller must have been pretty surprised. He had a few other lots of menko that didn't have baseball cards in them and they went for almost nothing, but this one exploded! Must have been happy with the result.
DeleteGiven how much it went for, do you think it's possible that this lot was gotten by an American buyer?
ReplyDeleteIts possible. Particularly because of the Newcombes, which are probably of more interest to American than Japanese collectors.
DeleteJapanese collectors do shell out serious money on cards I should note, but this lot in particular seems like it would appeal more to an American buyer.