Theodore Samuel Williams is better known as Ted Williams to sports fans and vintage baseball card collectors. He was without argument one of the greatest baseball players that ever lived. Many of his baseball prowess attributes from the 1940s and 1950s would still be desirable to any manager in the modern era of baseball. The key rookie cards of Ted Williams look undervalued versus key vintage rookies. Will his card rise after prices compressed?
Collectors Dashboard evaluates collectibles as an alternative asset class. These high-end collectibles are competing for capital that could have otherwise been invested into stocks, bonds or real estate. Collectors and investors alike should never assume that the value of any collectibles will rise over time. Some will lose value and some have lost handily. Those major price gains seen in late 2020 and early 2021 were followed by some significant price drops in sports card prices after peaking in early 2021.
Relative to other historic baseball greats, Ted Williams was undervalued as a baseball player. This alone does not assure that his prices can only rise. Ted’s more collectible vintage baseball cards and his rookie cards look and feel relatively undervalued compared to key cards of other baseball greats of his era. The relative value should not be understood as a prediction that ‘Splendid Splinter’ or ‘Teddy Ballgame’ card prices will suddenly soar in value again.
If Ted Williams’ vintage baseball cards were publicly traded stocks, they would be considered ‘value stocks’ in the investment vernacular. Sometimes value stocks never get their full respect they deserve.
One key issue in Ted’s career was just how many prime years he missed over military service. Ted also had some personally inflicted wounds that damaged his reputation with the fans and the media. And there were many years where the card-collecting boys of the era simply couldn’t pull Ted Williams cards out of baseball card packs.
Ted Williams began his career in the Pacific Coast League before entering Major League Baseball. Despite being tall enough (6’ 3”) by modern standards, Ted would be considered pencil-thin compared to the more muscular players of modern baseball. Ted entered MLB in 1939 and his “rookie card weight” was listed as 175 pounds. His weight was listed as 195 pounds on his last Topps card from 1958. The Hall of Fame Almanac had Ted listed as 205 pounds, but that was toward the end of his career.
Ted is one of the few players who lasted for longer than 20 years in the majors. He still ended his career with a .344 batting average that had him in a tie for the top-10 list of all-time averages.
His vintage baseball cards are still desirable to collectors, but in the higher conditions his more desirable cards can command prices well into the tens of thousands of dollars. That might not sound undervalued to some collectors, but on a relative value basis Ted’s cards just do not command the same premium prices as cards of Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Jackie Robinson and many of the players from the tobacco card era.
Ted Williams vintage cards are generally more valuable before the end of his career, and while that may sound common this has a much larger explanation that is due. There are fewer examples of baseball cards of Ted Williams compared to many of the Hall of Famers that he played against from the 1950s and who played into the 1960s or 1970s.
One area where Ted Williams has an oversupply (also hurting the value) is in the number of autographed items. Ted signed a countless number of autographs toward the end of his life. The argument that Ted Williams has undervalued vintage cards should not pertain to signed baseballs, photos, bats and other signed items.
Here are some just of the statistics and some relative data points about the life of Ted Williams that all add up to why Ted Williams is considered here as an undervalued player – and as an undervalued vintage baseball card.
1) Ted Is Underappreciated for Homers!
Ted may not have been destined to be the all-time home run king, but he still finished his career with 521 home runs despite having missed the equivalent of 5 baseball seasons due to military service. That is also before considering injury. That would have him as a Top-10 of the vintage baseball players before the modern era.
Even one more average year (37 homers) of those 5 missed seasons could have easily lofted him above Willie McCovey (tied at 521), Jimmie Foxx (534), Mickey Mantle (536), and Mike Schmidt (548). Two of those missing years could have put Ted closer to 600 homers, above vintage greats like Harmon Killebrew (573) and Frank Robinson (586). Without missing a half-year for injury and those years for military service, Ted’s career could have challenged the 660 homers of Willie Mays and put Ted closer to the 700-homer club. And for whatever it’s worth, Ted also ended his last career at-bat with a homer.
2) Monster Batting Averages
Ted was not the first solid hitter to study pitchers relentlessly. He was not alone in being well-known for not chasing the bad pitches. That said, his .406 batting average from the 1941 season was the last season that any player has managed to hit above the key .400 level since. That’s when he earned another nickname “The Thumper,” solidified with a slugging percentage of .735 with 37 homers and 135 runs in just 143 games.
To prove this .400 average was no fluke, Ted hit .344 in the prior (2nd) year and .356 the following (4th) year. And even after missing 3 years in service for World War 2, Ted returned to hit a more than impressive .342 in his returning season to baseball in 1946.
3) The Red Sox Team Was Less Than Spectacular
Ted Williams played his entire career of 1939 to 1960 for the Boston Red Sox. While only having one team over a career was common for vintage-era ballplayers, this also Meant that Ted only played the course over one World Series (1946) his entire career. Imagine if the Red Sox, who were still under “The Curse of the Bambino” at the time, had just one more strong batter or one better pitcher in the lineup over his career.
Ted’s lack of World Series appearances were also not very welcoming with fans and the press (see below). Williams’ fame and notoriety could have been much higher. And to prove the point even further, imagine if Ted Williams had played his MLB career with the Yankees, Giants or Dodgers.
4) Ted Was One of the Original Classic Hitters
Ted Williams was baseball’s top champion of getting on base. He authored the book ‘The Science of Hitting’ that aimed to help ballplayers of all ages become better hitters. He did not just signal to avoid going after bad pitches. Ted was even known for
The Hall of Fame Almanac listed that Ted’s holds the all-time record of starters on-base percentages (OBP) at .482. He led the league for 7 straight years and 12 seasons in all in that count. He ended his career with 2,021 walks (BB) and total hits of 2,654 despite five years out of the game during his prime years. Ted Williams would have easily made the prized 3,000-hit club had he been able to play.
5) The Missing Years for Military Service
Ted initially faced criticism over playing the 1942 season after so many ballplayers joined the Armed Services, but this decision looks to be financially related. He learned to fly fighter planes and spent World War 2 as a flight instructor to help the United States win the war in the skies. As an instructor, Ted may have been far more effective training hundreds of pilots to win the war in the air.
Ted was recalled to active duty in 1952 to be a Marine pilot in the Korean War, and this time Ted was in combat flying. One of Ted’s first missions in a jet in Korea his plane took a serious hit and caught fire, and Ted had to follow using another pilot’s visual instructions to get back to the base. He became known for refusing to bail out over fears that ejecting would wreck his knees and wreck his hopes of returning to play baseball.
Ted’s life and career could have later ended in the Korean War after a landing gear failure miraculously did not result in an instant explosion on the ground. That Ted’s plane did not explode amazed some fellow pilots, and Ted was credited with a very colorful prayer that can be searched for online.
6) All-Star & MVP (Less Than Deserved) Alike
To say that Ted Williams was an All-Star is an understatement. The only year Ted was not on the All-Star team outside of being in military service was in his rookie year in 1939. Ted finished as the MVP in 1946 and in 1949, and there were 5 other seasons that Ted Williams was either #2 or #3 in the MVP votes.
On top of just getting on base, his career slugging percentage of .634 is second to only the great Babe Ruth. Ted even blew past star Mickey Mantle for the AL Batting Title at age 39 in a race that was not even close. Ted Williams is also known for having one of the purest and cleanest swings of all baseball batters ever caught on film.
7) Bad Media Relations and Bad Public Relations
Ted Williams had challenging times with the fans and with sportswriters alike. Much of this was self-inflicted because times were different than the media and fans of today. This led to the Ted having less of a rosy relationship with fans and the media like rival stars such as Joe DiMaggio.
Ted refused to tip his hat after home runs and did not step back out from the dugout for fan cheers as was customary. Many years later he claimed that he was considering tipping his hat on what he assumed would be his last home run, but he went into the dugout without doing so.
Ted’s relationship with the Boston sportswriters was one of mutual content. He was criticized for his batting in the World Series, and Ted was unyielding about his complaints as local sportswriters were critical of him in the newspapers. After returning to baseball after the Korean War, one sports writer wrote that returning without swing a bat in a year, and with health issues, was referred to as an impossible undertaking at the age of 35.
8) Do Ugly Rookie Cards Help or Hurt?
Some players have beautiful rookie cards. Ted Williams’ main rookie card is the small black and white 1939 Play Ball card. PSA counts just 1,122 graded samples (far less than the 1952 Topps Mantle rookie count above 1,700 samples). Of those, just 952 have straight grades or non-qualifier grades. Of the 378 of the non-sample cards there are 314 graded “5” and under at that service.
Two other rookie cards are larger than normal cards in size. The quite rare 1939 Goudey Premiums has PSA counting only total of 19 cards graded. This card can be quite pricey but many vintage collectors have never even seen that card.
The least valuable rookie card has two variations in the 1939 to 1946 Salutation Exhibit cards with the rather dull blank backs. Some of those even ended up being used as postal cards back in the day, and many card dealers have confirmed that there may be exponentially more of these Exhibit cards that are in scrap books or that remain ungraded due to the value being low.
The harsh reality is that Ted’s rookie cards have very little eye appeal and the images just are not that great. It was not until the colorful 1941 Play Ball series that Ted’s cards started having some eye appeal.
9) Ted’s Cards Are Missing From Many Key Sets
On top of collectors and investors flocking toward certain players, there are some baseball card sets that are just more valuable than others. Ted Williams is missing from the 1948 and 1949 Bowman sets that started getting collectors interested in cards after World War 2.
Ted also does not have a baseball card in the prized 1952 Topps set, nor in the 1953 Topps set. Ted’s cards are also missing from the 1952 Bowman and 1953 Bowman card sets.
The 1954 Bowman had been considered a more scarce card with fewer printings due to a contract dispute, but it is still considered to be the prized anchor card of that set. On last look, there were nearly 1,100 PSA graded samples versus nearly 4,200 Mickey Mantle samples. Ted was among the baseball players from the 1940s who simply did not have many baseball cards around World War 2 due to a lack of resources (and likely a lack of funds in the years after the Great Depression).
10) A Career-Ending Market Flood of Cards!
Despite Ted Williams ending his career in 1960, and despite the scarcity in cards from before the 1950s, Ted’s supply of cards flooded the market at the end of his career. The 1958 Topps cards were Ted’s last major set, with a regular card and a debut All-Star card that was new for Topps. His card was given #1 in the set and it has nearly 3,500 graded examples counted by PSA. The #485 (All-Star) in the 1958 Topps set has about 2,950 PSA graded samples alone. A third card is a “Sluggers Supreme” card of Williams and Kluszewski with 1,256 graded samples from PSA.
The 1959 Fleer Ted Williams card set caused the biggest flood of Ted Williams cards. Fleer dedicated a complete set of 80 standard sized cards in 1959 to mark the capstone of Ted’s career, with many of his life events being portrayed on and off the baseball field. It should be an honor and testament to have a full baseball card set dedicated to one ballplayer’s career, but PSA alone counts a massive sum of 47,453 total graded samples of that set and SGC counted another 5,800 graded samples. This Fleer set comes with very affordable card prices, even in the higher grades, due to a vast population of the graded and ungraded cards.
The end result is that this flood of cards late in Ted’s career represents a massive overhang on his earlier vintage cards from Play Ball, Leaf, Bowman and Topps cards combined.
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Again, referencing Ted Williams as undervalued is meant to be relative to other key players of his time. Does a PSA 8 rookie Ted Williams seem fair at $52,000? It should not be considered a blanket statement nor a prediction that Ted Williams cards from earlier years are set to skyrocket in value. In fact, here is a quick hit on why a card’s last sale price just doesn’t matter.
