Collectors Dashboard evaluates collectibles as an alternative asset class. By many views, the evidence is undeniable. The cost of collectibles can easily be exponentially higher than a typical stock or bond investment. Collectors and investors openly compete for the same exact assets that come to auction. Baseball cards are perhaps the most iconic examples of vintage collectibles. They come with scarcity, they are in high demand, and ins some cases the price paid can be as higher than 99% of the homes in America.
One facet of collecting and investing in cards is purchasing or compiling a complete set of cards. Putting together a vintage set from scratch can take years even in an eBay and auction-driven hobby.
Vintage collectors have referred to the T206 tobacco set, known for the famed multi-million dollar Honus Wagner card, as “The Monster” baseball card set. The reality is that there are actually 3 sets within the valuable and popular sets that could each be considered “The Monster” on their own right.
These baseball card sets have hundreds of players. The scarcity of available cards for a set can range from difficult to almost impossible to obtain. And at higher grading that is sought by many investors, the examples may be impossible to obtain because they simply no longer exist.
Building a complete set may be viewed with a high degree of subjectivity from person to person. Some collectors do not care if the cards are in high-grade condition. Others want only pristine cards. Some investors will even buy a complete graded set solely to sell the cards off individually because the “sum of the parts” may be more valuable than the full set’s value.
There are three sets that vintage collectors and investors both know quite well. Two of the complete sets might not be so large by modern set standards. There is one set that will likely never be eclipsed within reason.
The true “Monster Set” was the famed T206 set from the American Tobacco Company. Another so-called “Monster” was the 1952 Topps baseball card set. The lesser known “Monster” is the N172 Old Judge from Goodwin & Co. which was produced back in 1887.
Buying cards to complete any of these “Monster” sets is undoubtedly going to cost a small fortune. Forget a pretty pennies here. It will cost tens of thousands (or multiples of that) for any of these complete sets in good condition.
Collectors Dashboard does recognize that each of these 3 monster sets are more likely to be considered “Holy Grail” items within collectibles. These sets do not generally have to include the incredibly rare cards nor the cards that cost in the tens-of-thousands or hundreds-of-thousands of dollars to be considered “complete” for collectors and investors.
These three sets are being reviewed in reverse order due to the availability and popularity of each set. While the review includes the population of graded cards as of April 2021, there may be many more examples of each set out there in private collections which have never been graded. Some collectors still actually prefer raw cards, particularly if the sets were put together by them or their relatives in decades past. Also, some cards are in too poor of a condition to justify the expense for grading hundreds of the cards.
There are still some sets locked away from the public and have been in private collections for decades. It is becoming less common to have the “finds” of the deep vintage cards, but there are undoubtedly many cards that remain undiscovered and which are waiting to be found again.
1952 TOPPS BASEBALL
The 1952 Topps baseball card set was not actually the first set produced by Topps. The 1951 cards are not that desirable to most collectors, and the 1952 set was Topps’ debut as a true leader in sports cards. The company wanted to overtake Bowman in sports cards. While opinions are subjective and can vary, the 1952 Topps set is considered by many to be the most popular baseball card set ever produced. The set is made of beautifully painted images that are mostly portraits of the baseball players of the day. It boasts 407 cards and the 2 5/8″ X 3 3/4″ size was also a much larger format card than its rival Bowman. Topps more than succeeded with the release of this blockbuster set.
Without getting into the minutia, there were different runs with the low numbers, semi-high numbers (251-310) and high numbers (311-407). The last series is where the big-money cards reside – players like Mickey Mantle’s most iconic card, and players like Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Eddie Mathews and others. The Willie Mays card that can now easily run in the tens of thousands of dollars for grades at very good or better is in the semi-high series. There are also red back and black back variations in many of the cards.
While there are exponentially more cards which have not been graded, PSA’s population report showed about 270,000 examples of the entire set have been graded as of April 2021. SGC listed 31,013 cards graded as its population report between new grading and old grading standards. As of April 2021, the population of Mickey Mantle “rookies” was just 1,745 graded by PSA and 549 graded cards from SGC.
Let’s put this in context of perhaps 500,000 interested baseball card collectors. The entire graded population of cards from the 1952 Topps set leaves less than 1 graded card per collector/investor at that rate. That is without considering the value of the common cards versus stars and super-stars.
1909-1911 T206 BASEBALL
The American Tobacco Company produced the famous T206 baseball cards set from the years 1909 to 1911. This is openly referred to as the true “Monster Set” because it counts 524 different cards. The set comes with 390 cards from professional players from the major league of the era. There are also 134 minor league players which are generally more rare and higher in price than common players from the larger run.
These small cards were inserts in cigarette packs of and they came with one purpose: selling more cigarettes. One effort behind the success for the tobacco companies was that it was relatively easy to pull a star player of the day. Many players in the T206 set are now in the Hall of Fame. And many of those stars have multiple cards. Ty Cobb and Joe Tinker each have 4 card variations on the face of each card and many variations of the backs. Players like Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Chief Bender, Addie Joss, Christy Mathewson, John McGraw and others have more than 1 card from those years as well.
There are 16 different backs for T206 cards. The most common advertisement backs are Piedmont, Sweet Caporal, Old Mill and Sovereign, and the remaining backs with brands generally come with a multiplier in their prices. Some T206 collectors even break down the cards by the cigarette factory number they were produced in.
This famous baseball set was not the first nor the last of the era’s tobacco cards. It was still the largest and most widely distributed set in cigarette packs in the decade before World War 1. PSA’s entire graded population report including the half/+ and qualifier grades was more than 253,000 as of April 2021.
To put the total number of T206 cards in context, there are nearly as many T206 tobacco cards graded as there are 1952 Topps cards graded. That is despite the tobacco era being about 110 years old versus 70 years old for the Topps cards in the bubble gum era.
Collecting a set of T206 cards is possible because of how many cards are available. Its “complete set” status does not require the rare Honus Wagner and Eddie Plank cards, nor does it require the well known “error cards” to be counted a complete set. One issue to consider is that with the multiple common and rare backs of the years it was made means that there are many more potential combinations than just the 524 cards counted.
When these complete sets do come to auction, they are generally broken up and sold individually. Otherwise the pool of buyers who can throw $50,000 or $100,000 (or more) will be much smaller.
It is fortunate that Honus Wagner is not a must to own a complete set here. It is becoming next to impossible to buy one of the T206 Honus Wagner cards for under $1 million even when the cards are the worst examples that have survived.
N172 OLD JUDGE BASEBALL
The black and white sepia photo Old Judge (N172) tobacco series was produced by Goodwin & Co. This set was issued from 1887 to 1890. Here is why collectors should consider the Old Judge as baseball’s true “Monster Set” — There were roughly 500 cards, but there are thousands of unique cards because of the variations of stances and players in uniform or wearing coats and ties. Because there are so many variations, newly discovered cards and new variations are still being discovered each year despite the set being 130 years old.
It would be a nearly impossible task for any collector or investor to assemble a complete N172. To do so would require endless funds, endless time, and continued persistence. PSA has previously estimated that there are 4,500 or more cards considering the player variations and poses. To add to that count, boxers and wrestlers were produced and the N172 set features players from minor league teams which have since faded into history.
One task that is possible here is to collect a “Hall of Fame” set. This would be to own one or more example of each the 25 Hall of Fame players like Cap Anson, Charles Comisky, Clark Griffith, Jim O’Rourke and others. Even without care of condition, putting together even a “Hall” set will require much patience and a deep pocketbook.
The set has Gypsy Queen backs and Old Judge backs. Each card measures 1 1/2″ X 2 1/2″ in a sepia image that was new technology at the time. The Gypsy Queens are represented as being more scarce and more valuable than the more common Old Judge backs.
The PSA population report counted just 5,405 graded examples of these cards as of April 2021. Time has not been a friend to the photography stock of the late 1800s. Improper storage for decades by collectors who did not know better is to blame. As is some collectors or families believing these were just old photographs. This combined condition-ignorance has contributed to many of these cards faded to the point the image and typeset are hard to see.
PSA’s counted less than 100 of the N172 cards graded 8 or higher. The “sweet spot” of the PSA grading with the highest sample count is the PSA 2 grade with 1,103 samples. Due to these cards now being so old, many collectors seek the cards with better photo quality rather than cards that are graded higher with faded photos.
MONSTER COLLECTORS VERSUS MONSTER INVESTORS
Regardless of being a collector or investor, there are no assurances that the price will rise from the time it was purchased. Sadly, many collectors and card investors also can no longer afford to chase after the premium vintage cards that have low populations.
Investors have bid up the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle cards and the T206 Honus Wagner cards with recent sales breaking records. The record is now more than $5 million for Mickey Mantle (a perfect example may command $10 million or $20 million)… The highest Honus Wagner sales are now above $3 million.
A complete vintage set of these mentioned in the highest grades available would easily run into the millions of dollars. Those sales figures should come with an asterisk because the finest samples graded by PSA have not come to auction in some time.
Some investors love to play the “go back in time” game and say which stocks (usually Apple, Microsoft, Amazon) they would buy if they were able to go back in time. If you ever land in a real time machine and go back to the 1990s or 1980s, any investor would have done as well (or better) buying some of the cards mentioned in this report based on the massive selling prices seen in 2020 and 2021.
