Maybe I am oversimplifying the concept but why get a 1 of 1 card graded?

It sort of is what it is.....take it or leave it.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
Maybe I am oversimplifying the concept but why get a 1 of 1 card graded?

It sort of is what it is.....take it or leave it.

But this way it goes in the registry, you don't have to buy a holder that fits, and you have a verified condition when you sell it.

Grading is all about the sale. If you want to keep the card for yourself, you don't need an "expert" to give you a number, unless you are seeking perfection in all things, which is bound to be a disappointing habit.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

That makes cents.

But how do you know you got more money for 9 than a 7?

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
But how do you know you got more money for 9 than a 7?

I guarantee you that if that card got a 7, the owner would bust it out of the slab.

You may not know exactly how much more a 9 gets you on a 1/1, but a 7 will certainly get you less. Its high grades only. Less than a 9 loses demand, less than an 8 may as well be raw.

Hahaha! Which means the owner would have to try and get a 9 price to pay for the 7 grade.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
I guarantee you that if that card got a 7, the owner would bust it out of the slab.

These cards are a VERY loose example of a 1/1. They're all labeled as 1/1 because the film piece is unique, but there are 100s (at least) of each card.

I really don't think these would be considered 1/1's if Topps didn't print that on the card.

quote:

Originally posted by Ted Dastick Jr.:
These cards are a VERY loose example of a 1/1. They're all labeled as 1/1 because the film piece is unique, but there are 100s (at least) of each card.

I really don't think these would be considered 1/1's if Topps didn't print that on the card.

That's the best kind of 1/1 for a card maker, the cheap kind. Topps is a mass producer of cards. Exclusive quality isn't one of their strong suits.

But what I would like to know, since this card is described as a film cel relic and the film cel is the 1/1 part, what exactly is the cel? Is it truly cut from an old reel? Is it an actual film piece of some kind? Is it manufactured plastic? They don't project movies like they used, but old stuff is laying around.

Either way it can't be too expensive to make, but if it's called relic, it should be an original piece of film. I have seen cels that were not. So what's the verdict here?

Plus my example was just that, a graded example.

The idea that we are discussing true vs fake one of one's seems to add credibility to my original post.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

quote:

Originally posted by Ted Dastick Jr.:
These cards are a VERY loose example of a 1/1. They're all labeled as 1/1 because the film piece is unique, but there are 100s (at least) of each card.

I really don't think these would be considered 1/1's if Topps didn't print that on the card.

That's the best kind of 1/1 for a card maker, the cheap kind. Topps is a mass producer of cards. Exclusive quality isn't one of their strong suits.

But what I would like to know, since this card is described as a film cel relic and the film cel is the 1/1 part, what exactly is the cel? Is it truly cut from an old reel? Is it an actual film piece of some kind? Is it manufactured plastic? They don't project movies like they used, but old stuff is laying around.

Either way it can't be too expensive to make, but if it's called relic, it should be an original piece of film. I have seen cels that were not. So what's the verdict here?

"In 2010, an editor for Beckett did some digging and discovered the following: Beckett had close to 340,000 1/1 cards listed in the Beckett database — just for baseball."

Obviously the number is in the millions now across the hobby.

The Luka Doncic 4.6 million dollar card was a 1/1 ungraded and yet other 1/1's graded can't get 10k or 100k. Who decides?

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
Plus my example was just that, a graded example.

The idea that we are discussing true vs fake one of one's seems to add credibility to my original post.

[/QUOTE]

There wasn't anything wrong with the credibility of your original post, which was "why get a 1/1 graded?" The answer is to enhance the sales value. It would be the same answer for grading any sort of card, be it base, chase, parallel, promo, hit, whatever. If it's your card, staying in your collection, fewer people feel the need to grade. Some do, but generally speaking for most non-sport card collectors, they don't.

Now a true 1/1 vs a fake 1/1 is a different discussion and it has many nuanced meanings. You could easily argue that just by creating new artificially limited 1/1 cards, manufacturers have made them all fake. Or you could go in the completely opposite direction and say that every certified autographed card is a true unstamped 1/1, even if there are hundreds of copies of the same signed card, because each hand signed autograph is technically not the same.

If it's a 1/1 relic card, but it's a manufactured relic, that's a true 1/1 card, but it's also a fake relic. And of course just because it is a 1/1 card doesn't mean that anyone has to be interested in it, whether true or fake. Every sketch card is a 1/1 and how many of them are on eBay? How many of them will never find a buyer because there is no demand?

Yeah the 1/1s could be in the millions and some will be graded if they have enough demand. Maybe the next step for that 4.6 million dollar Doncic rookie is to get it graded. How else can the new owner sell it for twice as much next year?

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
"In 2010, an editor for Beckett did some digging and discovered the following: Beckett had close to 340,000 1/1 cards listed in the Beckett database — just for baseball."

Obviously the number is in the millions now across the hobby.

The Luka Doncic 4.6 million dollar card was a 1/1 ungraded and yet other 1/1's graded can't get 10k or 100k. Who decides?

I can't even comprehend. . .

Anyone know the circulation of Beckett? I'm curious to know how many collectors are out there. . .

The number of hobby shops still seems drastically smaller to me than it was in the 90s. Perhaps Baseball card shops have fared better, I dunno . . . but the amount of money being spent is mind boggling. Maybe it's all through online sales, but really I don't see that many online sellers either.

I remember back in the day when 5FINITY released Mandy -- sketches were selling for big money comparatively, but the high prices ultimately were all driven by a single collector. When that buyer stopped buying the prices went back down to what other sketch releases were selling for. . . Further when that seller sold off a lot of his collection I bought a TON from him at what had to be 75% less than he paid.

I wonder if something similar is happening here -- a few well off people are cornering the market. It doesn't take a lot of people to manipulate prices.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

But what I would like to know, since this card is described as a film cel relic and the film cel is the 1/1 part, what exactly is the cel? Is it truly cut from an old reel?

cell used in the creation of a film reel probably from a can of film that was rejected or a spare that was never projected anywhere.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

The number of hobby shops still seems drastically smaller to me than it was in the 90s. Perhaps Baseball card shops have fared better, I dunno . . . but the amount of money being spent is mind boggling. Maybe it's all through online sales, but really I don't see that many online sellers either.

I personally believe that ebay may have kept prices down over the years.

How rare and difficult to find would a 500 produced insert/autograph card be pre-online sales?

Conventions, trade mags, local hobby store, bulletin boards, want list swaps among trader groups all rolled up into a one stop shop with protection and security. Many times have I logged into ebay to see 8 or 10 of what I am looking for and tell myself that there are plenty of them......I can bid on this later. This illusion tends to forget that the shelves might be stocked but it is the only store around. How many years could we log in and find an RDJ just sitting out there? It was ALWAYS there!!!

In the history of non-sports cards the last 10 or 20 years has produced them in some of the smallest numbers available. Maybe the hobby is finally waking up to that?

[QUOTE]Originally posted by mykdude:
I personally believe that ebay may have kept prices down over the years./QUOTE]

Another way of saying that is that eBay always plays to the lowest price offered, which is of course true. Everyone is trying to undercut the competition, so the cheapest offer sells first and becomes a standard that other sellers either embrace or refuse on the grounds of being too low.

As far as quantity goes, at one time pre-internet a limited collectible was numbered and advertised at 10,000 or 5,000. Plates, figures, beanies, coins, cards. whatever, were made in the thousands and they were rare. You could not find them anywhere. You and others searched dozen of stores and none could be found. When they were they were often marked up in price.

The internet, and places like eBay in particular, stopped all that. Stuff you hunted for over years were just there in quantity. The limited runs of thousands were suddenly not limited at all and once people who had them wanted to sell, the markets were flooded and the prices dropped below even the original SRP to that lowest offer.

That's the history of eBay if you weren't collecting in that 90's period when the big switch began to happen. It destroyed the collectibles markets, just about every one of them that had popular interest, and ushered in all these 1/1s and ultra limited productions as a way of generating any sort of demand to keep selling.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
I personally believe that ebay may have kept prices down over the years.

How rare and difficult to find would a 500 produced insert/autograph card be pre-online sales?

I think eBay really shined a light on how low demand was on some of the rare cards. Before eBay you are absolutely right -- it was very difficult to find a card limited to 500 copies, and when you did it had a price to match. After eBay it was easier to find the cards, but there were still only 500 cards made. . . I think the prices dropped because of lack of demand.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:

In the history of non-sports cards the last 10 or 20 years has produced them in some of the smallest numbers available. Maybe the hobby is finally waking up to that?

100% agree, the odd thing to me is that this speculator mob is focusing on common overproduced cards rather than actual rare cards.

On another note -- I was having a discussion on Blowout with a guy who was comparing Marvel Universe I (Impel) cards to 1952 Topps Baseball and the comic Amazing Fantasy 15. The guy I was discussing this with is a former Topps employee so he does have credibility.

I personally believe that due to the massive production numbers, and the fact that many people in the 90s collected everything (so few were destroyed) that those comparisons are ridiculous.

I think that if there is a non-sport comparison to Mickey Mantle cards it may be RDJ in Iron Man -- Iron Man kicked off the MCU, and I believe that in the years to come people will be nostalgic for it -- The first Iron Man is already 13 years old.

I think the fact that you can find most cards for sale on ebay shows that there are more cards than people who want them no matter how rare someone says they are although i accept that this does not apply to every card.

For a lot of cards on eBay I simply feel the "Buy It Now" prices are too high. There are plenty of cards there that I would buy in a second if the price was reasonable - not even a good deal for me, the buyer - just reasonable, the going rate. But too many sellers have pie in the sky prices. I think that keeps a lot of sales from happening just as much as a lack of interest. Anything you see sitting at those "Buy It Now" prices is almost always higher than the same item would sell for at auction - and a lot of times drastically so.