90's Baseball Cards: It's Not Just About Ken Griffey Jr. Anymore!!!

Welcome back to Cards and Comics, guys. Today I want to talk about 90s cards. Very popular topic on my channel and uh you've been paying attention to a lot of the prices lately. You know, 90s cards are still hot and uh Griffy cards are kind of gone into the stratosphere. And I can talk about grippy cards in maybe a later video, but one thing I want to talk about because you know most of the 90s baseball discussions, topics, message boards are talking a lot about Griffy cards and um and obviously some cards have gone up double, triple, quadruple uh what they were just a couple years ago and that's caused a lot of people to pay attention, right? And just like with the basketball market, which is very dominated by Jordan, um it's very common to think baseball cards are in the 90s are only dominated or only have a couple players that are very popular, collectible. And what I want to talk about today is to show you through some proof that the 90s baseball market is more than just Ken Griffy Jr. There's a lot of players that are collectible that people love to collect and you see them going for good money all the time. So, what I did was I just did one kind of snapshot in November, uh, around Thanksgiving time of the '9s market off of eBay, uh, the biggest market still. And I only did PSA graded cards just because that was the easiest thing for me to search and get some data on. So, I went and tried to look to see outside of Ken Griffy Jr. what was the most popular and expensive 90s cards that sold um on eBay through auction only. I only did auctions. So, these are bids um that are non-Kang Griffy Jr. cards that are PSA graded just to get a a subset, a sample size of how popular other players are besides Kangri Jr. So, let's look and I did some summaries and let's look at the data and um just kind of walk through it with you guys. So, here where I'm showing here is um you know the top you know 100 again non King Griffy Junior cards that sold on eBay around that Christmas time. And the thing I want to showcase here is that um just in summary of the 100 cards that sold um that I tracked 33 of them were different players. So again, it's not just four or five players. There were 33 cards uh or 33 different players that sold in the top 100 cards off of eBay. Um and the minimum price for every one of these cards is over $1,000. So, I know people think it's crazy, but there was 33 players that sold in November. Um, that was tracked through eBay sales in November that brought over $1,000, right? The these are not King Griffy Jr. cards. These are uh not just Derek Jeter cards, not just Frank Thomas cards. 33 different players had cards that sold for over $1,000 uh through November uh on eBay. Uh, and you see the max price of over $8,000. So, you're getting into some pretty high-end crazy sales. And not only was it 33 different cards, but it's from 55 different sets. So, we're talking like multiple sets, um, you had multiple cards, but again, a big diversity in the in the amount of cards, uh, players and sets that were being sold. Now, the other thing, too, is um again, the average cost per cart was over $2,000, almost $2,500. So, again, these are big numbers. Like the this is much different than what it was five, 10 years ago where it was Griffy or bust, you know, this is now uh the 90s have really diversified and players and sets and cards to look for. And the thing that I thought was really interesting was the average grade was only 8.5. And you know, a lot of the 90 sets are condition sensitive, so you don't get high grades on a lot of things like PMGs. But it just shows you that people aren't just looking for tents. You know, I think 10 years ago to get cards to sell for over $1,000, they had to be PSA tents. Nobody would pay a thousand dollars for a, you know, Hideo Nommo card or a even Nolan Ryan card, Wade Bogs card, Ivan Rodriguez card, unless it was a tent. It was just that would be unthought of, unheard of for people to pay uh $2,500 on average for a card that was not a PSA 10. So, we are kind of growing a little bit as a hobby, guys. We're trying to get out of, you know, this whole like everything has to be a 10 um, you know, era. And and the 90s cards are a great example of like just like with pre-war and even 50s and 60s cards, you can't get tens on those cards uh from some of these sets. So, you have to be happy with what you can get sometimes. Uh, so let's look at a summary here on this. Who are these players, right? So, I did um you know break it down by you know what players um you know um in what sets were being sold. So here we're looking at you've got um obviously Derek Jeter is the big dog here. 38 out of a 100red cards. So, you know, I could have done the analysis where I just excluded Derek Jeter and Grippy and dug down deeper into the well of 90s cards. And, you know, that's fine. But I I do think it's just interesting because the the difference in price point a lot of times between Jeter and Griffy is pretty severe. With Frank Thomas, there's this like in some sets it's 4x, you know, Griffy goes for four times more than Frank Thomas. Some sets it's only 2x, some sets it's 10x. You know, it doesn't it's not consistent. Same way with Jeter. I have seen some Jeter cards bring close to Griffy prices. And I have also seen Jeter cards bring a fraction of Griffy prices for the same card from the same or same type of card from a from a similar set. So, it's it's all over the place. The thing that is interesting is when you drill down in here that Barry Bonds was not number two in this subset of data. or number three. And I think that most likely is not right over time. I think if I were to do this meta analysis over, let's say the last three years, like a three-year keer of like, you know, what's what's the prices of of Berry Bonds cards, I think it would be number two, number three. Honestly, for what I see out there, it just happened in this one subset of data. There wasn't a lot of great bonds cards that went for auction on eBay, and that can happen. Um, but it's just a microcosm of the whole uh the whole 90s uh system is that sometimes it's just timing to see really what the market's like. But it does just want to I just want to say that this is a good way of looking at how volatile and how just you know there's a lot of other players that people buy and if Bonds isn't being sold in in a month you know not a lot of cards for sale there's plenty of Nolan Ryan's Bo Jackson's Frank Thomas' Ichiro you know A-Rod cards that are selling right so uh and Iro his rookies not to 2001 uh he had some cards again from the Japanese league from the 90s that were selling really well. Still 90s cards, guys. Uh so had 90s cards. Um so yeah, I'll go through here a little bit and just make some observations. Uh there's, you know, I think Hideo Nommo and Chipper Jones being so high. I think for a lot of 90s fans, a lot of 90s collectors, that's not a surprise to see Hideon Nommo and Chipper Jones high that they're very popular players or collectors are players for collectors to collect. I have huge super fans out there that want everything, especially the really tough stuff. Um, Nolan Ryan is like I I think it's one of those players that uh people forgot how popular he was in the 90s and how he still has a huge huge fan base of super collectors out there. Uh Bo Jackson, I think, is has really come on recently. I think his collectible card game has kind of put him back in the spotlight with some maybe some younger collectors. Um, you know, but again, you go through this list and you say, "Well, okay, A-Rod has two cards. Maddox has two guards, Piaza has two guards, but there's some players on this list I just want to call out. Paul Cano, uh, you know, um, has got a card. You've got Carlos Beltran. Yeah, Beltran, I could see that. But Jeff Kent, Josh Hamilton, Kenny Loftton, Carrie Wood, uh, you know, players Will Clark has a really strong fan base. So again, you have a lot of diversity of players here. And then sets, and we'll talk about sets here in a minute, but again, sets like molten metal, titanium, the gold, summer out of 50. Uh, you know, those are strong cards. They're they exist in basketball. And one thing that is a very common theme here is essential credentials, mold medals, uh refractors, you know, those things have both a basketball and baseball appeal, uh PMGs, and that is where you see a lot of crossover between baseball and basketball collectors when you have sets that have crossover or have the same type of cards in in both baseball and basketball. So, love the fact that you have that crossover collecting potential, but baseball has its own unique stuff. 91 uh 91 Desert Shield, 93 Finest Refractors, uh the No Name on Front um Frank Thomas card. You know, there's a couple of things that are only um I think unique to the whole baseball universe. Uh the certified team mirror golds I think are only in baseball. I mean, I may be wrong on that one, but again, there are cards that only exist in the baseball universe. So, that makes those cards fun and very much like its own little thing for for baseball card collectors, right? And you look at the prices and the average grades here. You know, the molten metals are titaniums are crazy price points. Uh, and Ivan Rodriguez just sold. I was looking at it and it went higher than I thought it was going to go. So, there is a lot of people out there chasing chasing chasing these these cards. Um, just on a side note, there's one player not mentioned here. Um, actually there's kind of few that weren't on this list uh that kind of surprised me. Jose Cano and Wade Bogs didn't show up here on this list. Um, so there were some players who just didn't have PSA auction sales in that time period I looked at. Doesn't mean that they're not popular. Doesn't mean that they don't have a lot of sales. Doesn't mean that they're not players that people are collect or chase in the 90s. It just shows you again the diversity. So, let's go look at the other thing which the most popular sets. Um, you've got uh 93 SP and again a lot of these are heavily weighted to the Derek Jeter rookie card. Um 93 SP, 93 tops gold, and then 93 tops Marlins, the Marlin team set that they put out. Same with the Colorado team set, the expansion where you had the logo on every card. Uh again, those are all very specific to Derek Cheetah rookie cards, but we get into like other sets like the essential credentials, but the 93 tops finest refractor. Again, the first refractor set. Um beautiful cards. Their design is unique to baseball. They didn't repeat that design and any other set. So again, that set is immensely popular. 91 There's a shield is still very popular. Then you get into cards like the PMGs, the essential credentials, the titaniums, um you know PMGs, rubies, game jerseys, all of those have parallels again to the basketball universe. Um so but you see some again Opich's tops Tiffany's um leaf black gold for Jeff Kent. Um you know just you can see these different sets with different cards. Flare Showcase, Masterpieces, the Hot Gloves, Flur Ultra is on the set is listed here a few times. Donner's Crusades. So again, a lot of cool sets, a lot of things that you Flur Brilliance, uh, Flur Starting Nine, which is a very cool insert set number to nine. So, uh, even Sports Illustrated first edition 101's was listed here. Then you go up to sort of the manufacturers or sort of the brands. Tops upper deck dominate. But again, Flare Showcase, Flare Ultra, Flare's uh Tradition, Leaf Signature, Metal Universe, Topps Chrome, Bowman Chrome, Bowman's Best, Flare Brilliance. And you see all these sets coming up. Some of these sets unfortunately are no longer made in baseball universe because of all the you know bankruptcies and consolidation and and uh ownerships of the different rights. So um it kind of a sad thing that we don't have these sets around anymore. Some of these cards aren't made anymore in the baseball universe and it makes me sad. But it also really helps the 90s cards because you know you're you're not seeing uh essential credentials in baseball anymore. You're not seeing um you know the cut aboves. You're not seeing some of these really cool sets like you did in before uh established feel brilliant. Those sets are gone. The upper deck, you know, they're not coming back. So, or at least for for the near future. So, again, it makes these 90s cards feel like the real deal. Makes them unique. Makes, you know, I always say this established was a one-time set. You know, I have it sitting right here. It's like you've got this set that was only issued one time and the cards are beautiful. Um, makes those cards cool. Uh, makes people really love and chase those cards. The man refractors, even though they've reprinted them, um, the originals are are beautiful. So, it's just the uniqueness and coolness of those cards are amazing. So again, going back just to the overview, um, you know, as we kind of like, you know, go through the summary here, the 90s aren't just about Griffy. And I think as long as people realize that this is starting to uh accelerate that people are starting to super collect players, teams, sets, uh individual cards like they want I see people hoarding cards um you know they they fall in love with one design and they want all of one player in that design. So they buy every card of his and that design. you're seeing this uh collecting mentality really taking over in the 90s. It's not just about flipping. It's about actually loving the cards and owning the cards. That's why I think the market is so diverse. If it was only about flipping cards, I honestly don't think you would see Carlos Beltron or Jeff Kent cards or, you know, um a lot of these Kenny Lofting cards really being collected because or being sold for $8,000 for a Kenny Lofting card, uh which is, you know, recently. So that shows you that people want to collect the player, the set, whatever it is. It's collecting. Collecting is driving this guys. This is not about just flipping. This is not about people out there just trying to turn a buck. Yes, people are trying to make money on 90s cards. People are out there buying them, trying to resell them. That's h happening. But a lot of times they're ending up in collector's hand. So um I just want to give you guys that sort of brief review of just the fact that it's not just Griffy. There's a lot of diversity out there, guys. So, when you're out looking for cards, just thinking like that Will Clark rare low number card might be more valuable than you think. It might be worth picking up. It might be worth going through those dollar $5 boxes at the at the shows now looking for some of these cards, some of these players that you may not have thought were big time uh players uh with these low numbered cool parallels. So, or or inserts. So, there it is guys. Let me know what you think in the comments. I'll see you next time on Cards of Comics. Bye. Heat. Heat.

In this video I go over the highest sales on eBay in thru November of 90's baseball cards that were not Ken Griffey Jr. The sheer number of players and cards that sold over $1000 was staggering.