Vintage basketball card prices have been on a roll of late, fueled by speculation and demand for some of the hobby’s most prized possessions from the past. 

The boom in values has been fairly widespread throughout most of the vintage sports card market, but the flame seems to have really been held to basketball card values.

Why the increase in basketball card prices?  It’s hard to pinpoint an exact reason, just like it’s hard to tell you why Pets.com was one of the most loved stocks at the height of the stock internet bubble in 1999.  

Momentum can be a funny thing.  Using stock prices as an example, once that excessive demand builds in something that everyone wants to own, the underlying valuation of the item at hand tends to get thrown right out the window. 

It’s a lot easier to put a value on a stock then it is a basketball card.  With a company, you can evaluate the profits relative to the company’s value and growth prospects to determine if a company’s stock is over or undervalued.

One of the most frequent questions we get from novice collectors is in regards to the ‘Authentic’ grade from third party grading companies.

It’s confusing, since we automatically assume a card we get graded is authentic to begin with; thus why does a grading company label a card as solely ‘Authentic’ with no numerical grade (from 1 to 10)?  And then ‘Authentic Altered’…what’s the difference between the two?

Simply put, an ‘Authentic’ grade means that the grading company identified something wrong with the card, usually an alteration or some other major defect, which prohibited them from assigning a numerical grade to the card.  

In what follows, we will examine some of the nuances of ‘Authentic’ graded cards and why they are graded that way.  Hopefully this will help clear up some of the confusion.

Be also sure to check out our piece on ‘How To Spot a Trimmed Card’ which talks more about grading and trimming. 

This Sweet Caporal pack was recently offered in a Facebook group for $1800 but I soon realized that there was zero possibility the pack could contain any T206 cards.

I recently came across a Facebook post with a seller trying to sell an unopened Sweet Caporal cigarette pack. 

The pack looked to be in relatively nice shape and the seller was asking for $1800, which to me seemed somewhat reasonable given that a T206 card might be nestled inside. 

I hadn’t really explored T206 unopened packs before and the listing triggered me to do some research into the topic.

Could this unopened pack hold a T206 card?  Imagine if it had a Honus Wagner, or even a near mint Cobb portrait.  The possibilities seemed nearly worth the risk at that point. 

However after researching old tobacco packs and examining some of the finer details on the pack, it was quite clear that there was zero possibility this pack held any cards from the T206 set. 

In this piece, I’m going to walk readers through the steps one needs to take in order to assess whether an old tobacco pack might contain a card or not.  

I also speak to noted tobacco pack expert Jon Canfield to discuss the topic in more detail.  

Please let me know if you have any packs that might be of interest.  Feel free to email me at chris@allvintagecards.com

One of the most intimidating situations can occur when a loved one leaves you a collection of valuable baseball cards.

For many, the cards represent a piece of their family member, and selling it can bring up a whole range of mixed emotions.

In addition to the emotions involved, if you’ve never bought a pack of baseball cards, inheriting a valuable sports card collection can certainly be an overwhelming situation. 

Sometimes the collection isn’t worth as much as you might have expected, although there are times when the value of the inherited collection exceeds all expectations. 

This resource will walk you through the different options for evaluating the inherited collection, including how to determine values, how to sell the card collection or holding onto the cards and safely storing them.  

Always feel free to reach out to me at chris@allvintagecards.com with any questions. 

We have a lot of collectors asking about grading, namely how to do it, and whether they should do it?

But one of the bigger questions that has come up lately is this:

Do PSA Graded Cards sell for a premium over graded cards from SGC and Beckett?

I always assumed that this was true, but decided now to do a deeper dive into recent sales data to see if it was actually true.

Our findings: for older pre-war cards, PSA graded cards carry a XX% premium over SGC and Beckett.  For newer, modern cards, PSA pricing is more in line with the other grading companies.

Let’s take a closer look.

We’ve written extensively about how to identify a fake Michael Jordan rookie card here and here

As I’ve mentioned many times, we get a lot of inquiries asking to help authenticate Jordan rookie cards. 

We’ve also written about the history of PSA flips and how to altered slabs. 

First, let’s just say that the Jordan fakes are getting better.  Often I find myself telling a reader that it’s not possible with me to authenticate via images and would need to examine the card in person.  So, long story short, the scammers are getting better at their job.

Now, something that the scammers have been doing for a while, and not just with Jordan rookies, is busting cards from authentic flips and replacing with a fake card.

The widespread price increases throughout the hobby has led to a surge in demand for sports card grading.

This has led to significantly increased wait times across all of the third party grading companies. 

PSA, SGC and Beckett just can’t keep up.  With forced closures during the peak of COVID leading to a backlog, the excess demand in recent months has led to significant delays for all of the grading companies. 

Thus, if you have a card you want to get graded, you could be waiting upwards of six months to get your card back.

Now of course there are ways to spend a bit more and get your order expedited.  In this guide, we’ll examine the wait times for all of the grading companies and what it costs to get your cards graded today at each company. 

In our history of baseball cards piece, we discussed at length the history of the Topps baseball card company; from their initial entry with the 1951 Red and Blue Back sets to their acquisition of Bowman in 1956.

In this piece, we wanted to have a little fun and rank all of the Topps sets starting with the ’51 Blue/Red Back issue all the way to the 1980 Topps Baseball card set. 

Now of course, we’ve noted that anything produced prior to 1980 is considered to be vintage, but we figured with this piece, we’d keep it to an even thirty years of Topps issues.  

Our rankings are based on a few different factors:

1) Overall design of the set

2) Star and rookie card power in the set

3) Collector Demand

4) Investment Potential

I’m sure there will be some that collectors disagree with, so let us know in the comments what you think are the best Topps baseball card sets.

For now, we’ve provided full writeups on the best ten Topps sets of all time.  At some point we might expand the writeups for all thirty Topps sets. 

A Reprint of a Wilt Chamberlain rookie card.

With the big run-up in Michael Jordan rookies over the past few years, vintage basketball cards from the 1960’s and 1970’s have followed, showing significant price increases.

While I authenticate a lot of Michael Jordan rookies, I’ve started to get a lot of requests from one set in particular- 1961 Fleer Basketball.   I love this set, it features some of the most valuable basketball cards in the hobby and in my mind is one of the best designs of all basketball card sets. 

However, with the popularity, comes more counterfeits and reprints, with unsuspecting collectors getting scammed out of thousands of dollars.

Thus, I want to provide a new guide for the 1961 Fleer Basketball Set.  This should be everything you need to know to help identify a real card from a fake.  

If you have any ’61 Fleer cards you’d like me to authenticate, shoot me an email at chris@allvintagecards.com

A PSA 9 Hank Aaron Topps Rookie card with one of the first front holograms.

Over the years, PSA has made various changes to the labels on its PSA holders (or ‘flips’ as most in the hobby call them) and the actual plastic ‘slabs’ themselves. Some variations are not as noticeable as others, but it’s important to know the difference when buying graded cards.

This guide was designed as a resource for collectors to help distinguish the different PSA ‘labels’ and ‘slabs’ to help identify some of the fake holders and labels that exist.  I haven’t run across many fake PSA slabs, but they do exist and can usually be spotted if you know some of the telltale signs. 

We hope this guide on PSA holders is a useful resource.  In future posts, we also plan to examine the history of both Beckett and SGC graded holders as well.