There was quite a buzz across the hobby, particularly the unopened community when in April 2023, Mile High Card Co. sold the following PSA 7-graded 1957 Topps basketball pack for nearly $128k.
In their auction description, MHCC wrote, “Topps learned their lesson when they overproduced the 1952 Topps baseball series, sending cases of unwanted product to a watery grave. They were much more cost-conscious when they rolled out their inaugural basketball series and packs such as the one featured here are far more scarce.”
However, the underproduction of the 1957 Topps basketball set is a bit of a hobby misconception. In September 2015, Sports Collectors Daily shared that Topps Had Lots of Unsold 1957-58 Basketball. They included the following article from the spring of 1961, which says that Topps had 10M cards from the set left unsold; that’s like 70k boxes!
So, the 1957 Topps basketball packs aren’t scarce from under-printing; they’re scarce because no one wanted them, and Topps appears to have disposed of the leftovers. That disposal and the resurgence of vintage basketball and unopened collecting have skyrocketed the demand for 1957 Topps basketball packs.
You see, the MHCC sale wasn’t some high-priced one-off outlier; shortly after that, in November 2023, BBCE auctions sold another 1957 Topps basketball PSA 7-graded wax pack for almost $92k.
Now, from a population (supply) perspective, PSA has only encapsulated nine of these packs (three 6s, four 7s, two 8s), and there are a bunch still in GAI holders, but likely not even an entire box worth across both companies.
However, some Facebook Vintage Wax and Packs Group collectors said the MHCC pack was probably part of a late 90s/early 2000s find. They thought they started selling for prices in the mid-teens (~$15k), that there were around 27 of them that GAI mostly slabbed as 7s/7.5s, and that the $128k pack was probably a cross from that find.
That timing seems to align with this lot of 6 GAI-graded 1957/58 Topps basketball packs that Mastro offered for sale in August 2004.
The packs’ grades included: GAI NM-MT 8: 2 packs, GAI NM+ 7.5: 3 packs, and GAI NM 7: 1 pack.
Update: 2 September 2024. After reading this post, a collector reached out and told me he and some friends bought the Mastro lot of 6 packs for ~$25k; they split four and sold two. Two of the guys he split them with sold theirs years ago. Another guy kept his GAI 7.5 and crossed it to a PSA 6 pack years ago, and he still owns one of the GAI 8 packs.
The same catalog had another lot for a single GAI 8-graded pack with a minimum bid of $1k.
Update: 8 September 2024. Mastro also included the following collection of five GAI-graded 1957 Topps basketball packs in their December 2004 Sports Auction of Distinction. One was a GAI NM-MT 8, and four were GAI NM+ 7.5s.
The recent ~$100k price point for these packs is a massive increase from other confirmed pack sales I’ve tracked down.
For example, Lelands sold this GAI 7.5 example for $3,352 in June 2005.
Memory Lane Inc. has two sales in its archives; the first is a GAI 8, which sold for $4,353 in December 2006.
And the second, more recently, is this GAI 6.5, which sold for just under $27k in December 2021.
That December 2021 Memory Lane 1957 Topps basketball pack appears to be the same one I grabbed a screenshot of back in August 2020 from eBay.
You can see that the owner was asking $33k (plus $4.95 shipping). Many of us thought the price was a little high then; at the time, yes, but not two years later!
The next example of a 1957 Topps basketball pack that I found was, again, from MHCC; they sold this GAI 7.5 example for just under $20k in March of 2018.
Update: 16 September 2024. BBCE Auctions sold the following PSA-7 graded 1957 Topps basketball wax pack this morning for just under $69k.
Here’s a summary of the progression of wax pack sales:
- June 2005: GAI 7.5, Lelands, $3,352
- December 2006: GAI 8, Memory Lane Inc., $4,353
- March 2018; GAI 7.5, Mile High Card Co., $20k
- December 2021: GAI 6.5, Memory Lane Inc., $27k
- April 2023: PSA 7, Mile High Card Co., $128k
- November 2023: PSA 7, BBCE Auctions, $92k
- September 2024: PSA 7, BBCE Auctions, $69k
If you have any other information about 1957 Topps basketball wax pack sales, please get in touch with me!