Dr. Jim Beckett

1978 Beckett Price Survey Update

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I shared Dr. Jim Beckett’s first price survey results a few weeks ago. Well, the following year, he kicked off an update with the following bit of hobby history that I scanned from the January 1978 issue of The Trader Speaks: Dr. Jim Beckett’s Price Survey Update!

David Kathman on the net54 boards pointed out that SCD published the 1978 survey update results in their July 15, 1978, issue, with an abbreviated version in the 1978 edition of the Sport Americana Baseball Card Checklist book. I believe The Trader Speaks published the updated results in their April 1978 issue; I just don’t happen to have that one in the Hobby Library to be able to include a scan.

Then, in 1979, Beckett’s first price guide book, The 1979 Sport Americana Baseball Card Price Guide, was published with the help of Dennis Eckes.

The rest is history!

1977 Beckett Price Survey Results

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Here’s a scan of Dr. Jim Beckett’s first report on baseball card prices from the April 1977 issue of The Trader Speaks.

The survey he referenced was distributed across multiple hobby channels, but in keeping with The Trader Speaks theme, here’s the one from their January 1977 issue.

And here’s Part 2 of the Price Survey Results from the May 1977 issue of The Trader Speaks.

As I said, Beckett distributed the survey and results across multiple hobby channels; David Kathman provided a nice overall summary on the net54 boards, including when Dr. Beckett printed details in Sports Collectors Digest.

In the fall of 1976, Jim Beckett, then a professor of statistics at Bowling Green State University as well as a collector and dealer of baseball cards, got the idea of doing a survey of other collectors and dealers in order to determine the market value of various cards and card sets. He wrote up a survey, and the September 30, 1976 issue of Sports Collectors Digest announced his project, and his intention to distribute the survey at various card conventions and by mail. The October 31, 1976 SCD had a status report by Beckett, clarifying what he hoped to achieve with the survey, and the January 15, 1977 SCD printed the survey itself. The results of this first survey appeared in SCD in two parts: in the March 31, 1977 issue for Topps and Bowman cards, and in the April 30, 1977 issue for all other card sets.

Hobby History!