Have you been to any great card shows lately? I’ll bet the Sports Memorabilia Show #4 in Whippany, New Jersey, was a good one!
This ad comes from the July 1982 issue of Trader Speaks and highlights Whitey Ford’s attendance during Sunday’s show, where he had agreed to sign 1000 autographs on a first-come, first-served basis.
Given that the ad features Ford’s 1951 Bowman baseball card, I thought it would be fun to take a look at a few sales of them:
REA has sold a handful, including the following PSA VG 3 Auto 10 copy with an HOF ’74 inscription for $780 in 2018, a PSA authentic copy for $510 in 2021, and a fairly beat-up card with an authentic signature for $450 in 2022.
Interestingly, REA re-sold the PSA VG 3 Auto 10 copy in 2023 for $3600, quite an increase! That’s probably because Ford died in 2020.
Now, some cards change hands quite often, so guess what? Probstein sold the same PSA VG 3 Auto 10 Ford on eBay on May 29, 2024, for $2200.
What’s more, the beat-up version above with cert 17605781 is also on eBay, with an asking price of $1699. There’s another PSA authentic copy on eBay as well, with an asking price of $1299.99 (cert 43601626). Given these prices, someone possibly got quite a steal when they picked up this blue-label version in April 2024 for $500.
