I recently had a chance to join Al Crisafulli as the third guest on his Love of the Game Auctions podcast. We covered a range of topics from SABR and this committee to favorite players such as Hank Aaron and Steve Garvey to a possible role for SABR Baseball Cards in the creation of an authoritative catalog for the Hobby. Feel free to give it a listen (or watch) if you like!
Around the 16-minute mark, Al and I got on the topic of Frank Robinson and in particular why his cards are so inexpensive. The example I gave was his 1975 Topps card, which I suggested was available in pretty nice shape for $3 or so.
As the conversation was live and unscripted, I wondered if maybe I’d underpriced the card. After all, it had been decades since I picked one up and probably 10-12 years since the card made it into one of my eBay feeds. Last night I had time to do some checking, and it turns out if anything I had overstated the card’s value.
The above is just a sampling of the 1975 Topps Frank Robinson cards still available on eBay, and that’s after I scooped up a binder page’s worth for my own collection. (And no, there really wasn’t any good reason I needed nine!)
Admittedly condition might be tough to discern in my pic, so here are some recent sales of copies graded VG-EX by PSA.
Granted, Frank Robinson wasn’t Willie Mays nor was his 1975 Topps card his rookie card. Still, Robinson is undoubtedly one of the 25-30 greatest players in the history of the National and American Leagues, not to mention their first Black manager. As for the card itself, it’s more than half a century old, which (no offense to the bulk of my readers) is really, really old!
I joked on Al’s podcast that the low price tag on the 1975 Topps Frank Robinson proved the Hobby was broken. At the same time, is a broken Hobby such a bad thing? If anything, the Hobby could use even more cards like the Robinson: really old cards of all-time greats for about the price of a gas station coffee. Fortunately, the way coffee prices are going, we’ll be there soon enough!
In truth, the Hobby has plenty of overlooked cards these days, and it may well be that other cards rate even higher than the Robinson in this category. Joe Morgan is another player whose cards attract far less attention than his accomplishments seem to warrant. The same may be true of most Steve Carlton cards. I’m curious which card you might nominate as the Hobby’s most overlooked. Let me know in the Comments.
