Will Seippel, CEO of WorthPoint, enjoys watching the objects bought at auctions held by our WorthPoint Business Companions. We thought it will be an excellent thought for him to pick out a few of his favourite bought objects and clarify why these gross sales stood out to him. Gaining insights from Will is a superb technique to find out about shopping for and promoting developments in our trade. We wish to empower you to purchase and promote with confidence. Check out his ideas on a number of of our companions’ current gross sales.
On August 25, 2025, WorthPoint added 264,506 objects to its Value Information, totaling $16,901,227.03 and a mean lot worth of $63.90.
A Staggering Value
Baseball Card Trade just lately held an interesting public sale that introduced me again to a world not removed from once I was born in 1958. It makes you consider all of the issues we must always have saved that are actually value a fortune. However then, if we had all saved them, they might be frequent and value subsequent to nothing. That paradox appears like one thing out of English Lit—possibly the “Absurdism” they talked about in faculty. It’s one of many few classes that caught with me from that class, and it nonetheless matches completely when discussing collectibles.
The spotlight was an unopened 1958 Topps baseball wax pack, the type children and their dads casually tore into sixty-seven years in the past with out imagining the longer term worth. These packs had been opened, traded, written on, and jammed into bike spokes with no second thought. At the moment, solely six unopened packs are identified to exist, and Baseball Card Trade had one graded PSA 6. Inside had been six playing cards and, most probably, a stale stick of bubble gum that may have completely hooked up itself to at least one. The pack hammered down at $134,402.58, a staggering worth however a reminder of simply how uncommon this slice of historical past has turn into.
The concept of unopened packs fascinates me—since you’re actually paying for the chance, not simply the pack itself. Who is aware of what might be sealed inside? Perhaps a mint Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and even Roger Maris’s rookie card—or possibly some commons caught along with gum residue. The thriller is a part of the enchantment, and for some consumers, the danger is value it to carry a tangible time capsule of their palms. Others would somewhat deal with it like artwork, retaining it sealed as an funding and by no means understanding what lies inside.
What puzzles me is the massive worth leap in comparison with the previous. Baseball Card Trade bought an identical pack on September 16, 2024, for $6,677.19—although that turned out to be 1960 playing cards in a leftover 1958 wrapper that Topps reused years later. Leland’s bought one other again in 2005, a PSA 8.5 instance, for $5,260.75. In some way, in simply twenty years, the value of a single unopened pack has gone from a number of thousand to 6 figures. That form of appreciation is jaw-dropping, however it additionally reveals how briskly the market strikes when rarity and nostalgia collide.
Not Only for Youngsters Anymore
This public sale wasn’t nearly baseball both. A document was set for a 1957–58 Bob Cousy basketball card, which bought for $83,452.59 at PSA 8.5, an enormous leap from the $8,400 a PSA 8 introduced in 2017. Cousy, “The Houdini of the Hardwood,” was the final of the Celtics dynasty, and his card belongs to the very first Topps basketball set—a set infamous for poor centering and print defects. Baseball Card Trade additionally set a brand new mark with a 1959 Sandy Koufax graded PSA 9 that bought for $24,873. By the top, the sale totaled $688,009.14 throughout 469 objects. Clearly, the period of children’ collectibles being only for children is lengthy gone.
Will Seippel is the founder, president, and CEO of WorthPoint. Will has been an avid collector since 1974 and supplier of nearly all issues vintage—with an emphasis on ephemera— since 1984. He’s additionally the creator and founding father of HIP, an internet site dedicated to recording the very best of the world’s historical past that has been saved on movie.
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