SGC vs PSA Part 3: Ultramodern Baseball

In honor of the Atlanta Braves triumphing over the nation’s favorite punching bag of a team, we turn back to the diamond this week to investigate how the different grading companies stack up for Modern-Era baseball cards.  Collectors have more choices than ever on where to send their cards for grading.  Understanding the potential future resale value is the deciding factor for which company to use for most collectors.  This series of articles aims to help you get a better picture of how the companies resale values measure up when compared to each other.  Previous weeks have examined Ultra-Modern baseball, basketball, and football.  For Ultra-Modern baseball, the gap between PSA prices and SGC prices was found to be narrowing.  Examining basketball allowed for BGS to be included.  Sales of Ultra-Modern basketball cards showed that BGS 9.5 prices were more akin to SGC 9.5 and PSA 9 prices rather than gem mint prices.  SGC has a fairly strong reputation in the baseball community, and even stronger amongst those who collect older cards.  It is likely that the trends found for Ultra-Modern cards will continue here.  

PSA defines the Modern-Era a as 1972-2017, but most collectors consider cards from the 70s to be vintage.  Rather than use an arbitrary pricing scheme as a guideline, the examination here uses the dates of 1981 to 2017.  1981 is significant in the hobby in that it saw the introduction of Fleer and Donruss to the hobby and marked the end of Topps having a virtual monopoly.  The cards included are ones that have a good history of sales.  The list skews toward the more recent as the number of sales a card has seems to dwindle with age to some degree.  Even popular players like Ken Griffey Jr. see their sales volume eclipsed by young sluggers like Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Ronald Acuna Jr., or Fernando Tatis Jr. (It might pay to collect Juniors).  Using data from Ebay, Cardladder.com, and 130point.com, sale prices for each card was collected as close to the start of each month for the months of August, September, October, and November.  While Cardladder.com data is great in that it includes sales older than these, it does not have enough data on older SGC or BGS sales to include any sales prior to August.  The sales value for all the cards are totaled each month to create a sales index for PSA 10s, SGC 10s, and BGS 9.5s.  The cards included are 2017 Ronald Acuna Jr. Bowman Chrome Prospects 127, 2017 Aaron Judge Topps Chrome 169, 2016 Vladimir Guerrero Bowman Chrome Draft 55, 2011 Mike Trout Topps Update 175, and 1989 Ken Griffey Jr. Topps Traded 41.

One might look at the list of cards included and wonder where Jeter is, or Ripken, or Maddux, or Ichiro, or Pujols.  Any of these is a valid question/concern.  The problem lies in getting enough data of gem mint sales.  Older cards simply have fewer gem mint copies than Ultra-Moderns with oftentimes 75% or higher gem rates.  For simplicity’s sake, this article stuck with gem mints, but it is clear that different grades will need to be included for our dive into the vintage market. 

The results are presented in Graph 1.  PSA is the winner here as is expected.  BGS is clearly having problems as it also did for Ultra-Modern baseball as SGC 10s are typically selling higher than their BGS 9.5 counterparts. The gap between PSA and SGC ranges between 63% and 75% compared to 45% to 65% for BGS.  This is consistent with the findings for Ultra-Modern baseball where the range ran from 65%-79%.  What is different is that the gap is widening here where it was shrinking in Ultra-Modern baseball.  Looking under the hood a bit, it becomes abundantly clear that the widening of the gap between PSA and SGC as well as PSA and BGS is primarily due to changes in Mike Trout’s prices.  The SGC and BGS Trout cards dipped substantially over this time period where the PSA cards largely held steady.  Without Trout in the mix, the widening of the gap stops and the results are much more in line with those for Ultra-Modern baseball.  The Trout card shouldn’t just be tossed out without some thought though.  Ultra-Modern baseball had the issue of Ohtani cards performing differently too.  It could be that for cards of a certain value, or players of a certain stature that the preference for PSA in more ingrained.  It could also be due to collectors from other sports that do not look at other grading companies as favorably are coming into the baseball market and targeting the biggest name or marquee players like Trout and Ohtani.  This could make their cards perform more like cards from other sports.  Another explanation is that the PSA Trout sales show the steadying of prices after a period of drastic decline.  It could well be that the PSA card stopped dropping before the SGC and BGS and that those will soon follow suit.  It is worth watching in the coming months to see which explanation makes the most sense. 

Graph 1:  Price Indices for Grading Companies over Time

While PSA has the highest sales realized and the highest sales volume, it also has the highest grading charges currently and a long wait time.  PSA’s current lowest price option is $150.00 compared to $25.00 for SGC.  The added cost must be included in the decision over where to send one’s cards.  Given the 125.00 price difference, one needs to expect an increased value of approximately $475.00 for PSA to make economic sense (ignoring sales volume).  For every card in this index minus the Trout, it currently makes financial sense to prefer SGC to PSA due to the grading costs and wait times.  As for Beckett, there is little in the data here to recommend them.  Their main appeal now lies in trying for Black Labels, personal preference, or for their longstanding acceptance in the Bowman 1st Autograph market.  Next week, basketball comes roaring back as we dive into Modern-Era basketball cards.