BGS Multipliers. Gem Mint versus Pristine. What’s the jump in value?

The inevitable question when collecting anything particularly baseball cards is “How much are they worth?” Now without going into economic theories and methods let’s just look at realized prices albeit a very small sample size.

This is hard to track because rarely is there a GEM MINT 9.5 & PRISTINE 10 copy listed at same time to compare. The other problem is the aforementioned sample size. It’s too small to make a true judgment. However it could be said that this works in favor of the perceived scarcity of the item. But let’s work with what I have.

Now in my estimation the upgrade in quality from a Gem Mint 9.5 to a Pristine 10 isn’t as big from a Mint 9 to a Gem Mint 9.5. But nevertheless it’s still noticeable.

Again it’s worth repeating that this is just a couple of slabs selling during a certain winter. This is by no means a gauge that can be set in stone. 

Rod Carew 1982 Fleer #455 BGS 9.5 sells at auction for $8.74 – That’s the very definition of a steal in a buyer’s market. That’s basically the cost of grading to own a gem mint copy of one of the great quirky cards of the 1980s. In case you didn’t know 1982 Topps has used the same photo for their “In Action” subset.

Rod Carew 1982 Fleer #455 BGS 10 sold at auction for $36.19! Whoa that’s just 4.2 times as much. In context that's another steal!

Mark McGwire 1987 Donruss #45 BGS 9.5 sells at auction for $16.00. For one of the great-overproduced sets this is still a solid price in 2012.

Is it worth it to run out and grade 10 copies? Perhaps not but what if you landed a pristine…

Mark McGwire 1987 Donruss #45 BGS 10 sold at auction for  $229.79! Wow that’s a multiplier of 14.4! The steroid junkie superstar still has major hobby pop. Now of course this same card would have gotten $2000 in 1999 but $229.79 is tremendous value for a card that readily available raw at less than a buck.

Don Mattingly 1984 Topps #8 BGS 9.5 sold at auction for $86.85

Another over produced set holding tremendous value. Donnie Baseball is the man responsible for fueling the baseball card boom of the mid 1980s. His three rookie cards are still in demand especially in high-grade condition.

Don Mattingly 1984 Topps #8 BGS 10 sells at auction for $512.34!

That’s a 5.9 times a much. That’s a serious jump.

Barry Larkin 1987 Topps #648 BGS 9.5 sold at auction for $34.33
One thing you have to say about this over produced sets is that they are still popular. $34.33
is tremendous value for a readily available card

Barry Larkin 1987 Topps #648 BGS 10 sold at auction for $141.48
That's a multiplier of 4.1 - right in line with what you'd expect.

It’s silly to extrapolate any information but we can see that Pristine slabs get anywhere between 4.1 and 14.4 times as much as their Gem Mint counterpart.

About The Card

The 1982 Fleer set was as simple design and as time has passed it looks more cheap than it did then. But this is before Fleer is taking the business of selling cards seriously. The cards at this point were just a delivery system for their team stickers. You can say with conviction that zero effort went into making these cards. Fleer just trying to grab a piece of the market pie.