1960 Topps Cello Pack For $98,000?

Longtime reader and viewer Brian wrote to me about JRI cards selling a break of a single 1960 Topps cello pack with Sandy Koufax on the front and Mickey Mantle on the back.

Pretty cool!

The details, though, seem unusual. Brian writes:

“They have a 1960 Topps Cello Baseball pack that they’re selling 1,960 spots for $50 a spot. That’s $98,000!! There are only 12 cards in the cello pack. According to the recent sales, the Mantle in a 9 sells for about $50,000. This has a Koufax on front (which looks to be a 7 w/Centering, which is about $400). It just seems to be a crazy mark up. I just thought you’d be interested in this. Sealed cellos with Mantle on front or Koufax in back, have sold for $6k and $8k respectively.”

They are indeed waiting for all 1,960 spots to fill before they break it.

I actually found a Mantle-front pack that sold for $35,000 very recently.

However, I also found this very Koufax-front pack that sold at Heritage at the same time, with Mantle on the back, for $28,000. Here’s a better shot of the pack:

If they sell all 1,960 spots, that’s a 249% markup!

Brian is right about Koufax values for this card:

The Mantle has more upside, but still not a ton:

You’re only gambling $50. There could be some amazing cards in there that grade really well. Good for JRI if they can more than triple their money, I guess.

Like almost any pack, this one is worth significantly more unopened and in the PSA slab.

What do you think?

Is This Really Rare?

I saw this Reddit post this week:

And the answer is yes.

One of the More Underrated Cards of All Time

According to Card Ladder, the 1951 Parkhurst Gordie Howe rookie card PSA 8 (pop 34) set an all-time high when it sold for $57,340 last month at Heritage Auctions. The card sold for $36,600.00 on the last day of 2023. It's up 57% in just over a year.

💰 Pickup Of The Week

It’s sad when an $8 purchase is my pickup of the week, but that’s where I am for a bit.

🥺 A Sports Card Item I Wanted To Buy This Week

I’ve been waiting for one of these to come up on eBay for a while. I put in a snipe bid via Gixen but won’t find out until Friday morning if I won it.

🔮 Clearing The Bases Preview

Hear me out…

📺 Short TV Show Reviews

I have enjoyed doing horror movie reviews in my Monday edition, so I thought I’d review tv show episodes each week. Here are the shows I’ve watched this week:

White Lotus season 3 episode 4: as amazing as always, and the characters’ stories are starting to merge. Mike White, the director and writer, is a genius with this stuff.

Severance season 2 episode 8: slower than we’re accustomed to, and a bit of a bottle episode outside of the office and excluding all of the main characters, but we got some important Cobel backstory. Now, with two episodes remaining in the season, it seems like they’re setting it up for her to help Mark.

Celtics City episode 2: heavy on 1960s Celtics / Lakers history and Bill Russell’s civil rights fights. Really well done, but basketball history doesn’t do it for me like baseball history for some reason. This is filling in some gaps for my wife, who has become a massive Celtics fan the last two years. I’m excited to get to the 1980s.

Speaking of Monday horror movie reviews, my wife and 15-year-old are leaving for the weekend, so it’s a Weekend of Mike! Copious amounts of junk food and horror movies.

🔗 Links:

Cllct partners with Yahoo to create new collectibles hub

Topps Joins Repack Game with 'Instant Rips'

Panini's antitrust case against Fanatics allowed to proceed

On this date in sports history: on March 14th, 1954, Hank Aaron hit his first spring training home run leading up to his rookie year. He would hit 755 regular season home runs over the next 23 seasons, breaking Babe Ruth’s career home runs record.