On The Rickey Henderson Price Surge

Last week, the legend and all-time great Rickey Henderson very suddenly passed away at the too-young age of 65. He was just a few days away from his birthday.

Over at Midlife Cards, Graig did a great video about the postmortem price surge for athletes’ sports cards, focusing on Rickey Henderson and Willie Mays:

Graig showed that, while Rickey’s rookie card has surged in price since his death, history shows us that the value will likely return to old levels.

I wanted to talk a little about the economic factors that are driving this:

Short-term profit-seekers:

Some people see the news of Rickey’s death — or speculated on it based on the rumors going around in the hours before it became official — and either bought up some 1980 Topps Rickey Henderson cards or pulled theirs out and decided to sell at a profit.

Whatever you think about this practice, it’s common and will never go away because of the existence of other short-term profit-seekers and…

Impulse-buyers:

People hear the news about Rickey Henderson passing, feel a sense of nostalgia, and think to themselves, “Man, I need one of his rookie cards.”

Impulse buyers don’t check comps; they don’t know that the prices they’re seeing are 50% higher than they were a few days ago.

They might be purchasing the card for a family member who loved Rickey, or it might be for themselves.

Impulse buyers also usually don’t care that they overpaid. They’re likely not even aware.

Either way, due to the vast availability of the card, it will inevitably come back down. And it already has started:

One exception to this rule may be to Rickey’s autographs. He’s never signing another autograph, so the population of them is basically fixed now. We may see a more long-term uptick in prices and value.

Let me know what you think in comments.

(Over at Cllct, Will Stern wrote about this same topic with a great deep dive into the data on Rickey, Pete Rose, and Willie Mays.)

🔗 Links:

Year in collectibles: Did hobby improve in 2024? (This is a great compilation of quotes from folks around the industry, including myself. It’s interesting that almost no one who relies on the success of the industry said anything bad about it.)

The Future of Collectibles: Sports Memorabilia Market to Hit $271 Billion by 2034 (I’m skeptical about this one)

Fueled By Baseball Card Boom, Whatnot Hits Financial Home Run (It’s interesting that the article says that “trust is vital,” but they don’t go into any of the trust issues Whatnot customers have had over the years. Also, it would be interesting to see stats showing how Fanatics Live has eaten into Whatnot’s bottom line.)

Complete 520-card T206 set lined up on a floor

The Caitlin Clark Effect In Collectibles Is On Full Display — some interesting eBay sales nuggets in there

Autographed Vintage Card Market Showing Rapid Growth