I
went to help clean out my parents’ home last fall in 2024. Six of us moved in
in the 1940’s. Three of us are going through the house in the 2020’s.
In
my father’s basement office desk I found 2 bundles of sports cards each tied
together
with string. One group of 48 was Bowman’s 1948 Baseball cards, the
other
group of 108 were Bowman’s 1948 Football cards. I can’t
account
for the 1948 Baseball and Football cards I found in his home office desk
drawer. He
never had an interest in baseball or football so I don’t know why he
had
these cards. They were probably put in the desk in the 1949-51
period. Each
set
is complete and was in numerical order, 48 cards for Baseball and 108 cards
for
Football each tied together by a piece of string.
As
a result of sitting in the basement for almost 75 years, unfortunately humidity
had
an effect on a few of the cards. The first few and the last few of
both the
baseball
and football cards are slightly bent where the string bisects each of the 4
sides
of the card.
I
submitted 6 cards to PSA to be graded, picking a few from the ends to see how much
the bend in the cards affected their grade. Later I submitted 5 more randomly chosen.
I wanted to try to get a sense of the overall value of
the 108 football cards with some elementary statistics.
First, choose a random sample of observations to
represent the population. The sample size is 11 for no particular reason other
than that is all I have. Observations were given preference in the selection
process. (end cards)
The end
positions of each card grouping were specifically chosen for the purpose of
seeing the degree of damage caused by the tied strings. As such, total dollar value may vary because
of the lack of randomness in observation selection. The $ value of a grade #1
end card may me higher than a grade #4 interior card.
What type of data do you have? Ordinal ranking data,
not useful for mathematical transformations. You need to substitute each stated
grade with a dollar estimate. Use sold data
from Ebay and low offer prices on this item offered for sale. (Data not
shown) Decide on a dollar number based
on this information. If the entire process using the grades is repeated, the
conclusion will be non unique if the prices for each item vary because of how you consider
the original data.
I submitted 6
cards to PSA to be graded, picking a few from the ends to see how much the bend
in the cards affected their grade. Later I submitted 5 more randomly chosen.
The results were:
After I have transformed each individual card’s grade
into dollars, I come up with this:
NAME GRADE PRICE
#3 John Lujack
= 1.5
#8 Kenny
Washington = 2
#12 Charley
Connerly = 4
#17 Charlie Trippi
= 4
#22 Sammy Baugh =
3(MC)
#36 Bulldog Turner
= 4
#61 Alex
Wojciechowicz = 5
#63 Pete Pihos = 5
#95 George McAfee
= 4
#107 Sid Luckman =
1
#108 Buford
Ray = 1
$1,850
Since we made a transformation from individual ordinal
rankings to dollars, I can use arithmetic.
11 observations =$1850.00 Now I will linearly extrapolate to the entire
108 cards.
108/11 = X/$1850
(1850x108)/11 = X = 199800/11 =$18,163
$18,163 - $2,400 certification costs = $15,763
$15763 – $9,975 = $5,788 net
With an Expected Value of $18,163 based on the 11 card sample the card cost plus the certification cost leaves an expected gain of $5,788.
NO RETURNS ON FOOTBALL CARD SET