Will Seippel, CEO of WorthPoint, enjoys watching the items sold at auctions held by our WorthPoint Industry Partners. We thought it would be a great idea for him to select some of his favorite sold items and explain why those sales stood out to him. Gaining insights from Will is an excellent way to learn about buying and selling trends in our industry. We want to empower you to buy and sell with confidence. Take a look at his thoughts on a few of our partners’ recent sales.
On February 10, WorthPoint recently added an impressive 279,775 items to its database, bringing the total value to $24,243,887.65, which averages out to $86.65 per item.
A Super Bowl of Super Cards
February is a pretty quiet month in traditional sports. Unless you’re out in the “Gulf of America” chasing after a trophy fish, there’s not much happening. It’s that awkward time between the NCAA college football season wrapping up and the basketball playoffs starting. The cold weather might make you think it’s a great time for hockey playoffs, but those don’t wrap up until after the summer solstice in June. So, as a fan, all you can hope for is a solid Super Bowl. This year, though, it was pretty anticlimactic. The Chiefs got beaten pretty badly—like someone stumbling down the streets of Philly at 2 AM. The halftime entertainment was decent, but the real stars sat in the stands, with seats none of us could afford. So, this February, I’ve found myself getting more into something new—watching trading card auctions.
The trading card auctions this week were on fire! Brockelman & Co. had some incredible cards in their latest sale, with a rare E107 Cy Young card from the 1903-04 set fetching a jaw-dropping $74,789.10. This card is part of the Breisch-Williams set, which was printed just 40 years after the U.S. Civil War—making it over 120 years old. Despite its SGC2 grade, I and the auction house thought the card looked better than that. I’ve seen graded cards at a 2 that look like they’ve been run over by a truck. If it were my card with that grade, I would have been furious and probably tossed it.
Interestingly, the last recorded sale of a Cy Young from this set was back in 2017 by Robert Edwards, where it sold for $45,000. So, even though the card in Brockelman’s auction had a lower grade, it still went for almost twice as much as the 2017 sale. This price shows how much these cards have appreciated—grading, while still important, is becoming less relevant.
Brockelman also had other cards from the same set, and they did well, even though they weren’t Cy Young. A grade 4 1903-04 Eddie Plank, the highest known grade for this card, sold for a record $46,437—more than double the previous record set by Robert Edwards. By the end of the auction on 2/2/25, about $200K was raised for cards from this set, averaging around $6,500 per card.
But here’s the kicker—back in October, Brockelman sold an entire set of these cards for a whopping $1.15 million! Let me say that again—$1.15 MILLION. That’s more than my house is worth, and you don’t have to deal with hurricanes or real estate taxes on those cards. I think Jon Waldman, our sports writer, needs an interview with these guys. The set that sold in October included a Cy Young with an SGC 3 grade. Could the buyer of that set be looking to upgrade their collection? Stay tuned!
Trains, Trains
Now, shifting gears for my “Game of the Week” in the sports market, I’m going to skip over the amazing set of Canadian Pacific Trains Lionel trains that sold for $3,600 on 2/5 at Toys & Trains Other Old Stuff.
An Eye-Popping Sale
The real excitement was at Goldin Auctions, where the top five lots brought in over $675,000—honestly, it was like a Game 7 of the World Series. Among these lots was a Topps PSA 9 LeBron James 2003-04 rookie card (20/50) that sold for an eye-popping $183,000. That means the entire set of 50 cards is worth roughly $10 million! If I could get my hands on card #1/50 and somehow have it graded a PSA 10, that card could be worth a million dollars on its own. If you happen to have that card sitting around ungraded, WorthPoint will fly you out to a show, grade it on-site with PSA, and pay for the grading. Pretty wild, right?
So, that’s a wrap for today’s sports market highlights. Now, I’m off to look for more cards at Kroger and work on my next column. Who needs a box score in February anyway? For now, I’ll be watching the SEC basketball tournament—Auburn’s doing great this year, and it’s been a while since they had a player like Charles Barkley. Maybe Johni Broome from Auburn and Cooper Flagg from Duke will meet in the NCAA finals and turn basketball into a showdown we haven’t seen since the Larry Bird and Magic Johnson days. That’s the kind of excitement the game needs, and I’ll definitely be on the lookout for their rookie cards when they drop—they’re both likely heading pro soon.
Will Seippel is the founder, president, and CEO of WorthPoint. Will has been an avid collector since 1974 and dealer of just about all things antique—with an emphasis on ephemera— since 1984. He is also the creator and founder of HIP, a website devoted to recording the best of the world’s history that has been saved on film.
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