Baseball Card Of Arch-Villain Ty Cobb Nearly Doubles In Value To $104K In Just Six Months

When it came to investing Ty Cobb was as ferocious and as successful as he was on the baseball field. Think of a nasty Warren Buffet in a baseball cap and in sharp-spikes.

Growing up with farmers, the Georgia Peach decided that the price of cotton was low and bought $1000 worth of futures. By the time World War I approached and demand for cotton to make uniforms sky rocketed, Cobb sold off his investment for $7500. ($179,500 in today’s dollars). After appearing in his first Coca-Cola ad in 1907 he bought 300 shares which grew to 24,000 shares over 20 years. He was also an early and prescient investor in General Motors .

“Ty Cobb would eventually endorse dozens of products from cigarettes, tobacco, laxatives, chewing gum, Louisville Sluggers, baseball gloves and even a line of Ty Cobb suspenders,” writes Brian Warner on Celebrity Net Worth.  “Every dollar that came in was invested in some stock or real estate. Cobb transformed himself from an uneducated Georgia farm boy, to a professional athlete, to one of the savviest, and richest investors on the planet .”  By the time he died in 1961, Cobb was worth $12.1 million, or $97 million in today’s dollars.

The all-time batting champion must be smiling in the big ball park in the sky.  One of his most iconic baseball cards, his 1914 Cracker Jack, has almost doubled in value to $104,302 from $59,750 in just six months. The price, in a Mile High Card Company auction, set an all-time record for the card, independently graded by PSA 8 (Near Mint-Mint). “[The sale resulted] from Mile High’s high-level marketing and a bull market,” said Brian Drent, the company President and CEO.

From talking to former professional card graders, I’ve learned that one of the difficulties of tracking cards values, even in the same grade, is that it can be apples to oranges. Subtle variations in quality, based on centering and printing, can spell the difference between hundreds and thousands of dollars. What’s remarkable about this Cobb, designated # 03654554, is that it is the actual card.This is apples to apples.

While Mile High’s marketing strength certainly entitles Drent to a victory lap, the bull market is probably the most decisive factor. After all, the prior auction house, Heritage, is a publicity power house. Furthermore in 2009 SCP Auctions, another PR. machine which dominates the industry’s social media, auctioned off this card for $57,868. (I found the card on vintagecardprices.com.)

PSA has graded only five Cobbs in near-mint-mint-mint condition and none higher. The 1914 Cracker Jacks are rarer than the virtually identical 1915 set because there was no offer by mail. Plus the 1914 cards’ thinner paper stock made them fragile. Then there was the product they promoted. “Their close proximity with syrupy Cracker Jack exacted a condition toll - stains and darkening associated with the sugars as well as dents, dings and creases incurred while the piece bounced around unprotected within the container,” notes PSA CardFacts. “Such facts of life force enthusiasts to forego exacting condition standards to collect them.”

Mile High ranks the Cobb card as one of the top 20 baseball cards of all time . The image perfectly captures his fierce competitive fire at the height of his career. “[He] had already amassed a resume that was not only unprecedented, it was unimaginable!” Mile High’s catalog description said. “In eight full seasons with the Detroit Tigers, Cobb had posted a career .377 batting average, winning the American League batting crown each of those 8 years, while averaging 95 runs batted in and 58 stolen bases, successfully swiping a base over 90% of the time.”

Despite certain revisionist histories that he was misunderstood, conventional accounts paint unflattering portraits of Cobb, to put it mildly. His demonic behavior is part of his mystique, like an arch-villain from an old comic strip— except one who emerges victorious in the end.

Here’s how the great sports writer George Vescey gave him his due in history book, Baseball: “An umpire-baiter, spike-sharpener, fan-fighter, and teammate-battler with racist tendencies. Cobb became the first great hitter of the century. A review of the records suggests that his career average was .366, not .367. Unpopular with opponents and teammates alike, Cobb confirmed the image of baseball players as crude and uneducated and sometimes even racist.”

High-end vintage card dealers whom I’ve interviewed believe that Cobbs are still riding this year’s wave of the Lucky 7 Find of Ty Cobb tobacco cards discovered in a paper bag in an old southern house. Whether or not the hoopla surrounding the discovery ever fades, significant Cobbs will always remain popular. Quite simply, says Josh Evans, chairman of Lelands auction house, “Cobb is God.”