Many of my weekends as a 5 year old kid were spent going to whatever local collectors shows were on that weekend with my dad. Minerals, trading cards, coins + currency, you name it.

While I appreciated the coins and currencies from across the world and centuries past, one dealer had something that really caught my eye - Disney Dollars. They looked just like real money, but the portraits proudly depicted my beloved Disney characters posing in place of presidents, and the reverses had scenes from the theme parks I loved rather than the Illuminati's all-seeing eye. And of course, treasurer Scrooge McDuck's signature guaranteed each note.

At the Disney parks, you could exchange your US Dollars for Disney Dollars on Main Street with a 1-1 exchange rate, and the new bills could be spent on Disney property just like real money (but more fun). And you bet, when we took our vacation to Disney World, the first thing I did was race to Main Street to get an envelope of crisp bills for my collection. At that time, there were only a few variations to collect since their inception in 1987. But Disney continued to print new series with more characters and designs until 2016, making this a fun and challenging set to complete.

Higher denominations were less common, and some later years often had smaller print runs, so there is a range of rarity and value dependent on the bill. There were only a couple of $50 bill designs, made in extremely limited quantities, as most tourists were not looking to arbitrage large amounts of cash on top of their entry ticket price, so these are usually considered the grails of this collecting niche.

For serious Disney Dollar collectors, a lot comes down to serial number and grade. Completionists will attempt to collect each of the serial number designations for each bill - usually there would be three distinct serial number designations, depending on where the bill was distributed: D for Disney World, A for Disneyland (Anaheim), and T if the bill originated from an offsite Disney Store. There are a few year/designations that likely only had a few sheets reach distribution, so though nearly identical to another bill with the same design, will fetch prices miles above them as it is the same few bills that are missing from most near-complete sets. Some collectors also covet low serial numbers, proofs, high grades or other small distinctions that may set a bill apart from others with the same design.
Grading is a similar process as with cards or coins, and Disney Dollars are recognized as legitimate bills from the major grading companies. The currency grading scale is like coins, where a perfect bill would be given a score of 70, and anything in the high 60s is considered a great grade.
Here is a trio that is special to me. This is a set of three bills, a $1, $5, and $10 from 1990, which display the original 1987 design that spanned the first decade or so of bills before they changed it up. However, the serial numbers on these three match - they are all D00000728A, a seemingly random number, but a special one if you are born on July 28th, like me. To find the 3 matching bills with this extremely low number, and have them all come back with the same GEM 65 grade, seems like a little bit of Mickey's magic. For me, it is fun to find distinctions among what is uniform to the non-collector's eye, assert meaning in the randomness, and find new ways to collect old things.

I have completed my ‘97 Fleer Metal Universe PMG Red football set, and am 50% of the way to the complete PMG Green set. Now I just need to cut them up - if anyone here has steady hands.

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It’s hard to overstate the significance of this set in the hobby. Design innovation and rarity came to a confluence in the late 1990s to create a number of iconic inserts that remain atop the hobby grails today. The emerald green parallels are numbered /10 in basketball and /15 in football, and the ruby red continue upwards to /100 in basketball and /150 in football. While both are considered grail cards for any player lucky enough to be in the set, the greens are often considered the top card for a player. The ’97 Michael Jordan PMG is arguably his second-most iconic card (still would give that to the ’86 Fleer Rookie), but likely the most desired among high-end collectors.

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As a Lions fan, the player that makes this all the more special to me is Barry Sanders. Brett Favre and Emmitt Smith share the spotlight on Sheet A, which interestingly consists of cards 101-200. Sheet B consists of cards 1-100. I’m not sure if it is the presence of the era’s preeminent stars on Sheet A that accounts for the apparent discrepancy in the number of uncut red sheets that have surfaced. I have counted nine unique red Sheet As surfacing publicly, all in the past few years, while only spotting two red Sheet Bs.

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You can see from the salvage that they inconspicuously named these “Parallel Set” at the time, not yet knowing that this would become the hobby defining parallel set for modern sports, and now Marvel, cards. Most of the great contemporary cards pay some homage to hobby history, and that couldn’t be truer for Marvel PMGs, which mirror the design and numbering scheme of the ‘97 sets and have become the grails of this space. The first year of production, 2013, remains atop the mountain, but Upper Deck (who acquired the rights to the Fleer brand) has continued to make PMGs the chase in their continuing Marvel Metal Universe releases.

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I know a lot of people are upset that after market items exist when it takes thousands of packs and years of hunting to find the individual cards, but to me, that is exactly what makes sheets special. A whole era of football is captured in one piece (or two here). Bigger than one player or team. Rarer than any one card. A large, dazzling piece that could occupy a museum wall.

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For whatever reason, the values of sheets seems to be below the sum of its parts. An unnumbered PMG green Brett Favre fetched a price of $11,700, over half the price for that I paid for the complete sheet in the same auction. I suspect there may be a simple explanation that card collectors do not like to deal with anything that cannot fit neatly into their PSA boxes and carried to shows. However, that paradox strongly incentivizes flippers to buy the sheets and chop them up for a quick profit.

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And that’s exactly what has happened. Many of the sheets have been cut up, and while some are graded and designated as “unnumbered,” distinguishing them from their pack-pulled counterparts, there have been instances of bad actors stamping their own serial numbers onto the cards and succesfully passing them off as pack-pulled to graders. Why wouldn’t they when a numbered Favre auctioned for $78,000, over 7x the price of the unnumbered copy, just over a month later? (Fraud should be the answer.) I speculate that the prevalence of after-market copies of the PMG football set accounts for some of the extreme price discrepancy between PMG basketball and football. Preventing the sheet slaughter is another reason that motivated me to acquire these sheets. I both want to prevent further after-market copies, but also want to preserve what I view as a rare museum-quality piece representing a golden era of sports trading cards - the sheets are an endangered species prone to poaching for their parts.

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An interesting note is that while many various sheets were auctioned at the infamous 2005 Fleer Bankruptcy auction, where many after-market cards and most likely these sheets came from, only a small portion were football (see attached auction record, and kick yourself that you didn’t buy these for $1). It is interesting that more PMG football sheets have surfaced than the iconic inserts from other sports given how many fewer football sheets were auctioned, though many others have had at least one or two copies come to auction (e.g. Basketball Essential Credentials). I wonder if there will be many more surfacing in years to come, or if the other sheets referred to in the auction record are lower end releases. I personally will be a bit more conservative with my bidding after seeing so many Sheet As slowly drip into the market, but there is no way to know if the first to surface is the only copy or not.

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Lastly, before doing a separate in-depth post on the topic, I want to briefly touch on the Pokemon card world, where there is something equally as disturbing but suspiciously kept quiet plaguing the high-end trophy cards that have become the most valuable cards in the hobby. I will expand on this soon in a later post, but here is the TLNYR (too long not yet written): the majority of Pokemon trophy cards in circulation and that come to auction, ranging from the “5 million dollar" Pikachu Illustrator and 1997 #1 Trainer trophy cards to the species-collector grail Pokemon Snap Photo Contest prize cards, were not legitimately distributed. They instead originate from an ex-The Pokemon Company employee who hoarded extra copies and has been slowly dripping them into the market for exorbitant prices. This is not known by many collectors, but it is also deliberately overlooked by many other collectors, grading companies who are failing to uphold their primary role as authenticators by not distinguishing these from legitimate copies, and large dealers/influencers and auction houses who have profited immensely off of this fact being ignored. It is Pokemon’s ugliest open secret. Unlike the Green PMG Favre, where the pack-pulled copy sold for 7x the unnumbered copy, there is effectively no difference in auction prices realized between legitimately awarded and extra copies of the Pokemon grails - and maybe this is no surprise when this is kept quiet and there is no distinction on the slabs or in the auction listing descriptions. As every other mature space in collectibles values provenance, including sports cards, I think it will be interesting to see how this disregard for provenance in Pokemon plays out over time - if the word gets out. I love my aftermarket PMG sheets, but I love them for what they are, and I don’t think anyone would want me passing them off as legitimate pack-pulled copies - something for Pokemon collectors to reconsider in their space.

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And no, I couldn’t just make a post about sports cards without dragging non-sports into it 😬 More to come.

There's a lot to say about the legendary 1966 Topps Batman sets, so I'll try to keep this post focused on a comparison of the three primary sets and how they are valued. I'll start with a quick overview of the sets and then dive into the pop reports, market talk, and draw comparisons with other sets.
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The 1966 Topps Batman sets were the first ever Batman trading cards, and with a lack of compelling DC trading card sets anytime after, still remain the most sought after by Batman collectors. There are three sets that each contain unique art (there are two more sets with images from the Adam West TV series that I will not discuss). They are illustrated by hobby and pulp legend Norm Saunders, famous for illustrating the highly controversial 1962 Mars Attacks set a few years prior.
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The sets are distinguished by the color of the Bat logo containing the title of the card:
1) Black Bat (also simply as 1966 Topps Batman or Orange Backs)
2) Red Bat (also referred to as Series A after the numbering scheme on the back of the card, e.g. 1A)
3) Blue Bat (also referred to as Series B after the numbering scheme on the back of the card, e.g. 1B)
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The Blue Bat series actually had two distinct design variations for the back of the card:
3a) Puzzle Back (the title and story are adjacent to an image that can be tiled with other cards in the set to form a larger image, similar format as Series A but with the title included)
3b) Blue Bat Back (the title and story contained within a large blue bat logo)
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Pictured here are PSA 10 examples from each of the three sets:
Black Bat #14 Nightly Patrol (Pop 2)
Red Bat/Series A #31A Flying Foes (Pop 2)
Blue Bat/Series B (Blue Bat Back) #12B Renegade Roulette (Pop 1)
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The Black Bat set is usually considered the most grounded art work, while the Red and Blue Bat sets saw Norm indulge into more camp and absurdity. The Black Bat set is by far the most heavily collected, and still fetch the highest prices today, usually about 2-3x the price of a Red or Blue Bat in an equivalent grade. This is likely due to it being the first release and containing what collectors have agreed upon as "rookie cards" of the heroes and villains, e.g. card #1 "The Batman" agreed upon as the Batman rookie, or card #9 "Face of the Joker" being agreed upon as the Joker rookie.
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However, as a collector obsessed with rarity, I had to take a deeper dive into the numbers. The PSA population reports (at the time of publishing this article) point me in a different direction for building my collection...
Black Bat Total Cards Graded: 16,731
Black Bat Total PSA 10s: 71
Black Bat Total PSA 9s: 736
Black Bat Gem Rate: 0.4%
Black Bat 9 Rate: 4.4%
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Red Bat Total Cards Graded: 5,905
Red Bat Total PSA 10s: 53
Red Bat Total PSA 9s: 464
Red Bat Gem Rate: 0.9%
Red Bat 9 Rate: 7.9%
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Blue Bat (Combined) Total Cards Graded: 3,336
Blue Bat (Combined) Total PSA 10s: 19
Blue Bat (Combined) Total PSA 9s: 183
Blue Bat (Combined) Gem Rate: 0.6%
Blue Bat (Combined) 9 Rate: 5.5%
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There appears to be a drastic discrepancy in rarity between the three sets - and cut these numbers about in half for Blue Bats to account for the two variations. While some of this discrepancy is likely explained by collectors submitting more Black Bats for grading given their higher value, this is not the whole story. Blue Bats consistently sell for more than Red Bats, but even when combining both back variations, there are 2-3x fewer total graded and mint cards than the Red Bats, and 4-5x fewer than Black Bats. This is true even with slightly stricter gem and 9 rates for Black Bats (seems the Pop Police are indeed out).
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This follows a trend common to many non-sports sets with multiple releases, where the later releases have shorter print runs as novelty and consumer spending wore off. I will look to a couple of analogs in Pokemon, where the collector base tends to be younger.
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First, lets look to the early Pokemon TCG sets, where like '66 Batman, the print runs were massive, and scarcity and value are only found in high grade examples. 1999 Base Set in Pokemon had an ungodly print run and has wildly large populations and very low gem rates in all three print variations it came in - 1st Edition, Shadowless, and Unlimited (all have the same art, but very slightly different card format). And like the Black Bat set, Base Set card designs are the most iconic and nostalgic. The sets that followed later that same year, Jungle and Fossil, also had large print runs (though about 4x less than base when accounting for all print variations) and have low gem rates.
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We can look at Raichu as a case study to normalize for Pokemon popularity, as Raichu is a rare case that has cards both in Base and Fossil sets.
Raichu Base Unlimited Total Graded: 10,530
Raichu Base Unlimited PSA 10s: 243
Raichu Base Unlimited PSA 10 APR: $766
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Raichu Fossil Unlimited Total Graded: 4,381
Raichu Fossil Unlimited PSA 10s: 46
Raichu Fossil Unlimited PSA 10 APR: $630
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Raichu Base 1st Edition Total Graded: 2,242
Raichu Base 1st Edition PSA 10s: 88
Raichu Base 1st Edition PSA 10 APR: $6,975
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Raichu Fossil 1st Edition Total Graded: 3,396
Raichu Fossil 1st Edition PSA 10s: 162
Raichu Fossil 1st Edition PSA 10 APR: $1,063.00
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A couple of observations can be seen here that I think extend to the sets as a whole:
- Base set price exceeds that of Fossil whether we look at Unlimited, where the Base pops are much higher than Fossil, or 1st Edition, where the Fossil pops are much higher than 1st Edition - though the multiple is much higher in 1st Edition.
- 1st Edition prices exceed Unlimited prices, even when the gem pops are much lower in Unlimited (true for both Jungle and Fossil).
- It is also true that 1st Edition Base gem prices greatly exceed Shadowless Base despite much lower Shadowless gem populations, again confirming collectors value the first print run over the scarcer variation.
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These trends tend to align with what we see in the Batman market. The earlier, more nostalgic set is valued higher than scarcer sets from later that year.
But one thing to note is that you could likely complete a PSA 10 Base or Jungle Set within a few days if you have the funds to spend. That is not the case with Batman, where overall numbers are much lower than these Pokemon sets.
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That brings us to another comparison - 2000 Topps Chrome Pokemon - which seems to show the opposite trend. Topps Chrome Pokemon had two releases, both the same year - Series 1 contains Pokemon 1-78, and Series 2 contains Pokemon 79-151. Series 2 is estimated to have a print run about 2-3x smaller than Series 1. The total number of graded cards from both of these sets is 34,533, still just over the 2x Batman Black Bat number but much less than the 772,327 Pokemon Base set pop. While the gem rate is quite high in Topps Chrome Pokemon (38%), this set contains very rare insert variations with total populations close to those of PSA 9 and 10 Batman pops - often single digits. Many collectors will pay up for these inserts in any grade, valuing the absolute rarity of the card rather than just the relative scarcity of a high grade.
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The interesting contrast to the 1999 TCG market is that with a few exceptions, Series 2 prices are consistently much higher than Series 1 prices, usually around 2-3x, and this continues to separate over time. While some of this may be due to Series 2 containing more popular pokemon than Series 1, the trend seems to hold true even for less popular Series 2 pokemon and more popular Series 1 pokemon. Collectors have taken note of the rarity discrepancy and valued the sets accordingly.
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Unlike the TCG, it is not very feasible to complete a PSA 10 set of the Topps Chrome Pokemon inserts. Instead, collectors tend to view these rare inserts with more of a "trophy card mentality," where any gem copy is a centerpiece of a collection. Specific character collectors often target just their favorite pokemon in the rarest Sparkle and Tekno variations. This is a very different collecting style than set collecting, which often drives TCG collectors and the current Batman collector demographic.
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One last comparison - this time to the iconic 1986 Fleer Basketball set. While the enormous prices for Michael Jordan seem justified, a 10x higher price for Jeff Malone over Julius Erving is clearly driven only by population discrepancy. Set collectors racing to complete their PSA 10 sets totally dominate the gem market and values correspond more or less directly to populations. This is also seen in the early Pokemon TCG sets, where a PSA 10 1st Edition Base Chansey is about 4x the price of a comparable 1st Edition Base Clefable that can only be explained by the gem population discrepancy. While it is not feasible to complete any PSA 10 Batman set, collectors do compete for the highest rated sets on the registry.
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So if you reached this point, you may ask why I am even talking about market outlook for a 60 year old set? The Batman sets have been around a lot longer than Pokemon and still maintain the hierarchy of iconic Black Bat > rarer Blue Bat - isn't the jury in? I'm not so sure.
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If you attend trade shows, you may notice that most of the collectors pursuing vintage non-sports sets did not subscribe to grading for the better part of the 60 years they have been around, so that component and the data that comes with it is still relatively new. We also have yet to see a younger base of collectors move into vintage non-sports that likely have a different value system than the old guard who grew up ripping '66 Batman wax and sticking them in their bicycle spokes. While most sectors of the card market have exploded (and some fallen back to or below Earth) in the past few years, it is remarkable that high grade '66 Batman card prices are nearly identical to prices 10-20 years ago. While modern and 1990s Marvel has journeyed to the moon and back through the course of the pandemic, almost anything before that is still relatively untouched.
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Newer collectors often start with sets they grew up with or that are in the current mainstream. For this generation of collectors, that is mostly 1990s and 2000s, where Marvel dominated the superhero trading card scene. But as we see with the growing market for vintage sports, collectors expand their reach back in time as they learn more about these classic sets. I predict the same will hold true for non-sports, especially with IPs that are still just as present in pop culture as when they were created, and I would say superheroes are in the mainstream more now than ever with the success of the MCU and The Dark Knight Trilogy (holding off on including the DCU and Matt Reeves' The Batman universe for now...).
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While I think the 1986 Fleer Jordan, the 1st Edition Charizard, and "The Batman #1" will always reign supreme in their sets, I do wonder if the paradigm will shift for the other cards in the sets. With the above comparisons in mind and a closer look at the numbers, I pose a few existential questions to Batman collectors old and new to ponder:
- Does it matter that one set came first, or is it sufficient that they are all from the same year?
- Will collectors start to value cards more in line with their relative populations, and if so, will this be regardless of set?
- Will new collectors still be primarily competing for the best sets, or shift towards targeting a few 9s and 10s as grails for their collection?
- If the mentality shifts towards trophy mentality over set mentality, will the ~10x lower pop Blue Bat 9s and 10s start to exceed the value of the higher pop Black Bats? e.g. Will a pop 20 Black Bat PSA 9 always be more desirable than a pop 2 Blue Bat PSA 9?
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I would be more than happy to remain the primary Blue Bat collector scooping up every 9 and 10. But an important and fun part of collecting to me is reassessing the norms in a space to determine for myself what the most valuable or important pieces are (at least to myself), and sharing those insights with others. I've found the best way to do this is to utilize tools like pop reports and price trends and draw comparisons to other spaces. I hope to provide a snapshot of how I approach things here, and as new collectors discover classic, timeless sets, they don't take for granted what people, or even the market, tell them they should value. Determine that for yourself!