$1,200: Genius or Idiot?

A 1989 Ken Griffey Jr. Repli-Cards rookie in PSA 10 drew 16 bids and closed just under the median of 12 matched sales.

Someone paid $1,200 for a 1989 Baseball Magazine #63 Ken Griffey Jr. Repli-Cards rookie graded PSA 10. The auction drew 16 bids and closed $62.50 below the $1,262.50 median of 12 matched sales of the same card at the same grade.

Why it matters

A contested auction is the market setting a price, not one buyer guessing at it. This one settled a shade under the comparable median — the cleanest fill a bidder can get, on a pool deep enough to trust.

By the numbers

• 0.95x — what the winner paid against the $1,262.50 matched-comp median. The premium is negative: $62.50 to the buyer.
• 12 matched sales — same card, same grade, lead sale excluded. That pool is also the whole visible exit market, hence liquidity 6 of 15.
• 16 bids — competitive price discovery, and the strongest input in the score at price discovery 13 of 15.

The intrigue

Other bidders set this number, not a seller. Interquartile spread across the pool is 1.14, so the middle of this card’s market is tight and the $1,262.50 median is a real anchor rather than an average of unrelated slabs. A fill under a tight median in an open auction earns comp deviation 36 of 40, the heaviest component in the model.

Reality check

Two things cut the other way. Prices in the pool run from $900 to $2,850 — a 3.2x spread, wide enough that we pulled and read every title in it rather than trusting the ratio. All 12 are the same card at the same grade, so the dispersion is real and one sale near $2,850 does most of the stretching. Do not read the high end as the going rate. Second, the recent half of the window is clearing lower: the trend is -5.5% across 6 recent sales, worth trend 5 of 15. And scarcity 4 of 15 is the whole scarcity case — a PSA 10 grade, no serial numbering, no autograph.

What's next

The verdict is FAIR BUY at 64 of 100, with no cap applied — a disciplined purchase in a softening market rather than a steal. Watch whether the next sales converge on the $1,150 to $1,312 quartile band or keep sliding. This score excludes a population report, sell-through data and card-level search volume, because we do not have them and will not estimate them.

How we track this

This edition scores one verified sale. The comparable median is computed from 12 completed sales of the same card at the same grade over a requested 90-day window, with the lead sale excluded and best-offer listings dropped, because a best offer publishes the asking price rather than what was paid. Every title in that pool was read by hand before publication. RazMania tracks a sample of completed eBay sales, not a census, so nothing here is a claim about the wider market on any given day. eBay reports sold date, not sold time. No population report, sell-through rate or card-level search volume goes into the score.