What effect do huge odds have on the value of a card

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wings1908

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I opened up a few boxes of SP Authentic today at the lcs ( Helou's in Windsor ) and got some nice hits. One of the hits in particular prompted me to post this question, Do monster odds of pulling a card make it that much more valuable ?

Here is the card



Stated odds of pulling this card according to cardboardconnection is

2012-13 SP Authentic Update - Team Canada Moments Multi-Player Auto Parallel Set Checklist
1:26,780 packs
210 Cody Hodgson/Matt Duchene Gold at 2008 U18 WC

It's a nice card, glad I pulled it, but if I had to put a value on it being unaware of the odds I would think that 60-80 dollars would be a fair price. I don't know if it was issued in last year's product and if these were extras put into this year's SPA.
Now the question is " how does the stated odds impact the value of this card or any other card. Is it that rare of a hit that I have a little gold mine here ?
We see a lot of cards in the show and tell that include the description of the odds, on E-bay almost everyone will include the stated odds along with SP or SSP in the sale.
Will collectors or set builders pay a silly price for this or is this just overhyped. This applies to so many cards that have long shot odds attached to them, If a card is numbered we know how many there are but because a company tells us that it is 1 out of 26,780 packs is it worth that much more

Thanks for the read, let me know what you think.
 
"odds" value only applies when people are looking for this card, for sets, collection whatever

who cares how hard is it to pull when nobody is looking for it
 
I'd say $60-$80 sounds about right but you never know. If you wait and 2 guys are building the set, it could go for hundreds of dollars via auction. That's the thing. It's all about timing
 
go_leafs said:
"odds" value only applies when people are looking for this card, for sets, collection whatever

who cares how hard is it to pull when nobody is looking for it
Click to expand...

I agree with you and a card is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it. If I can rephrase my original question I would say " Do these monster odds give us a false or inflated perception of value ?" I have a Nathan Mackinnon/ Seth Jones dual auto ending tomorrow on E bay with stated odds of 1 in 6000. I anticipate a sale of 200-300 I have seen the card listed with BIN from 495 to 1,200, long odds do not always translate to big prices ( by the way I did put odds 1 in 6000 in my description )
 
My Marian Gaborik UD Signatures card from the new UD falls at something like 1:12,000 packs, I still got it for the opening bid of $19 with no other competition. It might have sold for as little as $15 if I had a chance to bid from a lower starting bid. Like said above, low odds only make the card valuable if a lot of people are after it.
 
Like others have said, odds will only factor in if someone needs the card. I think Frank said it best in that you really have to hope there are multiple set builders looking for the card at the same time.
 
They can have a major effect if it's a tough-to-assemble set, or if it's a very popular player.

Case in point: a 2013-14 Trilogy Signature Pucks Josh Gorges Group A auto sells for $40. Not too often you can say that about my pal #26. The Beliveau from the same set, also a Group A, regularly goes for well over $100.

But then there's the case hits and greater that don't really do much of anything at all.
 
wings1908 said:
If I can rephrase my original question I would say " Do these monster odds give us a false or inflated perception of value ?"
Click to expand...

I would say they absolutely do in most cases. With your card (only one dual and it's a small set from a heavily collected product), the odds become much more relevant. However when it's something like UD Game Jerseys in S1 and the Group A odds are stated where there's Gretzky, Crosby, Joey Bagodonuts, and many other players making up the group, you can rest assured of who the filler is and who the outliers are within a group. Too many people fall victim to just stating odds as though it absolutely proves scarcity.
 
It also depends on if the odds are applicable to that card only, or a group of cards. UD's "Group A, B, C, etc" is very misleading, because it does not take into account shortprints within the grouping. You could have a Group A auto that is seeded 1:10000 packs that is more plentiful than a Group B auto seeded at 1:500 packs. It is especially noticeable in the 1997 Legends AU's and 11-12 Parkhurst Champions.
 
TanguayFan said:
It also depends on if the odds are applicable to that card only, or a group of cards. UD's "Group A, B, C, etc" is very misleading, because it does not take into account shortprints within the grouping. You could have a Group A auto that is seeded 1:10000 packs that is more plentiful than a Group B auto seeded at 1:500 packs. It is especially noticeable in the 1997 Legends AU's and 11-12 Parkhurst Champions.
Click to expand...

Also a good point, you have to give it some time after release to see which autos in the group appear to be more common before throwing too much money at them, but at the same time do you take the chance of waiting too long and they dry up quicker than you anticipated?

In the case of my 2013-14 Series 2 Gaborik UD Signatures here is what his auto group looks like:

GaborikUDSig.jpg


Group A (1:12,501 Packs)
Cam Neely
James van Riemsdyk
Luc Robitaille
Marian Gaborik
Peter Stastny
Shea Weber

Of those here is what I found on eBay with quick active and completed searches:

Cam Neely - Couldn't seem to find any at all
JVR - Three sold, none currently listed
Luc Robitaille - One sold, two others currently listed
Marian Gaborik - Two confirmed copies sold, mine and Curt's. None currently listed
Peter Stastny - One sold, none currently listed
Shea Weber - Three sold, none currently listed

As it stands right now, with Series 2 having been out for a while now, it appears the Group A autos are actually fairly scarce, especially the Neely which I haven't been able to find on eBay at all sold or otherwise. Basically no more than 2-3 copies of any of the six seem to have surfaced since Series 2 released, the Neely and Stastny being the rarest by far with only one copy of the Stastny between them. I may have missed a copy or two that didn't come up with my search keywords but for the most part the Group A autos are few and far between for sure. Add to that the assumption that this Series 2 will probably be very lightly broken which further reduces the chances of Group A, or even B autos hitting the market.

As a set collector - or player collector for that matter - I don't think you can take the chance of letting Group A autos or jerseys slip by assuming your player might be one of the more common ones. I'm glad I picked up my copy when I did as I haven't seen any since and who knows if any more will appear.
 
FrozenInferno said:
Group A (1:12,501 Packs)
Cam Neely
James van Riemsdyk
Luc Robitaille
Marian Gaborik
Peter Stastny
Shea Weber

Of those here is what I found on eBay with quick active and completed searches:

Cam Neely - Couldn't seem to find any at all
JVR - Three sold, none currently listed
Luc Robitaille - One sold, two others currently listed
Marian Gaborik - Two confirmed copies sold, mine and Curt's. None currently listed
Peter Stastny - One sold, none currently listed
Shea Weber - Three sold, none currently listed
Click to expand...

The Neely may not exist. Although with them being sticker auto's, there is a much better chance that they do, however UD won't admit to it one way or the other. There are two AU's in the 1997 Legends Set that UD reps have said exists (Neely and Bucyk), however neither of them have EVER surfaced on the online secondary market. I've seen two different checklists for the product, but UD swears that the one that is on their website (which contains the two cards in question) is the correct one, while the one on CardboardConnection has those two cards omitted. I'm guessing that CC is correct, based on what I can tell, since it has been like that since the product launched.
 
TanguayFan said:
It also depends on if the odds are applicable to that card only, or a group of cards. UD's "Group A, B, C, etc" is very misleading, because it does not take into account shortprints within the grouping. You could have a Group A auto that is seeded 1:10000 packs that is more plentiful than a Group B auto seeded at 1:500 packs. It is especially noticeable in the 1997 Legends AU's and 11-12 Parkhurst Champions.
Click to expand...

And Black Diamond. I really think that product is the 'master' of short prints within group odds. Not just with the autos; with the jersey groupings too. Heck, they even go so far as to have fewer of the 'base' jersey or auto than the parallel.

And that's one of the main reasons I love those sets.

For the OP's question: It's all about who's on the card, and if people are chasing sets (like others have mentioned). I know I've got into auction pissing matches with other people doing the same set as me. Fran definitely put it best. Timing.
 
I think that it would be best if Upper Deck would just number their cards.

You do not know if your card there is /5 or /25 or something even higher. I bet if a set collector find a card /5 has surfaced they will do what they can to try and get it. Now if it is not numbered they would be inclined to be patient and wait for one at a good price point.
 
There's another thing too in addition to Rob's point.

I like calling this the "Tony Esposito Effect" based on Espo's autograph in one of the Topps Archives sets. He was the lone Group E or F or J or whatever it was, and the odds of pulling his auto was something like "1 in 8700 packs" - Meanwhile, if you averaged out the odds of pulling one of the 20-ish autos in the 1:800 designation, it was theoretically harder to pull any one individual auto from that tier than Esposito. That again is assuming that everybody in that group has the same number of autos available.

It didn't stop guys at the shows from trying to sell those other group autos for $30 and Espo for $700 though. :laugh:
 
Stated odds only mean something if you are opening packs. As an auction or sale, the odds change and are then 1:1.

Also, the odds for a card on the secondary market would only really mean something to a set collector and they would already know what those odds were or how scarce a card was. A player/team collector isn't likely to bust enough product to beat the odds and get the card they want because they'd end up with a bunch of stuff they didn't want.

The exception to that is any player/team collector that has an outlet for unwanted cards.

Also, it is obvious that if the other player was someone more accomplished, desireable or a rarer (or dead, sorry) signer than Cody Hodgson the value would be considerably higher.
 
Tripredacus said:
Stated odds only mean something if you are opening packs. As an auction or sale, the odds change and are then 1:1.
Click to expand...

you may be overthinking this. when considering the odds most people will think of it in relation to the product and how rare it is to pull, not that fact that it is now on ebay.

high odds are the equivalent of low numbered cards... but we can only estimate what that low number is.

for example with this year's SPA, we can estimate there are about 5,000 cases (i'm just estimating but some of you may know the actual number). there are 60 different Future Watch autos numbered /999... they say there is at least 1 per box. consider some will have more than 1, some cards may be held back as replacements or whatever and you get a maximum of 4,995 cases.

the Authentic Moments group A autos, of which there are 5, are 1 in every 13,440 packs. so that's roughly 1 in every 47 cases. that means there are approximately 107 group A autos in the product. of course as someone else pointed out, we do not know how any particular card is short printed within a group (i'm betting the group C Gretzky is a sp). if the group A autos were produced in about the same quantity, there'd be 21 or 22 of each.

how does that translate to value? again, i think it's the same as it being a low numbered card.

i bought a Mario Lemieux group A auto... paid $172 for it. there could be up to 103 of them, so maybe i over paid. but i'm guessing/hoping it's short printed within the group and there are not too many of them. only one i've seen surface yet. either way, i got it for less than the price of 2 boxes so i'm ok with it.

your Hodgson/Duchene is a little easier since it's the only card in its group. looks like there's 1 in every 93 cases... so probably around 50 total in the product. so unfortunately it's not as rare as the odds make it sound. but it's still a good looking card.
 
and if anyone knows the actual number of cases i'd be interested in hearing it. 4,995 appears to be the max but it could be much less.
 
The odds stated on the wrapper (or website) only pertain to that product. If said product only existed in hobby box format, then the math is safe. Otherwise, those odds would be different for products with retail, blaster or jumbo packs. We'll probably never know.

I'd be interested to know what the print run on Decoys are. :D
 
The odds of a pulling a card from a set stated on the pack/website is only one factor while the other is the players in the set and their market value. This goes into the same old question "why is this player more than the other?"

It is known that card companies produced more cards of the stars within the set to sell the product a little easier. There would be more "star" players than regular Joes just to make sure that the average collector would get the players that were popular. That would mean that Gretzky, Lemieux, Lindros, Crosby, P Kane, and many others would be produced at a higher quantity than say Weight, Roenick, LeClair, Getzlaf, Wheeler, for example. The values actually don't reflect the actual market saturation of the players in the product but the demand for the player.

Odds and values related to odds these days on a special inserted item like the SPA Dual Auto in this thread are more convoluted than most of these answers but they all hit the nail on the head.

Popularity really drives a lot of this market along with the "new". Hodgson and Duchene were hot a year or so ago, but now it is more to the younger guys. A great card none the less but the price value of $80 does seem reasonable for the "popularity" of these players in the current market.

It is funny if you think about the value of cards and the odds of getting them. A Topps Gold Label 1/1 can go for much less that a Topps Gold Label Red of the same card.
 

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