Is anyone else changing their collecting habits?

[JustinD]

This post is almost a cliche lately, but with the ridiculous prices lately in most of the cards I am interested in, I am smelling a 90's crash on the far horizon.

I am still buying, but honestly had to change philosophies and my collection has altered slightly. I now lean toward more obscure issues, and been looking at key 70's and 80's cards I have ignored but still give me the excitement of childhood memory I am always chasing. I completely ignore PSA almost, due to it selling at unsustainable amounts as I believe most of the "investors" in the market vs. collectors are familiar with it and overpay for a brand name.

My other collections are lately winning the money race for my pocketbook and my Art and Toys are really getting the funds as I wait for the shoe to drop. It might be a couple years, but just like how I refused to buy a house and rented throughout the early 2000s due to the absolute joke of values. (So glad I did that) I feel like digging in and getting stubborn about this.

What are you putting your money in, if you are sitting on the sidelines right now? I almost went all in on British pounds the other day at the 31 year low... after not doing it, I have a feeling I will regret that in a couple years.

[ALR-bishop]

Have collecting goals and parameters and have never varied, other than to expand some. Just a hobby for me

On the 53 Bowman's do you do just color or also B & W ?

[kailes2872]

Have collecting goals and parameters and have never varied, other than to expand some. Just a hobby for me

On the 53 Bowman's do you do just color or also B & W ?

I have them both in the same binder. The b&w just feels like the last series

[JustinD]

Have collecting goals and parameters and have never varied, other than to expand some. Just a hobby for me

On the 53 Bowman's do you do just color or also B & W ?

To be honest I have no B&W's in my collection. The photography is so spectacular on the color and the B&W's just do not hold the same draw. I doubt I will collect them unless a completist gene kicks in, lol.

[bravos4evr]

After getting back into the hobby again recently, I have decided that aside from the odd Braves card I "must have" or some old favorites, I am going to focus on the HOF'ers of my childhood before moving on to older things. Prices have just gotten too high for older cards in decent shape.

[stargell1]

I collect graded cards from my favorite baseball sets. All NM to high grade.

1980 topps and o-pee-chees
1975 topps regular(some mini)
1972 topps
1971 topps
1970 topps

[glchen]

I don't collect those high grade vintage RC's, so most of the run-up doesn't affect me. Saying that, there are still some cards that I have wanted to buy that are now beyond me. However, one thing about this hobby is that there is an incredible breadth to it. There is always something interesting to collect. If there is something on my want list that is now out of my budget, I can move to other items on my list that I can still afford.

[TheNightmanCometh]

After getting back into the hobby again recently, I have decided that aside from the odd Braves card I "must have" or some old favorites, I am going to focus on the HOF'ers of my childhood before moving on to older things. Prices have just gotten too high for older cards in decent shape.

I'm working on collecting every Braves Topps base card from '51 to today, but I've gone away from it lately to collect some Braves bowmans, venezuelans, and OPCs. Also, the odd memorabilia here and there.

[Billy5858]

I'm staying away from the RCs obviously even though I've
never really have bought high grade examples anyway. But even the mid grades are being affected with the run up. Also staying away from the big name HOFers i.e. Cobb Ruth Mantle Mays etc. I'm just buying centered colorful clean midgrade mid level prewar HOFers. Also getting into raw cards for the first time. A recent post got me interested. I'm diggin holding and smelling the cards like I used to as a kid.

[Zach Wheat]

I find myself looking at & collecting more of the regional issues. This is something that I have previously avoided. I do not collect or follow prices on graded cards.

Interesting topic though.

Z

[JTysver]

I don't really see this as a bubble as it was in the 1990s.
For starters, the cards that took a dive were not vintage cards. Those pretty much kept their value.
I see this as the time when cards are starting to move again after a good 20 years of doing very little.
The price of cards didn't boom in the 90s much at all, they boomed in the 80s with the rookie craze at that time. When the market on new stuff crashed, the old stuff didn't follow.

[Beatles Guy]

Quality over quantity for me. I may buy one or two cards a month now, and they aren't the obscenely priced 8s and above. I'll take a nice mid grade card with good centering any day.

[Exhibitman]

I'm with Jason on that one. Forget the slab #.

[egbeachley]

I don't really see this as a bubble as it was in the 1990s.
For starters, the cards that took a dive were not vintage cards. Those pretty much kept their value.
I see this as the time when cards are starting to move again after a good 20 years of doing very little.
The price of cards didn't boom in the 90s much at all, they boomed in the 80s with the rookie craze at that time. When the market on new stuff crashed, the old stuff didn't follow.

I'm pretty sure T206 commons and 1952 Topps Mantles lost 1/2 their value then. But regardless, market bubbles aren't going to be exactly the same.

When the few people paying $300K+ for these Mantles wake up, or run out, and one sells for under $250K, the floodgates will open as sellers try to get their cash out before its too late.

[JustinD]

I don't really see this as a bubble as it was in the 1990s.
For starters, the cards that took a dive were not vintage cards. Those pretty much kept their value.
I see this as the time when cards are starting to move again after a good 20 years of doing very little.
The price of cards didn't boom in the 90s much at all, they boomed in the 80s with the rookie craze at that time. When the market on new stuff crashed, the old stuff didn't follow.

Every bubble pops in time.

The laws of economics dictate that value cannot rise infinitely. Eventually the market settles and prices level. The extent of that pop is really the non-constant. But as in all things, ie: stocks, real estate, precious metals...everything, it will fluctuate. The true guessing game is finding the highs and lows and selling and buying accordingly.

I don't believe we have hit the high yet, but it will come. You can't stop inevitability. Also, once the competition is priced out and the upper crust have gathered all they want, the sellers market dries and thus begins the fall.

I am certainly not quitting, but I may just stand on the sidelines and watch for a bit and just grab some of the low hanging fruit for a smidgen and see how it plays out.

[pokerplyr80]

My strategy has changed a little. A couple of the rookies I wanted to add or upgrade are a lot more expensive. Those will have to wait, or I will settle for a lower grade. As others have suggested I may go after a couple of prewar cards next, or a few modern cards I've wanted. If the prices stay where they are at I may have to settle for a nice card a grade or two lower than I originally anticipated.

I may also sell a card or two that I had planned to hold.

[begsu1013]

yep. probably about 6 months or so ago, all my player sets were completed, hard to improve upon and in some cases done several times over.

had to find something else scratch the itch.

[Writehooks]

A dozen years ago I was a hardcore hockey and baseball collector who dabbled in boxing cards and memorabiia. That changed when I moved to China in 2003. I was on a one-year contract to cover sports for a national English-language newspaper, and while my work took me all over the country, there was next to nothing to satsify my collecting interests -- except for boxing. I'm now on my third extended tour of duty in Beijing, and over the course of annual vacations in Canada I've sold off all my hockey and baseball stuff. My focus since 2006 has been 100% boxing, and I'm happy to report that I've been able to add several nice pieces to my collection from China, Japan, the Philippines and Australia.

[Koufax32fan]

[QUOTE=JustinD;1555630]Every bubble pops in time.

The laws of economics dictate that value cannot rise infinitely. Eventually the market settles and prices level. The extent of that pop is really the non-constant. But as in all things, ie: stocks, real estate, precious metals...everything, it will fluctuate. The true guessing game is finding the highs and lows and selling and buying accordingly.



Just a thought about this comment from Justin. Economic theory actually dictates that value is a simple function of supply and demand. I agree with Justin that prices established by true markets will fluctuate, but if the supply of something is limited and the demand is less limited, then over time prices will increase. Rookie Kevin Maas's (or is it Maases?) were in oversupply compared to the (non-existent) demand. I believe there could be some cards that will always be in demand and supply will not increase leading to increasing prices over time - think T206 Wagner - because no matter how negative "investors" get on sports memorabilia there will always be a large enough (albeit very small) number of well-heeled people wanting to acquire those (perhaps very) few cards. I also believe that where supply outstrips demand due to any number of very good reasons (people begin to watch roller derby more than baseball, baby boomers looking to sell their collections (or their heirs do), credit becomes scarce and the economy falters, etc.), then prices on many cards that are relatively plentiful (52 Mantle comes to mind - especially those mangled versions) will find an equilibrium. Hopefully I will be in a position to purchase some of those cards when prices do come down.

Here is an excerpt from an Economist article on bubbles and baseball cards from 2014 (http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636506-how-childrens-hobby-turned-classic-financial-mania-baseball-card-bubble):

"Economists have wrestled with the question of whether markets are “efficient” or not for more than half a century. Eugene Fama was awarded a Nobel prize in 2013 for pioneering work demonstrating that markets quickly incorporate new information and cannot systematically be beaten. Yet others reckon markets often go haywire. Robert Shiller, for instance, showed that market returns could in fact be predicted at longer time horizons. He also reckoned people are prone to certain behavioural tics, misjudgments that depart from rationality and which can drive markets to heights of “irrational exuberance”. He was also awarded the Nobel prize, jointly with Mr Fama. Other economists have investigated ways in which markets can overshoot in one direction or another. “There are idiots,” Larry Summers once wrote in a paper on the subject. “Look around.”

Yet Mr Shiller, who warned of both the stockmarket bubble of the late 1990s and the housing bubble of the 2000s, has pointed out that it is often not just the fools piling into speculative frenzies but the experts themselves. The bankers putting together dodgy mortgage-backed securities at the height of the housing bubble were not simply corrupt or stupid: they believed that they had discovered new ways of capturing high returns at low risk—which is why they retained so much dangerous stuff on their balance-sheets. Neither did big institutional investors pile out of equities before the crash of 2000-01. The potency of a bubble is in its plausibility, to laypeople and experts alike, right up until the moment the game is over."

[Leon]

A dozen years ago I was a hardcore hockey and baseball collector who dabbled in boxing cards and memorabiia. That changed when I moved to China in 2003. I was on a one-year contract to cover sports for a national English-language newspaper, and while my work took me all over the country, there was next to nothing to satsify my collecting interests -- except for boxing. I'm now on my third extended tour of duty in Beijing, and over the course of annual vacations in Canada I've sold off all my hockey and baseball stuff. My focus since 2006 has been 100% boxing, and I'm happy to report that I've been able to add several nice pieces to my collection from China, Japan, the Philippines and Australia.

Thanks for your service.....and sounds like you have found happiness in collecting. What more could one want?

[GoBigRed]

After several decades of being out of the Hobby I jumped back in two years ago.

I got caught up in the Prospect/Serialized/Auto craze and got frustrated after about a year with all of the wild price gyrations, volume of options and the whole speculation game.

I got out completely (with some losses along the way) and started to pursue 50s & early 60s HOFers and Rookies, concentrating on Mantle. This brought me back to my childhood and lasted for another year. The recent wild rise in the Rose RC allowed me to totally get out of this focus and switch to Early 20th Century examples of the first Hall of Fame Class members (Cobb / Johnson / Mathewson / Ruth / Wagner).

It has been a fun and rewarding ride, here are the key cards from my changing focus over the past two years:

2013 Bowman Chrome Puig Blue Refractor RC PSA-9; then

1963 Topps Rose RC PSA-7; and now

1909 T206 Cobb Off-Bat SGC 80/6.

I think I am most comfortable with the early 20th Century issues, no more worries about a prospect getting Tommy John surgery just after I just acquired 20 copies of his Pink Ice Auto Refractors #d/50 RCs !!!!!

Steve

[Exhibitman]

A dozen years ago I was a hardcore hockey and baseball collector who dabbled in boxing cards and memorabiia. That changed when I moved to China in 2003. I was on a one-year contract to cover sports for a national English-language newspaper, and while my work took me all over the country, there was next to nothing to satsify my collecting interests -- except for boxing. I'm now on my third extended tour of duty in Beijing, and over the course of annual vacations in Canada I've sold off all my hockey and baseball stuff. My focus since 2006 has been 100% boxing, and I'm happy to report that I've been able to add several nice pieces to my collection from China, Japan, the Philippines and Australia.

Let's start a boxing card bubble.

[conor912]

Pink Ice Auto Refractors #d/50 RCs

good grief