been buying a ton of vintage hockey wish me well

It does. 5-10 years ago so much I could have bought that is likely out of reach forever. Goudey Ruths PSA 7s and 8s. 1921 Exhibit Ruths. So much amazing stuff. I just can't bring myself to buy a poor bashed up version of something for the same price tag that I could have gotten it near mint 5 years ago.

Find myself now more picking around for cool memorabilia and photos that are more meaningful to me anyway.

This is it in a nutshell:

I see the spikes tied to people having more time working remotely to get a hobby, then having extra funds from not vacationing in lockdown and not commuting to work, possibly having even more expendable money after receiving stimulus checks, an increased interest when they see mainstream news and sports sites reporting on huge sale prices of vintage cards from Wagner and Ruth down to newer cards from Trout and Tom Brady.

The rich get richer...the poor get poorer... and the middle class pay more and will spend less. Cards are still bullish IMO just not low and middle grade.

Welcome back Greg. I would say that the price increase on cards in general and especially on vintage is due to keep up with inflation. Everyone is buying hard assets these days since your money is worth less today than a few years back. From Real estate to anything hard asset has been the way to go if you want to keep up.

As far as commons also rising in price, it’s simply supply on demand. With a $50 minimum price to grade a card at PSA, I rather go buy the card already graded since very little new inventory has come to the open market as of late on vintage common cards for us set collectors.

For those of us that collect rather than speculate, it’s a bummer of a time but it is also nice to see our collection appreciate in value as most other things have these past few years.

I don’t follow those cards but there are lots of cards like 86 Jordan, DR J rook that are more then 50% off ATH’s. Broadly, the card market is way off ATH’s.

+1 Agree. The future buys for a collection become less often and less than i would have bought
Also now trying to look at other items related to my collection focus they are more affordable(for now although those items like ticket stubs, photos, scorecards are all exploding in price also)

Obviously no one can predict with any certainty but my thought - and I hope I’m right here - is that the high grades continuing to climb helps the lower grades too. Pulls them up along for the ride.

As they should be IMO. Crazy

The memorabilia market did exactly the opposite of what I thought it would do when the pandemic started and then the stock market cratered. Why would people want to buy assets that are not income-generating and are not necessities (like food, lodging, medicine, etc.)? I really thought there would be a major drop in price because people would start to question the underlying concept of "this piece of cardboard is worth a lot of money because of who is on it and how sharp the corners are". Because when you stop and think about it, it doesn't make any sense (shhhh....don't tell anybody).

I guess stimulus checks helped but these were not enough for multi-thousand dollar purchases and (I thought) went to people making less than a certain annual income. And saving a vacation payment or commuting costs doesn't translate into the major increases on high-end cards (although I guess on lower-end cards it may have).

Since supply did not go up, demand obviously increased...a lot. I have no idea why. I'm not a card millionaire on paper but the value of my collection has increased based on VCP while my ability to buy cards has decreased. So I am caught (like most of us are) between "glad I have what I have" and "I need to lower my standards if I want to add anything else" (or part with some of my collection to fund future purchases).

Demand on everything increased due to easy access to cheap money. The stimulus cheques were great but how many people saw their house appreciate by 100k? Lots, and people leveraged up. Literally everything ran hot. So hot that we can expect money to get significantly more expensive and if the Fed ian’t careful a possible recession.

Not a doomer take but money was cheap and east and folks blew their brains out on debt. That debt is about to get significantly more expensive. Asset prices will follow.

Okay, I hear that. The value of my house went up as well, but that didn't affect my spending. I guess in theory I could have taken out a home equity loan to buy cards or bought cards using my credit card. I didn't, but maybe others did. I am trying very hard to stay away from politics and economic theory because I am not interested in discussing the former on the board and don't know anything about the latter.

So I guess I am left with: I don't know why it happened and don't know what will happen next. But I still love collecting! I just have to collect differently than I used to.

Sounds good, but It doesn't look like the Fed data supports that theory in relation to taking on debt to finance cards.

HELOC loans dropped by $45B from Q3 2020 to Q3 2021. Credit card debt dropped by $3B. Autos up $80B.
New mortgages (not cash out refi) jumped as people took advantage of the low rates and jump in equity to sell and move up. Here, I believe you are right. The piper is coming.

Once people that didn't 'need' the money realized such, most paid off debt or saved it. Those who needed it, used it for those needs.

*Opinion* The people who used "cheap money" to purchase cards (and meme stocks and crypto) are the same who would use a payday loan to go to a casino.

There aren't many, and they surely could not move the market.

'86 to '88 Fleer Hoops has done much worse than just about any other segment of the market since the Feb '21 peak. A 70-75% drop across the board.

But they'd also had some of the biggest gains beforehand.

I think the overall card market has held up pretty well since the pandemic boom. Basketball, hockey, and modern everything corrected the most...but again, those are where the most incredible gains were first.

Blue chip baseball and football hasn't corrected nearly as much. 20-30% after some big gains. And while I don't follow pre-war much, aren't plenty of T206s selling higher than ever at the moment?

That's not what happened. Basically, a lot of big money investors saw the card market as an opportunity to manipulate things and cash in. This led to other big money investors coming in. HELOCs aren't driving the purchase of Jordan rookies - fake purchases at $800k (or whatever those two were) are. And so on.

I'd think youre mistaken. Look at Gamestop and AMC stock compared to the losses by the hedge funds shorting it.


People were bribing the target suppliers to buy retail boxes to resell on ebay minutes later for double or more.


Panini begin "dutch auctions" where wax boxes sell out at 1k within minutes. Paying on your credit card is a short term loan since just about any card inside, or the box itself, would bring a profit as soon as it gets to your door.

PSA inundated with modern cards, literally out of the box, since 9s and 10s bring a huge multiple because they will just be "worth more" graded or next month.


Long time psa dealer stole/lost 1 million worth of grading fees as turnaround times slowed as the modern market sank.

Just like biotech and qqq they are the first to get hit, then the mega caps start falling, while people start buying to find a middle ground.

Most dangerous words in any market "this time it will be different". However, if you dont need to sell, and make good buys, historically you will be fine.

1986 fleer jordan psa 1s, not so sure


People certainly used pandemic loans to buy cards. If they never had these funds, the card wouldnt have sold at that price, or at all.

I stand by these very strong opinions!

All I know is I don't wanna bet against non oddball examples of
RUTH
COBB
JACKIE
MICKEY AND WILLIE
in the long run especially higher end these are NOT GOING DOWN. Stick with these 5 names non oddball preferably higher grade and you're going to be very happy.

Prove to me the above statement is not true?????

This definitely has to be factored into the equation.

I'd think youre mistaken. Look at Gamestop and AMC stock compared to the losses by the hedge funds shorting it.
A relatively small # of 'influencers' doing a viral pump and dump play to stick it to the man. On a game interface to boot. What do you think would happen if they decided to mess with a sector short?

People were bribing the target suppliers to buy retail boxes to resell on ebay minutes later for double or more.
This is accurately describing the investor sharks. Day traders, same as for 86/87D and 89UD, except the interface environment allows to flip in minutes rather than days.

Panini begin "dutch auctions" where wax boxes sell out at 1k within minutes. Paying on your credit card is a short term loan since just about any card inside, or the box itself, would bring a profit as soon as it gets to your door.

YES, yes, yes. BUT buying enough vintage cards to move the market in the way that it has?


People certainly used pandemic loans to buy cards. If they never had these funds, the card wouldnt have sold at that price, or at all.

Technically, this is true. But that is also true for any other purchase I make in the future, sort of a 'But for' scenario.

The FOMO is OVERO

1955 clemente psa 8

6/30/2016 $150,391.00

11/16/2018 $26,400.00

5/23/2021 $59,040.00

4/2/2022. $79,198.80


This time it wont be different. I just hope it cycles back up when I sell!