More T206 price escalation?
 

Last night in Heritage's weekly Sunday auction a Lajoie w/Bat in PSA 4 Piedmont 350 goes for $1680. Seems very high to me. Might have to consider selling my Lajoie portrait if this continues. Here's the link though I don't think it will work because you have to log in (any thoughts?):

https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball-c...Auction-120115

T206's, especially HOFers, for whatever reason are going thru the roof right now!

I saw that. It is a pretty card, but that’s a silly price; the consolation is it’s nice to see people buying the card and not the flip. Let me know if you go to sell your Magie - although there is a very pretty PSA 3 prices at $30k+ that has sat on eBay for a while, so we know a pretty 3 ain’t worth $30k, but it should be if a Lajoie w Bat is worth over $1.5k.

My set is lowish grade, punctuated by a few nice cards, but i am glad I finished it a few years ago.

The key HOFers are hot, but I'm not sure the run-of-the-mill guys are.

It's all relative, when you see people paying $180k for a shiny Ohtani auto rookie or even $30k for a Trout rookie.

I sometimes believe, while still a baseball card, it is a different market and scale from pre-war.

I often think that some cards are a market unto themselves.

This is a price in which you can get a solid PSA 6 and save money.....ridiculous.....

or a 7 OC

People tend to overpay at Heritage for some reason. I follow their other categories and use their website for pricing comps. When I sell an item that Heritage has sold in the past, it never gets close to the HA realized price. I always adjust their prices down by about 25% to get a more realistic market price.

I keep wondering how long this bull market for T206 Hall of Famers will last. A few years ago at the National in Chicago, I felt that I overpaid for a PSA 3 Cobb Red Portrait. My main objective then, was to add a Cobb card to my collection. If I were to allocate the same amount of money I paid then for a Cobb Red Portrait card today, I may be able to pick up a PSA 1 or an Authentic grade. Now the Lajoie has spiked in value. -maybe not as drastic as the price realized on Heritage- If this mania continues, I may have to become a seller.

These prices are Great for the Card World!

I am noticing the mis-cut cards and funky error printer goof ones are not like they once were but the Quality cards are soaring still outperforming NASDAQ
in 5, 10 and 15 year windows.

Go Gators
CV

Now Ronnie, no sour grapes......the grades are what they are...

I've never understood this mentality. The higher prices go, the more limited the market is.

I'd rather see more collectors, not less.

I suppose that the higher prices are great for those of us who are more likely to be sellers. I'm gradually being priced out of some of the cards that I still want.

I could be wrong. I think it's a couple factors.

Collectors using extra cash ( from stock market..? ) to have to reach to get items because, the hobby market is going up very fast...and it's hard to keep up. So people are paying the higher price now thinking...I won't be able to afford it in 2-3 years at this rate. FOMO. Fear.Of.Missing.Out.

It's not just with T206 but it's like that way with a lot of hobby categories especially with photos recently. Crazy prices. I know I'm having a hard time keeping up with the currently prices in the hobby.

Not that I'm in that market, but the art market has given me confidence that the high end card market still has room.

And a caution to him here, if anyone follows anyone else around the forum, giving them a hard time, they won't be following for long. That is a peeve that won't be permitted....

And back to topic, I think the high prices of those stellar cards "might" give a little bump up to nice, lower grade ones too.

But wouldn’t more collectors mean more demand, and therefore, higher prices?

Leon,
You’re correct. I was curious and checked some ended auctions for mid grade PSA/SGC 3-5’s that I purchased from Barry about 15 years ago. Most if not all have doubled since then. A $100 HOFer graded 5 has sold for $300-400. A 3 which was $50 sold for $140. Not earth shattering but still an increase. I won’t mention the Green Cobb PSA 3 I purchased for $900. Guess that went up a bit too.

"A rising tide lifts all boats."

I start to think about everyday set builders who now encounter significant premiums for top HOF cards. Do they get frustrated and give up their quest to build the 'monster'? Maybe they lean towards other sets that haven't seen the same sort of appreciation? I myself started looking at M116 cards and the scarcity compared to the T206 cards and the relative 'cheapness'. At some point your 'investment' has to have some sort of reasonable return. When you dump $3000 into a card with thousands of an existing population, it sometimes becomes a question of 'is it really worth what i'm paying?'--in other words is the premium warranted, given the supply?

As long as there is demand

but does

escalating prices + frustrated buyers = lower demand

?

Or escalating prices = interest from new parties = continued increasing prices.

Any way you slice it, many aspects of the "hobby", including high grade T206s, is moving more toward being an investment and attracting a new audience of investors or bringing back an old audience of collectors who are now buying for investment too.

Or more demand for middle or low grade. Prices rise from demand.

Overall, yes, I agree. But the market for certain items will narrow as prices go up.

Everything is relative, so take this example FWIW. Five years ago, card X sold for $1000. Today that card sells for $5000. Person Y can deal with dropping $1000 for a card, but not $5000. That person is now out of that market.

Full disclosure... my salary has not quintupled in the last five years.

Ok, fwiw, I'm retired. My income has been cut in half but my bills may have been cut by 500%. I don't want to do the math :p.

For sure, but I think that sustained investment capital will not continue as long as auction houses are permitted to bid on their own lots and fraud is still so rampant. There are easier investment waters to navigate.

I agree AH's shouldn't be able to bid in their own auctions. That said, and as devil's advocate.....and beside the point they get to see the bids (my main reason they shouldn't be able to bid as well as paying commissions), why? If I am a consignor and you bid 1000 and the AH bids 1100, why is that bad for me? I am getting more for my consignment. Again, just being devil's advocate. I absolutely agree though.

I'm not suggesting that fraud/AH's bidding on their own lots while seeing the bidding hurts the consignors. It will keep rich guys who may want to invest heavily in the hobby away, because they know these are not true auctions but instead just give the appearance of chance when in truth the AH's are fixing the bidding when they deem appropriate. And while the consignors may win in the short term with this sort of AH fixing, in the long run we all lose because keeping out major investment dollars from the hobby will keep values down.

The higher T206 prices - remember its demand relative to supply (or vice versa, haha). To us here on this board, yes, T206's seem high supply compared to other cards we collect. However, I argue there is still not that many nice T206 HOFers really out there compared to a lot of stuff (1950's everything, 1960's everything). And the fact that A LOT of folks would like to own the fabled T206's, demand, is really high. Higher than any other pre-war set. I can easily imagine a new investment collector coming into the market - what are they going to look at - probably starts with nice HOFer T206's, no?