Where Cards are and are going - Link to Josh Luper's "statement"
 

I just thought that someone should link to this....
As I understand it the author, Josh Luper, is the key person, the "Chief Vision Officer," for Fanatics cards as the company enters -- takes over -- the production end new card market from Topps, Panini etc for baseball, basketball, football etc. in the next few years.

Go to :

www.tradingcardsarecoolagain.com



Obviously this does not directly address "vintage" (whatever that is now) but I thought there was enough interest to warrant linking to it...

That was a very interesting read. Thanks for posting it. Relevant to vintage in the sense that modern collecting is a gateway to vintage, as it was for all of us kids 20-50 years ago, so a surge in modern collectors is likely to evolve into a surge of vintage collectors after a while. MJ is a gateway to Wilt The Stilt.

I wonder how generalizable his analysis is to sports cards other than basketball, though (he talks about cards generally, but almost all of his examples are basketball). Does the analogy to sneakers work? Sneakers and basketball (and probably also football) are linked to hip-hop and youth culture in a way that baseball is…not.

interesting read but not sure of the impact on vintage but interesting for more modern stuff

Definitely an interesting read, though not necessarily as applicable to the vintage, especially pre-war, baseball card market. I always thought baseball cards were the top component, by far, of sales and activity of the U.S. sports card market. Yet on that CL50 Index referenced in the essay, there were only 15 baseball cards (30.0%) on it, with only one of them being a pre-war card ('33 Goudey - Ruth). Also noticed how 49 of those 50 cards referenced were PSA graded versions (only 1 by BGS), seeming to further push the reliance almost solely on PSA grading for applicable market confidence and measurement. And though he also discussed issues with card grading backlogs and the cessation of acceptance of new submissions by some TPGs, not a single word about the suspected, and still unresolved, card alteration issue still hanging over select sellers, TPGs, and the hobby as a whole.

But if this guy's arguments and predictions are even close to true, we are definitely not a hobby anymore, but an emerging new investing commodity market and industry, with all these slick young, new, business and investment types entering into it. But I fear not so much as to promote, take part, and enjoy card collecting themselves, but more so to figure out how to jump in and take more money from collectors like us. He even got our hobby into a comparison with Bitcoin, of all things.

So if this is truly where things are headed, I think I finally have it figured out. I just need to get Kanye, Megan Thee Stallion, or maybe the Biebs, to pose with a few S74s and upload and post pictures of it on Twitter or Instagram. Maybe then my silk collection will actually be worth something. LOL. :D

As a person who lives in both the new card world and the vintage (pre-1980) world, I can assure you we as a vintage group are going to be fine.

Now the biggest changes will occur in the brand new (beginning about 2024 or so) and the really expensive cards (the high dollar cards which a large majority of us can't afford to own).

So rest assured, our T206 monster quests or our baseball history quests will not be affected.

Rich

One of the more interesting comparisons is the condition rarity of modern vs. the absolute rarity of vintage. They are truly different markets. Extremely low grade prewar cards are busting records. I mean, Heritage closed a fair condition 1925 Exhibit Gehrig RC for $105,000; think a fair MJ RC will get anything like that??

I would expect the huge price jumps for the big name pre-war players like Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, and Wagner, even though their condition is nowhere near all the 9 - 10 grades these modern manufactured rarities get. These new investor/collectors know to focus on the big names when it comes to pre-war cards. And they also realize they don't have to be 9s - 10s to go for big money, as long as the PSA pop reports show they're just as rare as the high value modern cards. The bigger question I see is, what is happening to the prices of the pre-war commons, and/or pre-war cards not in PSA holders?

??

Are modern cards are like the gateway drug to vintage collecting... So, an Ohtani rookie is like primo weed that will lead to a Ruth/Cobb heroin addiction?

It should be interesting in the "hobby" how a few not so legal and a few, well.....figure in to the overall prices.

Gateway drug...

OK, I think almost all of "us" collected cards to some extent as kids. Who of us started with collecting old cards instead of cards contemporary with our youth? The cards I got were from small grocery stores, and then a bit later in trades with childhood friends. I think that's true for most of us.

We didn't start with bidding on 4, 5, and 6 figure graded cards.

Most of us didn't start collecting old cards until after we became aware of, to varying extents, the history of baseball. For me it started with reading Carmichael's My Greatest Day In Baseball, an early 1960's edition. It took that mental stimulus, coupled with encountering an opportunity to buy an old card (years before there was internet or eBay, never heard of a card show then and couldn't have gotten to one if I had heard).

I think that article is fairly well written. I think his deductions are tailored to the finding he wanted to make. I feel like there's a significant disconnect with a deep pocketed speculator in a slabbed basketball card, and an armchair baseball semi-historian collector of 90 to 140 year old ballcards. From the outside they both look like card collectors. But they aren't. For those of us who own a few shares of stock in some NYSE or NASDAQ listed company, did we invest in those shares or did we collect them????

I don't want a room, closet, safe, safety deposit box that smells like slabs. And I think I like it that people with deep pockets have recently paid 6 figures for slabbed basketball cards and slabbed hockey cards. I'm not gonna buy any of those. I hope those guys continue to chase shiny cards in shiny smelly slabs (do they really smell?) and may they never develop an interest in old baseball cards. I almost always eat a big bowl of Cheerios, Rice Chex, Frosted Flakes, whole milk and blueberries for breakfast. I hope there's not a big influx of moneyed buyers who start buying massive amounts of that stuff resulting in an increase in prices on my breakfast stuff. I hope they stay focused on graded Jordan's and graded Gretzky's.

So maybe that article describes what could happen to the old ballcards. But I hope not.

I'm hoping that the people that collect modern, and continue to chase after the shiny new autographs, continue to do just that. Vintage has gotten difficult enough as it is, I shudder to think about the prices rising again. Especially for some of us that collect on a fixed budget.

I gotta give Josh Luber props. He helped make second-hand sneakers into a $30 billion market. And he spends a lot more on sports cards than I do, so he is plenty interested in the card market and is invested in its success.

As Josh points out Wall Street is recognizing our hobby and investing in it. He thinks this is a good thing and will help make card-collecting cool. I guess I am happy the hobby is getting more interest. Although corporate backing doesn’t necessarily mean long-term health for our hobby – companies have a track record of making short-term decisions – if corporate attention can add new collectors some of them will get hooked and that is a good thing. Because while it is nice for card manufacturers to sell more new cards, at the end of the day the most important factor for the health of the hobby is whether there will be continued demand for the cards that already exist, and we need new collectors for that to happen.

I am not sure how much I agree with his take on the market over the last year. I’d say his “Mark y Mark” theory is true: some people with a lot of disposable income and limited options on how to spend it (like Cuban and Wahlburg maybe) started buying cards, and as prices rose other people who had cards were happy to cash out and take profits. But I would say the run ended when vaccinations got people out of the house again. All the other things he mentioned were minor, and while PSA shutting down did choke off the market (and still is), prices were already falling and anyway a lower supply of graded cards should cause prices to go up.

Also I don’t know how much you can tell about the state of the hobby by looking at sales of $1 million cards. Those are out of range for 99.9% of the hobby, and the future of collecting is not going to be determined by what the ultra-rich decide to put in their vaults. Card Ladder’s Low-End Index, which focuses on $1 to $500 cards, shows prices have not stabilized since the bust in April, and have continued to drop over the last six months. Looking through individual cards in the index, vintage seems to be holding up better than modern, but it would be nice if they had a specific index to show that.

My personal take is that buyers are being pickier right now. High-quality and low-population cards are going up, while run-of-the-mill cards are sliding. This to me is a sign that we don’t have many new collectors building their collections, but instead a lot of Net54-veteran types upgrading their sets and dumping their discards. I don’t know if this will continue but it is not a good direction to be heading.

I know hate is a strong word, but I really hate the idea of Wall Street recognizing the hobby, and people considering cards some type of asset class. Don't get me wrong, I am happy for the people who make a living selling cards, but the commoditization of our hobby, really rubs me the wrong way. The concept of buying "shares" of a high graded card completely defeats the purpose of collecting in the first place in my opinion. Most of us collect because we enjoy the history of the game. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be high dollar cards, scarcity definitely drives the vintage market, I just wish the concept of a "portfolio of cards" as if they were a company, existed. Might sound a bit like an "old man yells at cloud" rant, because it probably is, but that's just my opinion.

I remember, not too long after I graduated from college and was starting on my career, being called on the phone by a (no doubt shady) investment firm wanting me to invest in sports cards. I had absolute no connection to the hobby at that time, so it wasn't like they bought somebody's mailing list. This was in the early 1990s. We all know what happened subsequently. So, I'm firmly in the camp that Wall Street's interest in sports cards will only do damage to the hobby.

Similarly, I see the Fanatics deal through the same jaundiced eyes. The fact that MLB, NBA, NFL, MLBPA, NBAPA, and the NFLPA are all investors in Fanatics points to a business strategy that seeks to squeeze as much out of the license agreement as possible. And that means, in my estimation, a focus on the investor side of the hobby. I may be wrong, and I hope I am, but I'll need to see it to believe it.

I didn’t read the article and I don’t plan to. But I can tell you that for decades I have thought of cards as an asset class. I started buying and selling cards again after law school (previously I collected from age 8-17) in order to help pay for school. Then, in 2014, once I started making some excess income, I looked at cards as a place to invest. Luckily, I believe what I “collect” to be good investments, but I certainly put money in cards a long time ago for the primary purpose of making money. My point is that cards have been an “asset class” for a long time (long before I looked at them that way). It’s just that now, many more people see it as a an asset class. The hobby has gone from a niche to mainstream, which has attracted more outside money and created innovation (fractional shares, NFTs, wax breaks) and created affiliate products (grading, card scanning apps, digital price guides, etc). It’s all a logical progression

I buy old and rare cards, preferably of blue chip players and/or sets. I have collected off and on for almost 40 years and the one truth is that the good cards consistently go up in value over time. I am conservative by nature, so I will stick to my knitting and enjoy my collection of dead HOFers

All that said, I do think prices are a little out of control and I am not nearly as bullish on card board as many. Who knows, it will be what it be. But I also believe what is good for modern is also good for vintage and that a riding ride lifts all boats (at the same time, tidal waves destroy all boats)

As a collector of old cards viewing them as an "asset class" and looking at them as an investment (and I am absolutely NOT that kind of collector), it seems to me that such an asset class collector would be buying cards of Cobb, Ruth, Gehrig, Wagner, Young, Johnson, Lajoie... stuff like that. And they wouldn't be buying common cards or making any effort whatsoever toward collecting sets.

Lawyer Rotchkiss, is that how it's done? Or do you collect a little bit on the side?

Hi Frank. Actually, almost my entire collection is comprised of Wagner, Cobb, Ruth, Joe Jackson, etc. I do love t206s and that’s sometimes where I “collect” - I have the set, plus several back runs and I am working on others and a set of all one type of back. Plus I am working on back runs of Cobb/Wagner in other issues. I do love cards, so I do stray sometimes, but for the most part I stick to the blue chips. I find that the back variations give me enough latitude to be a collector of investments. A link to my collection is in the area below all my posts.

I haven’t practiced law in over 16 years, and I don’t miss it all!!

Sounds like you're enjoying life after lawyering, congrats!

I read about half of this article scholarly essay and the author does make some interesting points. However, he feels that the 2020 boom would have happened, even if the pandemic hadn't occurred, and I don't agree with that at all. And just like how he doesn't believe the role the pandemic played in bringing the prices up to astronomical levels, he also doesn't believe that mass vaccinations and restrictions being lifted played a role in the big decline that we saw earlier this year. And finally, he makes no mention of Gary Vaynerchuk. Does he fail to realize the kind of impact this man had on card prices? Think about it: he has 2.6 million followers on his Twitter account, and there are also millions more followers who are non-subscribers. Now, this guy is considered an "investment guru" and what do you think happened when he started posting pictures of himself with basketball, wrestling and soccer cards? Prices went insane. There was one member on this forum who would get ripped to bits by everybody whenever he shared pictures of his cheap wrestling cards here - does anybody remember that? Well, when somebody offered me $500 USD for my Hulk Hogan, I thought that person was insane, and of course I did the deal. Today, this same card is selling for thousands. And at the same time, when Gary stopped promoting cards to his millions of followers and moved on to NFTs, then what happened? Card prices dropped while NFTs went nuts.

Sounds like Gary V is into creating yet another tulip mania [per Wikipedia]: Tulip mania (Dutch: tulpenmanie) was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels, with the major acceleration starting in 1634 and then dramatically collapsing in February 1637. It is generally considered to have been the first recorded speculative bubble or asset bubble in history.

Lots of money to be made on manias; just don't be the last one standing holding the asset when the bubble pops. You can't readily bubble a vintage card because there are not enough of them to generate the fast flips that build momentum for a mania. Can't do a FOMO post on a card that only sells a few times a year.

Thanks for posting...great read and analysis. I'm hopeful we're at the beginning of a huge expansion in the hobby. Fearful Topps will try and burn it all down by over producing on their way out the door.

I think an interesting question that is raised both by the article and by some of the responses above is this: what percentage of sports card collectors see themselves primarily as investors, and their collections as an "asset," versus what percentage see themselves as collectors, without primarily valuing their collections as investments?

I know that most everyone who collects cards is cognizant of their value, and I think it would be absurd to think that most aren't. That said, I think there are certainly a significant number of collectors who collect for the sake of collecting. Their cards are not perceived as investments. Their cards are not something they consider when they evaluate their "assets" in terms of retirement, income, liquidity etc. For instance, me. My collection is probably worth an equivalent of 25% of the value of my retirement funds. But I don't particularly care. I don't ever sell, I just buy. Much of what I have, I bought years ago when it was much cheaper. Unlike many folks here, I still buy each year's base Topps product and hand-build sets with my kids simply because it's fun and not because it's efficient or really worth the money I spend. When I die, or when I get tired of the cards, they will be sold. But I'm not banking on them to fund my retirement in any way, nor am I counting on them to fund a vacation home or new sports car. They are just fun for me, regardless of value. I suspect there are a ton of collectors who feel the same way. I would just be interested in knowing what the percentages of both groups are right now.

kevin

I would guess the majority of this forum might be a bit of both. For me, I am like you, 100% collector.

One thing I've noticed, especially with newer cards is a lot of folks are neither investors or collectors but "gamblers", looking for a quick return, much in the way people do when buying lottery tickets.

There is one other elephant in the room so to speak and depending on the result, And that is as of today, IMHO there is about a 99 percent chance we have a lockout by the baseball owners on 12.1

Option 1

Lockout is over no later than 2.10. In that case we'll have a truncated hot stove league but spring training will begin on or nearly on time and no real impact to the 2022 season

Option 2

Lockout runs a bit longer and impacts slightly the regular season. If it does only that there will be a minimal impact and we'll go on with a hiccup

Option 3

Lockout runs a long time and basically ruins the 2022 season. As a hobby we gave 2020 a COVID-19 Pass and everyone understood how the season was worked out in real time and other sports could draw upon what Baseball did to make the season go easier for them.

If this occurs, and this is based on the 1994-5 Baseball Strike combined with Hockey Lockout issue, then our hobby will have a hurt and we may lose a lot of the "new" people who have come in.

End Result: This board, and what is primarily covered, will be just fine for about 98 percent of us and the other 2 percent will adjust or leave.

Regards
Rich

What is this reefer madness. The myth of cannabis being a gateway drug has been credibly debunked many times.

So true. In fact, weed has gotten me away from booze entirely. A nice edible mellows me out way better than a shot of whiskey and without the deleterious side effects. Just a little cottonmouth.

But I digress...

Investor-Collector? Collector-Investor?

--When I was a kid and $3.25 could get you a good condition 1952 Bowman Mantle at auction at a local card show (true story) no one was an investor.

--When I got back into the hobby in the late 1980s, it was as a Collector-Investor. I collected for myself 80% but would keep an eye out for a good deal I could flip.

--Now, it is Investor-Collector. I still have stuff I collect purely for $hits and giggles: I don't sweat the future value of sub-$5 cards. But the rest is strategic, so I guess investment. Even if I like the card I have to be convinced of its future potential because if I am fortunate enough to be able to retire in the next decade, I plan to use my cards as a main occupation to gradually unwind my collection at retail over the course of the early years of retirement.

Not so sure I'd write them off entirely as non-investors. IMO these "gamblers" as you call them are like the "day traders" from back in the day. More of a short term investor (and generally not very succesful), but still an investor of sorts.

This is the stuff that kills me, obviously we can't pick when we can go around the sun, in this world, but none of us will ever experience prices remotely close to this for modern cards (not that I'm a modern guy, but still) , let alone vintage.

I'm happy with my 52 Bowman, but I had to pay a decent penny for this one. Some cards seem so unreachable nowadays, like #311 for example. A double printed issue, with a good amount of cards known to the world. Hell I wouldn't mind If I even had to pay $5K for one of them. But $30K, for a PSA 1? I say to myself that hopefully by the time I retire, which is a LONG time from now, that I'll be able to get one, because collecting is a journey.

Vintage, has a STEEP entry point, for newer collectors, especially those on fixed budgets. Kids will never be able to enter the hobby as they once could. What 10 year old can afford a $100 card let alone something that's $1000. Well every thread needs a card, here's my 52 Bowman.

https://i.imgur.com/a3VYXCb.jpg?3

I have always considered my "stuff" as an asset, whether it was a work truck, rental property, or yes, my cards, autographs and memorabilia. Just because I love "it" and may have kept it for 20 years, doesn't make me think of it as anything other than an asset.
I shit you not, I just sold some well used shirts and jeans that were 20-30 years old for the amount I payed for them originally. The buyer was a Wardrobe shopper for a film production. I was surprised, but only at the prices realized. Every time I wore them, I was always telling my wife "They don't make them like this anymore" and the market bore me out.
Over the years I have rehomed some items that didn't speak to me anymore to someone with a more advanced need, sometimes at a NET54 discount. I always introduce myself to antiques dealers and yard sale folks as a "Re-homer", I find it, I buy it, I research and enjoy it. And at some point I get it into the hands of the person it should belong to.
I would not have an IRA holding Baseball cards. But if I needed to fund my IRA, my item's would certainly become liquid if necessary.

Bit of a shot in the dark, but does anyone have an active email address for Josh Luber? I have an old one that is no longer working and can't seem to find a good one. Thanks for any assistance.

hi rich agreed