PSA market data
 

Apologies if already posted, Leon please just delete if so, didn't see it on a quick look.

Nothing paints a picture of collectibility like real-time market data. For all the numbers powering movers and shakers across sports, eras and players, Card Ladder brings the goods.
By Sport (1-Year Return)
• Baseball -3%
• Football -41%
• Basketball -41%
• Hockey +8%
By Era (1-Year Return)
• Pre-War +21%
• Vintage -5%
• Modern -40%
• Ultra-Modern -41%
Player Trends (1-Month Return)
• Nolan Arenado +31%
• Klay Thompson +19%
• Josh Allen -19%
• RJ Barrett -25%
New Record Highs
• 1915 Cracker Jack (Shoeless) Joe Jackson #103 PSA 2.5 $45,401
• 1997 Stadium Club First Day Issue Michael Jordan #118 PSA 10 $8,000
• 1978 Topps Kareem Abdul-Jabbar #110 PSA 10 $6,900
• 1971 Topps Steve Garvey #341 PSA 9 4,800

Pre war is solid.
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When does modern end and ultramodern begin?

Last week?

(2017 or 2018, I believe.)

Too solid...

I can predict a pre-war card market drop. If anyone wants to know when, just let me know, I'll be happy to provide the date/time it will start.

When you see me selling cards, then watch the market drop about 40% or more in a single day...:p

edited to add, this is my Zager and Evans post!

As with any market, we see the most volatile assets drop first and fastest, the blue chips will lag but will suffer, likely not as bad

Interesting, but this is just a blip in time. In an ideal world, you’d collect data/prices when the first cards were first created and follow them to today’s data/prices. This avoids selectively choosing peaks and valleys of card prices. Outside of this, everything is speculation on everyone’s part.

yes...but this "ideal" scenario you outline is not possible to create?

Not possible to create, that’s true. But to me, better data would be obtained from the time period were card prices/sales were first recorded and preserved. Heck, even data from 5 years back would have much more meaning. The further back the data yields a higher “N” ( i.e. total population in the research sense) which leads to more realistic results.

I’m guessing you’re a dentist, but as you know there’s a reason why medical researchers put more credence in studies that lasted decades rather one that lasted just months ( e.g. Framingham). Stock analysts apply this same concept. And if people are equating cards to stocks then this should hold true as well.

i certainly agree with you regarding quality of data...and yes...i'm a dentist. I just think it's funny how many want sports card collecting to be a pure..."perfect" marketplace...but it can never be. There are too many variables...combined with all data not being known/available.

Sooooooo...we just have to live with the data we have.

And...maybe...baseball cards shouldn't be viewed quite so much as stocks????

Bing, bing, bing. You hit the jack pot. There just not enough volume in sales to accurately predict ( notice I said predict) a card’s price.

I was actually buying quite a few football cards (1950-80's) for my son's collection over the last 6 months, and can honestly say for a good part of them I was paying 2017-18 prices and getting them bought. There were a few that were a little stronger, but it appeared to me that this vintage of card had lost most if not all of the "COVID" gains they experienced and are settling into a price point they were in roughly 7-8 years ago. I think this is going to be pretty standard across the industry, some segments are just going to take a little longer to get back to these price points, but pricing seems to be settling at these price points for now anyway. Not sure Vintage baseball will go back to these price points, but do look for them to drop some value and have some correction, especially when talking lesser stars and more common cards from this era.

Yes, not much at all like stocks.

For a lot of the time card collecting has been a thing there was very little price data, and what we had was fractured and mostly unreliable.
The ACC and whenever it came out, sales lists and results from a handful of people who bought and sold.
Followed by the Sports collectors bible in 1975? And its update. Plus a few more regular publications.
The annual Becketts started in 77 or 78, and the first monthly pricing magazines a year or two after that.

But those are only monthly pricing.

It's only been since Ebay began that we commonly had easy access to more timely data. And only since some of the automated price tracking sites started that it's been collected in a really easy format.

I don't know when the place Peter got that from began, but I suspect it's within the last couple years.

I think it's right there in Peter's first post - 1 year return.

So not a particularly large window. But bigger than 1 month!

But maybe your question was whether this 1 year covers January - December 2022 v. some other 12 month window?

The question was how long card ladder has been around. It could be over a year but they had a summary of data over the past year. Or it could be they've only been tracking things for a year.

You're right that Card Ladder has only been around for a few years - looks like they started in June 2020.

But I assume they collect sales data that goes back further. My experience is that data from 2010-today is fairly abundant, data from 2000-2010 tends to be less abundant, and before that is really sparse. So I wouldn't be surprised if they're picking up data from the last decade or so, and maybe attempting to go even further back, although I would be suspicious of just how precise any data will be prior to about 2010.

:D And then what comes after ultra modern? Megamodern? Super Duper Modern?

Postultramodern.

Card Ladder was bought by Collectors:

https://www.psacard.com/articles/art...latform-ladder

They should have access to past sales data kept by PSA and Goldin. If the 2000-2010 ( which would include data from the Great Recession) is suspect then I would not think the current collected data is any more reliable.

Perhaps sparse is a better word than suspect. I'm not convinced that a lot of the sales data was picked up during the window from 2000-2010.

Go ahead and do a search using the PSA data for any given card at any given grade, particularly cards with a lot of historical volume. My experience is that the data thins out dramatically starting at around 2010, give or take. Often the data drops dramatically, by a factor of 5x or 10x as you go back in time prior to 2010. So either there were fewer sales back then, or just as likely, the data tracking systems weren't capturing as many sales.

Of course, it could also be an issue where there just weren't as many PSA-graded cards period during that era, in which case there wouldn't be as many sales. But as such, the data is a lot less robust, and therefore much more difficult when it comes to parsing the data to reach reliable conclusions.

I agree that data is sparse. But sparse data is better than no data. It just means that you have to look at ANY kind of data with a critical eye.

These numbers - from what cards ? Are we talking playing days Ruth's in higher grade ? Are we talking Cobb beaters? Or low tier HOFers from semi-obscure sets? Or Cracker Jack commons ?

Our portfolios might contain nice Ruth's and Cobb's for which we have realized nice paper profits. But our holdings also contain much lesser cards of lesser players.

Would be interesting to see how the percentages came about and from which cards.

I think the data Peter cited is an attempt to aggregate the entire market for any given era. As you noted, there are a lot of smaller data points within those groupings.

I think you can drill down on some of the data using the free resources on cardladder. But you probably need a premium account if you want to get very much. I’m not a premium user, so I can’t speak to the precise functionality, although their marketing puffery makes it seem like you can basically track everything in your collection over time no different than if you were tracking stocks in your portfolio.

Note: I agree with the earlier observations that baseball cards are not stocks, so please don’t infer that my comments above would suggest otherwise.

Player Trends (1-Month Return)
• Nolan Arenado +31%

I find it interesting that Arenado is getting some love. I think he's a great player and on track to someday get into the Hall of Fame. But "players over 30 who play in the Midwest" isn't exactly the normal "hype machine" player who'd top a list like this.

I think this year he probably crossed the line from possible HOFer to probable and maybe that explains it.

Maybe that's it...and I think that he's trending that way surprised a lot of people.

Of course, it's an "percentage basis" change, so maybe the number was very low, then by just going up a little bit, made for a large "percentage increase". Or maybe one person subbed 1,000 Arenado cards. Tough to say. Interesting, though!

Not only has he put up another solid year but also removed some of the Colorado question, I think.

That's true...another great year in St. Louis helps remove some illusions. I think we call that the "Larry Walker", right?

I for one am all for it. My modern collecting is very much focused on "players who will/could/should" make the Hall of Fame some day". I just don't get the modern obsession with prospects. I swear, even for players who have great careers, their cards are never more valuable than when they're in A ball.

Then Yesterday, and final category is Today. ;)