Posted By:
PaulThe Robert Edwards Auction brings back to mind a question that I've been wondering about for awhile. How many people out there have the resources and the willingness to spend, say, $5,000 on one lot of vintage baseball cards? And to do this not once in a lifetime, but several times a year?
I mean this question very seriously. The percentage of people with that kind of discretionary income is very small. Combine that with the percentage of people with a serious interest in vintage cards, and the number is even smaller. Yet, in auction after auction held by REA, Mastro, Lew Lipset and a few others, dozens if not hundreds of lots of vintage cards are sold for many thousands of dollars each.
The membership of this board collectively probably knows every serious vintage card collector in the country. I would be very interested to hear your estimates of roughly how many folks there are out there spending this kind of cash on vintage cards. I am absolutely not asking for information about anyone's personal finances. I'm just interested in the overall state of the market. Maybe a different way of asking my question is this: How large is the potential universe of bidders on vintage card lots in the 5K plus range?
Thanks.