The card market is way too big and too diverse to all move in the same direction at the same time.
In the cards I collect a PSA 9 1982 Wrestling All Stars Series A Hulk Hogan just set a record for a PSA graded copy of the card this weekend. The supply is very low so when one appears it attracts interest. Greg got offers within five minutes of it being listed.
There are some card segments where buyers might get a little jittery and pull in their horns but I don't see them leaving long term. The altering of cards has been going on forever and it isn't entirely surprising to me that cards have gotten passed the goal line and I do know there is a range of attitudes towards the issue so not all collectors will run from graded cards just because they have had work done on them. I was surprised to see such great acceptance for the videos of the guy teaching people to clean up cards on Youtube so it seems that it is just an issue of how much work the card has had done. I first learned of soaking from reading this board and was surprised it was in the totally okay category so it seems there is a lot of different view points of what is acceptable. That said the market will shake this off in time. There are so many graded collectors they aren't just going to quit and there have been loads of new people coming into the hobby the past few years.
The sales tax is an interesting one because it could modestly affect auction prices. I live in Florida so if I buy from a seller in New Jersey I avoid paying a 6.5% sales tax where as the person living in New Jersey might pay 9%. On a $200 item I am saving $13 and they are paying $18. That means for their bid to actually be $200 they must really bid right at $183.50 to be in the same boat. If they do this and I still bid $200 and no one else bids than the card will indeed sell for a lower price. I could see this happening in some cases but I don't see this hurting selling prices significantly. There are a lot of big time collectors that live in states like New York and have already been paying taxes to auction houses and buyers premiums so overtime I expect this to just be the norm and collectors will accept it. I sold a raw 1982 Wrestling All Stars Series A Ric Flair that I got with a set and wanted to recoup a portion of the purchase price and got the $185 that I wanted. I was freaked out at first because I saw a higher payment come in and it had tax and was like F I hope I don't have to deal with this. You don't. Either way the price I wanted I got so I can't say the tax affected the price. In theory it could have been higher but I will never know that. It was a back and forth in a best offer scenario and in theory every card negotiated like this could sell for more so I can't concern myself with the what ifs.
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