I feel sorry...

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by Bored5000

That is largely how I look at it as well. Modern cards aren't my thing at all, but I am reluctant to call someone speculating on one or buying one "dumb" or "stupid." People can spend their money on whatever they want. To a very large segment of the population, spending $10K on any baseball card -- pre-war or modern -- would be "dumb" or "stupid."

Sure, pre-war cards hold their value better than flavor of the month modern cards. But a collector can also lose his shirt on a $10,000 individual pre-war card as well.

A couple of big differences I see: for a collector to lose his shirt on a $10K pre-war card, he has to get caught up in a bidding war that is emotional (most $10K pre-war cards have fairly well established values that are stable for longer periods). A speculative $10 modern card can lose its value really quickly.

The second difference is the collector/dealer relationship. I could certainly be wrong about this, as I am not involved in modern cards, but my guess is that dealers are generally going to dump the high-priced modern speculative cards quickly, while they have high 'value'. In other words, much more likely that the collector gets caught without a chair, than with collectors of pre-war stuff. Basically, dealers of modern stuff are turning it over more quickly because they know it's more dangerous to hang onto things. I also suspect there are more collector/dealer types with prewar, whereas with modern there are probably a lot of straight dealers.