Will this stock market madness affect cards?

[drcy]

Originally Posted by Dpeck100

If someone has to sell during this environment perhaps it is soft but the reality is most of the high profile cards from every genre are in strong hands. I get constant emails asking me to sell cards but the reality is I have no interest. This means higher prices not lower prices. When you control such a large amount of the available inventory it means even higher prices.

The people shouting for lower prices don't own the cards. It is that simple.

That doesn't make much sense. At best, you don't sell the cards at the price you want because no one is willing to pay that much. Which means your "prices/values" are imaginary. eBay "museum sellers" have a similar philosophy: "My card is worth $10,000. No one's willing to pay half that much, but it's worth $10,000 because I say so." Market values are identified prices realized, which means buyers and what they are willing to pay most definitely are part of the value equation.

[Dpeck100]

Originally Posted by drcy

That doesn't make much sense. At best, you don't sell the cards at the price you want because no one is willing to pay that much. Which means your "prices/values" are imaginary. eBay "museum sellers" have a similar philosophy: "My card is worth $10,000. No one's willing to pay half that much, but it's worth $10,000 because I say so." Market values are identified prices realized, which means buyers and what they are willing to pay most definitely are part of the value equation.

I get the feeling most of this board doesn't actually watch EBAY completed sales or follow active auctions.

Right now there is a Jeter at 140k, a Kobe Bryant insert at 111k, and numerous other cards getting major action.

In a different thread someone asked about a Lebron that is from a year ago and I watched the final action and it went for over 11k.

The stock market and the card market are so much different in the way they trade. I believe we will hear about some high profile hedge funds that were over leveraged going into this and there could be some actual blow ups. Those that own cards unless they are forced to use those assets for liquidity can simple sit on them.

Two months from now or six months from now people will still want to own tangible assets and enjoy collecting. If this hurts the economy for a much longer period of time then yes it will create demand issues. China got back to work in two months and if that is the road map here I just don't see the catastrophic outlook for cards.

There are plenty of people like me that own cards that you can't simply get on EBAY and buy. Unless those same people who want the cards exit the market their interest doesn't wane but it grows. Over time that means higher prices.

I have lived through a number of corrections in the markets since 1998 when I began investing and trading. This is clearly the strangest one because it came out of no where. Comparing this decline to 2008 and 2009 in my view is not a good comparison. We had a two and half year slow down brewing where there were millions of people not paying their mortgages and upside down on home equity values. The stock market is important but so is the real estate market. I live in a pocket of Orlando and all through this so far homes listed are being snapped up at the same prices. This means at the moment that perceived equity is still in place for folks. In 2008 and 2009 that wasn't the case. The stock market collapsed, unemployment trends had been on the rise for quite awhile and homes values were decimated.

I only talk directly to a handful of collectors but none of them are heavy in the stock market and have plenty of resources and cards. I think you will find that there are lots of collectors who have positioned a larger percentage of their net worth in cards and aren't seeing drastic hits to their balance sheets in real time. My largest asset is my 401k and it is in cash.

Time will tell how this plays out and I know I will be checking EBAY daily looking for things to buy and hopefully some supply shows up that I want.

[Huysmans]

Originally Posted by drcy

That doesn't make much sense. At best, you don't sell the cards at the price you want because no one is willing to pay that much. Which means your "prices/values" are imaginary. eBay "museum sellers" have a similar philosophy: "My card is worth $10,000. No one's willing to pay half that much, but it's worth $10,000 because I say so." Market values are identified prices realized, which means buyers and what they are willing to pay most definitely are part of the value equation.

+1

[hcv123]

Death rates of people infected with the disease have been running at between 3.6 and 3.7 percent globally (under 2% in the US). IF there are ultimately a million cases in the US that amounts to 20,000 and 37,000 deaths nationally - incredibly tragic for sure, but not the "sky is falling" scenario many are painting.

If "shutting down the country" for 2-3 weeks would be sufficient time to contain the virus, then our leaders need to stop pulling the band aid off slowly and just hit the pause button - it will ultimately hurt a lot less on a lot of levels then allowing all of the state and local responses that while well intentioned are insufficient at resolving a national problem.

That all said - I guess I land somewhere in the middle of what has been stated on the card market. For sure there are simple economics in play - supply and demand. Last time I checked a hard asset is only worth what a willing seller and a willing buyer agree on - not set by the seller or buyer alone. I believe for reasons mentioned above items in our hobby with larger supply will likely be affected negatively by the current environment as there will likely be less buyers and more sellers. I further believe items with limited supply will largely hold their values.

My 2 cents.

[obcmac]

How does your analysis change if we have 100-200 million cases in the U.S.?

Originally Posted by hcv123

Death rates of people infected with the disease have been running at between 3.6 and 3.7 percent globally (under 2% in the US). IF there are ultimately a million cases in the US that amounts to 20,000 and 37,000 deaths nationally - incredibly tragic for sure, but not the "sky is falling" scenario many are painting.

If "shutting down the country" for 2-3 weeks would be sufficient time to contain the virus, then our leaders need to stop pulling the band aid off slowly and just hit the pause button - it will ultimately hurt a lot less on a lot of levels then allowing all of the state and local responses that while well intentioned are insufficient at resolving a national problem.

That all said - I guess I land somewhere in the middle of what has been stated on the card market. For sure there are simple economics in play - supply and demand. Last time I checked a hard asset is only worth what a willing seller and a willing buyer agree on - not set by the seller or buyer alone. I believe for reasons mentioned above items in our hobby with larger supply will likely be affected negatively by the current environment as there will likely be less buyers and more sellers. I further believe items with limited supply will largely hold their values.

My 2 cents.

[Johnny630]

Who believes a lot of the sales for vintage post war cards in auction since 2014 were fiction ?

I do.

[Hankphenom]

Originally Posted by Johnny630

Who believes a lot of the sales for vintage post war cards in auction since 2014 were fiction ? I do.

How so? What percentage?