Forbes Article...good can reading.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by Leon

It seems everything goes up. I can barely afford the taxes on my house anymore.
As long as the stock market is up I think hobby prices will increase. If there is a big drop I think it will affect some card prices but not the "commodities".

The hobby is simply maturing the same way the coin market did, with the big boys (it wasn't that long ago we called them "whales") now also being drawn to it. Really rare and significant cards are still well below comparable items in other collectible fields. I remember the early '90's, when an ExMt M101 Ruth rookie could be had for $5,000 to $6,000. Multiply by 25X or so now, but that pales in significance to $30-$40 million Ferrari 250 GT's. The original 5 Shelby Daytona Cobras, which won LeMans, could have been had for a total of about $12K in the late '60's, and now each is well into seven figures. 1967 L-88 Corvettes (with the 427, 560 horsepower racing engine and related racing components), 20 of which were made, could be had for less than $20K in the '80's--now, $3.5 to $4 million all day long. I always like to think that one indication of the hobby's growth is the size of REA's catalogs. I have one from the mid '90's that was on newsprint and about 8 pages long. Now, even the fall auction catalog is approaching 500 glossy pages.

There will be some up and downs, but as long as baseball is around and people are drawn to its history, rare and significant items (each of which is a matter of degree) will continue to rule the day in the long term.

Just my two cents worth (and a lot of time studying the collectible car and coin markets),

Larry