Quote: darwinbulldog
The cards have been around for 100 years. People are just realizing they are attractive? Makes no sense.
+1. Also I think the Young portrait is maybe the ugliest portrait card in the entire set.

interesting glenn, young portrait is one of my favorites

I've always loved the Young Port too. He looks very dignified.

I think David Clayton-Thomas' first line says it all...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4bSBLctK0g

Nice thread going here. I Definitely agree, top T206 HOF's Cobb, Wajo, Cy Young are shooting way up in price lately. Even when I want to buy a group of commons either individually or in a lot, if they're nice looking raw cards, they have gone up in price.

Even a low to mid grade, raw group was $15 to 20 per card now has become $20 to 25 per card, even higher.

When I restarted buying T206s over a year ago, I tried to focus on the big HOF's first, I got some of them at the time, which was to my advantage.

It's just easier to take a chance on something like baseball cards right now because....what the hell. I'm not gonna earn money putting it in the bank. If you have cash, what's the point of buying a 6 month cd? Interest rates on savings accounts are basically zero, and have been for years. Interest rates on Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth > 0.

....until the next MLB work stoppage, that is.

People are also buying classic pickup trucks right now too. Unfortunately, I don't have enough room in my garage. I wonder how coins are doing?




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Definitely a significant herd mentality. People start chasing cards that they hear other people are chasing. Jackie's Bond Bread a year or two ago. Shouldn't really be surprising. Human nature. People do it with stocks, real estate, cars, vacation homes, vacation destinations, colleges. Figure others know something you don't and you jump on the bandwagon.

totally agree that this occurs!

Now that you both said it, me too.:D

Sure, at your local bank they will likely pay you near 0%.

You can get ~2.4% for a 6 month CD at a place like Schwab, Citi etc. Keeps up with inflation at least.

I don't think we can group the Bond Bread Jackie portrait as a herd thing. i believe that the impetus for that card's rise was the research recently published that demonstrated it was a true rookie card. At that point a lot of collectors realized that a fairly difficult and somewhat obscure card was a very attractive rookie card of a major historical figure. Kinda like what happened when the evidence was arrayed that photo-matched Joe Jackson into a T202 action image.

Now, in terms of postcards and Exhibit cards, people are waking up to the fact that attractive career-contemporary cards of the greats can be had for a fraction of the price of T or R cards, even now when there has been some price rise.

Nice score on the WaJo! I'm with you on the modern stuff. But it's not just crazy, it's bat-sh!t-insane-asylum crazy.

This is a good point, I think. I'm not sold that a herd mentality would be the biggest factor in prices driving up - and in particular, that's because the herd mentality didn't work very well with the Koufax rookie market manipulation a couple years ago. If a herd mentality is all it takes, that card would have stayed at the inflated prices. And FWIW, the fact that that manipulation didn't seem to have a long-term impact makes me think that the hobby is probably in a healthy place.

Recent sales on modern cards
Playoff Contenders Tom Brady RC 12433.00
National Treasures Stephen Curry RC 12700.00
Bowman Chrome Mike Trout RC 19750.00
Upper Deck Exquisite Kevin Durant RC 40105.00

t206 cards are cheap. We have been collecting for so long that we have become oblivious to price increases in the hobby. I bought the cards discussed here for 20-50 dollars. Cobbs for 100-200 dollars. Back then modern rookies were 1-5 dollars.

There are several factors here. Investors shifting money from other investments to high end vintage. Also, modern collectors who are used to paying 500-1000 for a pack of cards and selling modern cards for thousands of dollars shifting to vintage. Neither group is concerned with what these cards sold for 5, 10 or 35 years ago. They see a track record of gain in hobby staples and that is where they want to park their money.

I guess I see the modern market as a much different beast than the vintage one, perhaps even so much so that they are separate markets altogether. What happens in one doesn't necessarily have much bearing on what happens (or might happen) in the other. So I don't necessarily see the speculation in the modern market having a strong connection to what is happening to prices in the vintage one.
In that way, I don't believe that adage, "a rising tide lifts all boats" for cards. A record sale for a PSA 6 1952 Topps Mantle doesn't necessarily mean anything for other 1952 Topps, other Mantles or even other graded 1952 Mantles, and even less for cards from other eras of other players. And sometimes a card is even a market unto itself.

Maybe in the past, but that line is disappearing. I see more and more guys that collect modern cards looking to enter the vintage market. Guys "invest" in a young player and hit it big, so they look to put part of their profits into key vintage cards that don't have the risks involved like modern cards do.

But isn't that an example of moving the money into a different market? I'd like to make a perfect comparison, but I'm sure this will be clunky as I'm not well versed on investments: I see your example not unlike somebody making money in one investment (derivatives, perhaps?) and going into something else (blue chip stocks, I suppose). I don't think those would be grouped together in the same market, just as I don't think vintage and modern are in the same market.
There are certainly factors that overlap with modern and vintage cards, but I guess I see many factors that are different, particularly the artificial scarcity of the 1/1, the gambling on an unfinished career (prospecting), etc.
Perhaps this is all semantics, but from my point of view, there are enough differing factors and influences that it creates a separation of markets in which what happens in one doesn't necessarily have a bearing on the other.