I was just having the conversation yesterday with my twin brother about cards and how one of the draw backs from collecting wrestling is that it is obviously a work so you don't have that ability to speculate on their performance like you do sports cards. The closest thing to a real competitor in the true sense of the word is Brock Lesnar and his cards haven't really moved in any significant fashion.

The recent surge in many of these top star cards can directly be attributed to their actual performance and that correlation is quite appealing to people.

There is a guy on Twitter Gary Vee that has recently been pumping sports card collecting from the investment angle and it seems reasonable that this past performance just like in stocks is going to bring in new money. This guy appears to be buying large lots of various cards and it doesn't take much of this activity to send prices soaring.

I don't know if it is a good sign or a bad one when speculators like this come in with gobs of cash because on one hand it is bullish on the other it could lead to a serious imbalance in the market and an eventual serious decline.

People do like to speculate and these enormous gains have really been incredible to watch. It is pretty remarkable that a Tom Brady card sold for 400k.

Jeter hasn't played in years and his cards have surged tremendously in the past two months. Baffling to me. Maybe it's Gary's doing?

It could be.

Obviously everyone by now knows who Evan Mathis is but to my knowledge he is the only high profile collector/dealer that was a professional athlete that is really known in the hobby. I am sure there are others but he is pretty visible. If more athletes or entertainers ever get involved it will get really crazy.

Lets say someone comes to me with their million dollars and says Dave I want to get this put to work right away. You can buy this sum of almost anything in the financial markets and not move it too much unless it is a micro cap stock and that wouldn't involve me anyway.

You can't say the same thing in cards. I could see "investors" coming in and saying lets get some cash put to work and if a Jeter used to be 4k they could easily move it to 6k just by trying to allocate some funds. The price elasticity of cards is really high and fresh capital can create a tidal wave.

Look at that guy Nat Turner with basketball. He has clearly moved cards in that market.

+ 1
 

Amen

Clearly in 2016 people moved prices on certain rookies quite significantly. And not to say it yet again, but man did I take grief from certain people in making the claim that the market was being manipulated or whatever verb you want to use.

Some of those cards will never sell for those prices again. Others are in the process of rebounding and in the case of Jeter new highs have been made.

Once something is off the ground it can take on a mind of its own. What is the difference between 10k and 11k? Obviously $1,000 but it is only 10% at that point. How does one determine if something is worth $10,500 to them or $10,800? Beats the hell out of me.

+100, David. I got so sick of the disparaging remarks on Net 54 regarding auction house lot descriptions. They MUST represent the consignor with all their might. While it is true that many items are all too well-known, their fame must needs be refreshed for potential bidders to ponder whether they want to bid to own said item. Then there are items that were scarce when issued, and somewhat rare to downright rare today. All too many collectors have little to no knowledge of them, not to mention their significance. How are they going to learn, or become intrigued and then intensely interested, lest the auction house let them in on what they're looking at?

--- Brian Powell

Change is indeed inevitable. In the tobacco era kids picked up discarded Cobb inserts off the floor of the tobacco shops if they were not yet smokers.

In the 50s kids like me could always get a nickel or two from their mothers for those 5 cent wax packs of Topps cards sold everywhere. A few collected sets but many made their bicycles roar.

In the 80s and 90s we were lured back into the hobby by those billions of high end Upper Deck cards that were destined to be the gold mine of the future, just as the 50s Topps Cards were beginning to appreciate in 80s,

But now how many “kids” are buying those $100, $500 and &1000 packs of manufactured rarity without getting a secured loan, understanding they only come with an implied guarantee of possibly recouping your investment, if you’re lucky, actually only if you're pretty damned lucky.

When old baseball cards began to show significant appreciation, I tried to determine what new, future collectible should I begin to hoard. The result of my brainstorm I do not believe has come to fruition yet, but I considered rarity in making my choice.

Drumroll please

Unopened Happy Meal Toy Packets from McDonalds

If they had taken off in value, just imagine the national depression that would have ensued in the young adult population who had consistently ripped open the toys before touching their burger.:eek:

I guess the unease underlying all of this is the degree to which the registry proponents are willing to hand over control of their hobby to a monopolistic for-profit business, unregulated and beholden to no one except its shareholders, with all that implies. All the talk of markets and investments and so on, yet no consideration of the fact that the registry exists on the whim of whoever runs it, as do the awards, as does the difference between grades of cards, especially at the top levels with modern cards. PSA decides not to grade an issue or not count an issue and the registry doesn't reflect it. For example, PSA won't grade any exhibit cards except baseball. Which means that the player sets for other sports are woefully incomplete and inaccurate, often missing a whole run of a subject's cards that predate the PSA-approved rookie card. Or it won't differentiate between T205 backs, so a Drum or a Hindu counts the same as a Piedmont or Sweet Caporal because PSA acknowledges no difference.

Third party grading came about because it was a natural evolution of an industry that assigns grades to a tangible asset and that grade can have a significant impact on the value assigned to it. This is nothing new.

Cars, coins, stamps, diamonds all had third party grading services prior to cards.

I purchased my wife's engagement ring when I was 27 and didn't do an ounce of research. We found a yellow diamond and took the jewelers word for it on the ratings and just assumed it was the case and had our grading report tucked away for many years. Thirteen years later we celebrated our ten year wedding anniversary late last year and she wanted a major upgrade and the first thing I said to her was we need to do some research before we even consider purchasing a new one. It turns out the rating company of our ring was a much lower tier company and over grades the diamonds. I was afraid of this as soon as we started looking into it. The diamond is probably worth 30% of what I paid for it and such is life. That said once we had more information we realized the price range it was going to take to get what she wanted and shortly there after moved forward with purchasing a much larger stone and setting that is graded by the PSA of diamond grading.

This right here is exactly why third party grading is a necessity to the trading card market.

The only reason that cards have been able to achieve the level of prices they have is because a non biased entity gives their opinion and the marketplace has chosen to assign higher values based on it.

Not a week goes by that we don't read about a card surfacing on EBAY that is fake or a story like the guy who is pushing the idea he recently found an extremely valuable Babe Ruth and the third party authenticaters act as a referee and protect consumers from being scammed.

All three major third party graders had the same market opportunity and market forces decided that PSA was king. Was it first mover advantage? Was is better service? Was it marketing? Was it tough grading? Was it the advent of the registry? It probably was a combination of all of these but what really did it is that the most successful collectors that exist have either all or a huge percentage of their collections in PSA graded slabs. I can't speak for Marshall Fogel or Ken Kendrick or Donald Spence but something gave men like this the confidence in the brand and decided to pursue cards graded by PSA.

The third party authentication market is close to a monopoly at this point but no one is forcing anyone to use PSA other than the market. The market is built by a large number of participants and their actions have created the current climate. No one has to participate in the registry. Some think it is great others think it is completely stupid but the population reports that dictate the registry have clearly had a significant impact on values and will continue to.

No one has turned over the hobby to anyone. PSA doesn't set the prices for cards. EBAY doesn't require cards to be graded to be sold. PSA doesn't force someone who submits their cards to join the registry. There are 145,501 active sets currently so a lot of people have decided this is a route they would like to take.

I am a market guy and not a socialist so none of this bothers me. I can either choose to accept it or not. I have.

Not only all of this, but grading can also come in handy when buying/selling in an online world. My area is relatively small and rural compared to a lot of the country. The last show I went to was the 2015 National. Prior to that, I probably hadn't been to a show in ten years. That means that pretty much all of my buying and selling is done online. I am almost to the point to where I don't try and sell anything ungraded online any longer. It is just so much more cut and dried to have cards graded prior to selling them. By the same token, unless I knew the seller really well or had done a lot of business with him, there is almost no way I would buy ungraded cards online anymore.

The other end of this is that buying graded doesn't excuse one from doing his homework first. It is on me (if I am the buyer) to educate myself about the card(s) I am buying both in terms of pricing and in terms of any other nuances particular to that card. There is absolutely no substitute for knowledge. I am still buying the card and not the flip, and in many cases I am still pretty selective on whom I am buying from, especially if the purchase is substantial. I say all of this as someone who has not really been a "grading guy," but I am coming to grips with the direction transactions in this hobby are taking.

And YOU obviously drank the kool-aid from the people who get paid for their opinions.

Which is another way for me to say that it is YOU who have no clue what you are talking about.

There is NO WAY for you draw a correlation between the number of cards in the pop report and the number of cards that exist in total.

I happen to have four of these cards in my safe deposit box, and trust me when I tell you they will never be listed on the pop report during my lifetime.

During my last 40 years of driving around the country scouring baseball card and collector stores I have accumulated many other incredibly scarce cards the existence of which would collapse their markets if I released them all at the same time.

When my kids start the sales, you might be among those who run screaming from the collapse. Apologies in advance.

Doug "there's a big grin on my face right now" Goodman

To suggest you can't draw conclusions from a pop report is ludicrous.

A pop report doesn't tell you how many exist but if a third party grader has only reviewed a few after 28 years and has graded nearly 33 million collectibles it is extremely rare.

Using this logic I am to assume there are hundreds of Honus Wagner's floating around that aren't accounted for. Please.

Congratulations on owning four. Hopefully your children make a fortune one day selling them.

Apologies, you are correct, you can draw many conclusions from the pop report.

But, any of those conclusions that involve cards outside of the pop report won't be based on any sort of reality.

Question
 

Doug, you don't think the pop report can be used to draw any accurate conclusions in regards to rarity or condition sensitivity?

No.

The only certain conclusion that can be drawn from the pop report is that no more than the number listed have been looked at by the people who get paid for their opinions.

There have been numerous threads on Net54 regarding cards being resubmitted. I would be of the opinion that, on average, less cards have been looked at than are in the total pop report for many cards.

That's why I often joke that Dmitri Young should be used to submit cards to the opinion sellers, they always seemed to like his, even if they hadn't liked them previously (with a different owner).

I don't think anyone would argue that an unbiased third party who could examine cards for alterations, and set a grade to determine value, would be an asset to the industry. But from that premise, to what actually takes place, is a vast abyss.

The TPG's are missing altered and trimmed cards at an alarming rate, the grading is so inconsistent that a card can be resubmitted three times and receive three different grades (it happens often), and it is believed by many that certain high volume submitters get preferential treatment with their grades.

So why don't we say that third party grading solves some problems, but creates a host of new ones. A far from perfect industry that, IMO, could be doing better.

4 McKinley's? That is amazing. Are they cancelled?

Pres
 

Doug, here is a graphical representation of the '32 President set showing population total graded by PSA. You're unable to draw any statistically accurate conclusions from this?

I am completely baffled by your opinion on this topic. If someone thinks a Pop report is a perfect road map they are indeed mistaken as many cards are graded by one company and crossed over at some grade or cracked out and once again submitted to the other company falsifying the number of cards graded.

That said when a card comes from a very popular set of cards that have been heavily collected by advanced collectors for a long time time if there was a ton of them you would know it simply by looking at the Pop report.

Here is the sale from 2014 where they notate that less than ten copies are known. No where does it read that there aren't more but at this stage of card grading Robert Edwards is confirming it is indeed a rare card using the population totals.

https://www.robertedwardauctions.com...ly-discovered/


The 1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth has three graded by PSA. Once again this doesn't mean only three exist but it is 100% accurate in conveying that it is indeed an incredibly rare card.

I can confirm once more 100% that a population report can be used to determine condition rarity. I only have one set of cards that is rare like your McKinley cards but I have lots of condition rarities. How come there is not a PSA 9 or PSA 10 of the 1982 Wrestling All Stars Series B Ray Stevens? When looking at the pop report it is the only card from all three sets that one doesn't exist. You don't think it is easy to ascertain by looking at this scenario that this card for some reason is tough in high grade condition? I will give you the answer because every single copy I have ever seen is cut 70/30 or worse and so none will qualify. Will one surface? I don't think one will ever surface but it might. But I know for certain there won't be many and therefore incredibly tough in high grade.

I am not certain if your opinion is based on extreme position bias because you don't like third party graders or what but you are simply wrong.

Not in regards to how many exist in the entire world outside of the pop report. How could I?

It's certainly logical to assume (ASS U ME) that a similar breakdown proportionately would exist outside the pop report, but nothing in regards to actual counts.

Are there 10 more McKinley cards, or 10,000?

There is no way to KNOW.

Did the printer have a time machine hidden in his shed because he was actually from the future, and had gone back in time to print himself a bunch, but then he got stuck when his time machine got broken, so the extra cards he printed are being handed down to his (in the past) children, to eventually hand over to his (future) family so that they can all make a fortune from when they are worth way more than they currently are, to be sold just before my family crashes the market?

MAYBE!

Doug "maybe my grand father was that printer" Goodman

pop
 

Doug, you made the claim that no accurate conclusions can be drawn from the pop report, but you're now changing your claim to total population. I don't think anyone is making a claim that the pop report can be used to determine the total population of a card. As David pointed out, the pop report is far from perfect, but in my opinion, it is the best data source available, hands down, to analyze card rarity and condition sensitivity.

I am equally as baffled by your opinion, but at least I have some logic on my side.

No, you would not necessarily know that.

Auction houses like to use terms regarding how many are "known" If I open my refrigerator and note that based on the fact that I have one hot dog remaining from my Five Guys purchase yesterday (yes, their bacon cheese dogs are great), and say to you "I know of only three hotdogs" my comment would have no relevance or connection to the number of hotdogs in the world.

If by "incredibly rare" you mean that only three have been seen by the people who sell their opinions, then yes, you would be correct. That does not mean that the guy who lives up the street from you who you have never met doesn't have 8 of them in frames in his den, but he probably doesn't. But he COULD.

I don't know where to start with this paragraph, suffice to say that you CAN NOT "confirm ... 100%" as shown when you say "it might".

Actually my hatred of the people who get paid for their opinions is irrelevant to this conversation.

Prove me wrong, and I will apologize and agree with every comment you have made, and donate $1,000 to the schools or classrooms of your choice on https://www.donorschoose.org/

Doug "my hate does not define me, but your proof is not proof" Goodman

No further comments from me Doug.

I am not going to change your mind and you are not going to change mine.

You can draw various conclusions from the pop report, but none of those conclusions give you an accurate provable number on how many of a given card exist outside of the population report.

Yes, based on the pop reports you can ASSUME that a certain card is more rare than another, but it is an assumption, which can not be proven.

Man, let's forget this pissing contest where nobody is going to convince anybody of anything, to me the fact that Doug has 4 McKinley's is just huge.

Seems like you should try, if only to help the kids...

https://www.donorschoose.org/

A better place for the money that some of you pay to have people give you opinions about your cards.

And of course a better place for my money than the cards I buy.

Doug "I'm a riddle wrapped in an enigma, with logic sprinkled on top." Goodman


PS - I am not sure that all of my opinions expressed in this thread were actually opinions, many were statements of fact.

I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything, I am just pointing out fallacies in logic, and reminding those reading that not everybody kneels at the alter of those who get paid for their opinions.

Doug "but I have my knee pads if needed" Goodman

I think TPGs are a net positive for the hobby, but I don't really "get" the whole highest graded thing or the gigantic price disparity of a one grade difference.

Most of my cards in the $300-500 range, and none of them are worth more than $1,200, but at any price point, I would rather have an absolute rarity that only comes up for sale once a year or every few years than a condition rarity that can easily be found in very similar condition any day of the week.

I have one set listed on the PSA registry -- a set of 1972 STP racing cards. It isn't the highest rated set, and it never will be. But I love the set because there is only one other complete set listed, and the set is nearly impossible to complete in any grade.

The differentiation between absolute rarity and condition rarity is the key and well stated here.

A TPG has no control of the former and complete control of the latter, particularly at the 9-10 level.

Why would you assume that releasing some of these scarce cards you would "collapse their market"? Unless you are sitting on dozens of each card the current market would most likely absorb them quite easily. Typically new finds and releases of previously unknown material stirs up excitement and actually increases the price of cards that are already out there.
And to clarify, after reading all these posts, I don't think anyone was saying that you can know exactly how many of any card exists just by looking at a pop report. But to say that it can't be used as a guideline to know the general scarcity or the condition sensitivity of a certain card is absurd.

Well, I must admit that I am able to draw a valid conclusion from your graph.

If you have the highest pop or the lowest pop, you will be assassinated.

What about Garfield?

And that is a great summary of why this 'condition rarity' stuff, especially with anything made since 1980 that isn't a limited issue, makes little sense to me. Setting aside any unproven assertions about the submission system being rigged or biased, and assuming an honest TPG performance, given the thousands upon thousands of cards sitting in boxes raw and even unopened, holding on to these cards just seems foolhardy. I send in cards to PSA and when I get a really high grade on a mainstream modern card I sell it because I know that the 'pop' on that card is going up eventually.

As far as absolute rarities go, the pop report is an inefficient analytical tool for assessing rarity because it counts only the cards from the sponsoring TPG, does not account for resubmits, and does not present a dynamic picture of the market for the card. A far better tool is a sales scraping page, like VCP or even the free tool PSA offers for PSA card sales results. Run a search on that and see how often the given card is sold. That tells you everything you really want to know: how often it sells and where it was priced when it did sell. If the card hasn't sold in years, or has a sale or two over a period of years, you know it is rare. I did that the other day with a card I was considering selling: there hadn't been a sale in years in any condition, so I decided to hang on for the price I wanted.

I think the card manufacturers learned the lessons of junk wax quite well, which is why they focus their efforts on limited edition and/or serial numbered cards. If your card is numbered /150 you know that there aren't thousands sitting out there waiting to be graded if the card's price catches fire. Ironically, the serial numbering is also the way that some of the modern card aficionados are catching alterations. Read some of the modern card alteration threads on Blowout, really scary stuff. As bad as the TPG fake autograph thing was on here, it is dwarfed in volume and value by the alterations of low print run modern cards that are slipping past the TPGs.

Which is another issue with TPGs. The old VCBC article got it right: TPGs are smoke detectors without batteries. The amount of altered crap that makes it into holders is the crazy uncle in the cellar of this hobby: "Grandpa, did high grade T206s have narrow borders when you were a kid?" "Why no, Bobby, unless we cadged our pasteboards from American Beauty smokers."

Not to say that TPGs don't do some good, especially when it comes to making cards liquid. Most of what I sell on eBay is slabbed: it is one of the best ways of ensuring that you get exactly what you bought.

I just don't think much of this registry thing and I especially do not like how proponents of the registry treat other collectors as stupid or backwards or otherwise somehow wrong for not being interested in participating. Collecting is a hobby. A pastime. A harmless bit of fun that diverts one's attention from the harsh realities of every day life. In other words, GET A LIFE! I mean, it's just baseball cards dammit, IT'S JUST BASEBALL CARDS!

That was, of course, a re-creation of the evil Captain Kirk from episode 5, The Enemy Within.

Yeah, they all say Denali on them now.

You are probably right about not being able to collapse markets, the "Trump" in me tends to exaggerate.

I agree that the proportional scarcity is something that can probably, but not certainly, be assumed from the pop reports.

My point is that many people read the pop reports as if they were listing all cards that exist, and auction houses tend to word their descriptions in a direction that leans that way, when in fact they do not.

Doug,

Thank you for proving my point.

I don't know a single knowledgeable collector who views the pop reports as absolute certainty. Auction houses will of course use the pop reports as a certainty because they are in the business of selling and puffery is the norm. There have been plenty of times I've seen auctions of cards described as one of a kind -- with another example sitting in my collection, slabbed by the same company.

Case in point:

https://live.staticflickr.com/1876/2...fd208207_z.jpg[

Jeff, SCP did recently auction another D380 Chase, but stated "one of two ever graded". Just wondering what you meant ? Paul

The copy initially said 1/1. After I emailed them a picture of my card they changed it.

Do you consider this card rare?

I did except I’m afraid Doug may have four raw ones sitting around somewhere.

I see. So six copies would just make it sort of rare. But no longer rare. K.

You lost me.

A Pop 2 went to a Pop 6 and you no longer think it is rare.

I guess the question is what is rare? I still think 6 known examples in this case is rare. If it isn't still considered rare than it is sort of rare meaning very close.

When did I suggest this wasn’t a rare card? Of course it is. There are two in existence from all that I know. If there were two less it would be extinct.

medium rare?:eek:

like this guy

I just interpreted your comment that if four were sitting around and it went to a Pop 6 it wouldn't be considered rare any longer.

Some of this discussion is predicated around what is rare. If a card where there are two known examples increases by a few that is to be expected over time but the chances of a card with only two known examples at this point exploding is zero.