Our own bst is an indicator.
 

The bst has much less "wtb" and there are a number of key cards available that aren't disappearing immediately. Curious if there is also a decline in new forum members this month compared to February. At a minimum, there's an apparent slowdown and more cautious approach by long time members that I am seeing.

Am I wrong? Are you all spending as much right now as compared to prior months this year?

I have all but stopped. Looking for a Summer home and sitting here watching inflation snuggle in and waiting for the housing market decline. Going to need that cash moneys!

8K
 

I have spent about 10K this month so far......no slowdown.

Mike

I’m not buying at all right now, but it’s purely because I’m out of money :)

My spending is fairly constant. Think of a dollar-cost-averaging approach to collecting.

The deals I'm getting now are better than a few months ago.

I like the disciplined approach of budgeting hobby spend. I have a similar approach, but admit to going way off track the end of last year and up to April of this year. I spent $15k/month and built volume on cards I felt would do well longer term(May's, Gehrig, Ruth, Williams, etc). Primarily mid grade raw with strong presentation and some obscure issues. Included were a few thousand boxing cards. I've spent less than $1k this month.

Seems to me that higher end stuff in BST has basically dried up. See the PSA 1s and 2s, but no one is selling high end stuff at a friends and family discount. I look particularly at the baseball memorabilia board and it’s been a while since I’ve seen something truly higher end. Lots of odds and ends.

Remember when you would see a Joe Jackson PSA 7 on BST. Those days are gone for now.

Been looking for the "right" Clemente RC in a 6 to finish off a graded EXMT set for more than a year now. Prices have been SO CRAZY that I have bought and flipped several lower end cards but the 6's and above still remain out of reach (for me anyway).

Need it go along with this (Leon says every post needs a card :))

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...cc2a7d96_c.jpg

That is a beauty! Love the centering!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Clemente RC is like the Ozzie Smith RC. Almost all of them are off centered. Even when you find one that isn't 80/20-90/10, it is 60/40-65/35. When you find one close to 50/50 you are going to pay a crazy price.

Another issue causing a slow down on ebay was the ending of ebay bucks. They have had a couple of 5% bonus bucks so far, but with no bonus bucks for every purchase outside of the bonuses there is no real incentive to buy more.

I’m right there with you. I just keep plugging away. I’m not worried about timing the market. I’ll just steadily buy all the way down - grabbing every card that fits my fancy along the way. I have always been the ultimate long haul mindset guy.

Obviously if things crater in an unexpected way I’d be ready to pounce and quadruple down to scoop up deals, but I really don’t expect that to happen on HOF/Superstar upper mid-low high grade 50’s/60’s stuff, which is where I live. I’m a lower mid-grade pre-war guy but I just never see pre-war really falling off a cliff. As others have said… too much is buried in collections of those who properly adore it.

When big price swings occur, I try to remember that if card prices plunge and the book value of my collection craters, I still have the cards to hold, admire and put under my pillow at night, if necessary; it hardly compares to holding Petcom stock, that old dog, during the dot.com crash of the 90's.

Meanwhile...I am having a stellar sales weekend on eBay, mostly with boxing cards.

The confusion has worked to my favor on one item. I found a rare premium that got shuffled around a bit and BINed it for ten bucks. Gotta love that.

Agree with these points, as a soccer card collector it's extra tough since most listings end up in the "not specified" category. Would add (and this might only be an issue for me), on the eBay app it no longer reminds me 15 minutes before the end of an auction. Just started about a week ago but I've already missed out on 10+ auctions that I would have bid on. I can't see where in the settings it would have changed. Time to go back to a sniper service I guess.