It is true....

There is a difference between "producing" and "collecting".

What are the VALUES of those boxing, golf, etc cards produced by the English traditionally? Peanuts. Especially compared to cards produced in North America.

Why? Because so few collect them. This isn't complicated.... IF there were many British collectors, the values over time would have increased, just like sports cards in North America. But almost no one there collectors or cares, hence low values for vintage English "sports" cards.

It's illogical for there to be a huge plethora of British card collectors, but despite this, the prices on vintage British sports cards stay extremely modest? ..... to the point it appears that no one collects them?

Sorry but I do feel the need to respond to this completely ignorant comment. As mentioned by other posters, the English (and German, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian, Argentinian, Australian, etc.) were collectors of sports cards. Maybe just not the sports you follow, but Soccer, Cricket, Golf, Aussie Rules Football, etc, have been collected almost as long as baseball cards by international collectors. It's true these had not been commodified as much as North American "Big 4" sports cards, but they have always been there and been collected. As a soccer card and memorabilia collector of 30+ years I can attest to the small group of collectors that has now exploded over the past few years. Are there speculators just like in any sport? Of course, and maybe even more than most other sports. Soccer and Basketball have seen the fastest growth in recent years, and the fact that they are probably the two most popular global team sports has been a significant contributing factor.

Now, would I pay $34K for the Mia Hamm SI card? No, but I don't have the monetary means nor the interest in that specific card. Just like any auction, all it takes is two interested parties and the bidding goes from there. It's all about supply and demand, so you could insert [Wagner, Mantle, Gretzky, Jordan, Trout, Brady, Pokemon] and build the same argument. $5.2MM for 1952 Mantle or $3.25MM for T206 Wagner is simply the same economic and emotional situation playing out, albeit at a completely different price level.

True, the value of soccer and some of these other sports cards are peanuts compared to "North American cards", but I can assure you they are catching up quickly. Bloomer, Meredith, Dean, Matthews, Puskas, Pele, Maradona, Cruyff, Zidane, Messi, Ronaldo ... are setting new records every month. The soccer card market is maybe 20 years behind Baseball, but it is there and growing. Trust me, there are lots of people who collect these and lots of people who care about them.

"I can attest to the SMALL group of collectors" ....says it all.

That's all I said... some of you want to live in a fantasy world where there are supposedly tons of card collectors in countries like England to rationalize the ridiculous and sudden climb in card values... but if that were true, values of English cards would have LONG been increasing... but they have not. You said it yourself, the soccer card market is 20 years behind baseball... so if there are truly numerous collectors of these cards, there should have been a constant - not meteoric - increase throughout that time... but that has never happened. WHY?

I might be oversimplifying things, but I have observed soccer card collectors to traditionally be set collectors and not focused on individual players - that is, up until the past couple of years when things changed. That could fit both sides of the argument - lots of collectors and suppressed values. As an example, 1906 Ogden's Football Club Colours: sellers used to offer each team card for the same price. But now that collectors have identified Steve Bloomer as the player pictured on the Derby County card, that one card is 100x or more valuable than a common card from the set. You could argue that this is driven by the relatively recent valuation-separation between commons and stars by collectors of this sport.

Australia at least at one time had a thriving basketball card market. Including one or maybe two local producers of Australian basketball league cards.

And Upper deck made international editions in the early 90's.

If only I could think of a foreign company that made big bucks on cards or stickers... Oh yeah, Panini.

Yeah, Panini is key if you collect RCs from non big 4 sports.

This is most definitely the case. Back in the mid to later 90's I was mail ordering from The London Cigarette Card Company, singles of Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, and even occasionally Bobby Jones (who even back then was selling for a bit of a premium) and others, for the same price as any other common in the sets.

Of course, that eventually dried out once the internet made more people (especially in the U.S.), aware of these issues.

....and BTW The London Cigarette Card Company, along with Murray's Cards, were bigger then any Sports or Trading Card dealer in the U.S.., until well into the 80's, including the Larry Fritch's and Renata Galasso's.

It is interesting what captures collectors imaginations and what doesn't. Sebastian Vettel is a still active 4 time F1 Champ, and nobody seems to care about him. Max Verstappen hasn't won a title yet, and everybody is in love with him. Obvious recency bias. I'd say that even completely unproven drivers like George Russell and Mick Schumacher, elicit more attention then Vettel does.

Niki Lauda is a 3 time champ, has a very compelling story, and was a featured figure in a very well received big budget film. His cards when found, don't sell for much at all.

That is an interesting observation about Vettel and Lauda in the hobby.

Verstappen definitely seems to be second behind Hamilton in terms of the Topps prices, with Russell not far behind. I guess that is because the future appears limitless for each of them. Verstappen looks like a good bet to win the WDC this year at age 23 and Russell is seen as a future WDC if he does move to Mercedes. Schumacher also has the pedigree and is an F2 champion.

On a related collector's note, even autograph cards of Nikita Mazepin in the Topps sets have been going dirt cheap. LOL

Ha Ha, nobody thinks much of Mazepin. Especially his own team-mate, Schumacher.

Mazepin is a cautionary tale of what can go wrong in F1 if you have a backer and too much money.

Sometimes it's not "The Best", that rises into those 20 seats on the course.

Lance Stroll has a similar story, but he at least holds his own as a competent driver.

Stock car drivers may be second class hobby citizens compared to F1, but I can't imagine I will ever like an auto racing card better than this.

Oh, I am familiar with Mazepin and his back story. LOL. I have been listening to some of the F1 podcasts and the hand wringing about three of the 20 seats in F1 currently filled by sons of billionaires.

Petty's 1972 STP card, along with all the other STP cards in the set, has exploded in price over the past 12-18 months. That Petty card is up around 1,000 percent over the past year or so.

That's a cool-ass card.

Can this thread be moved to the soccer section, if there is a soccer section.

LOL, the dreaded Testing forum. :D


I'd be fine with Leon squeezing Soccer, Golf, Racing, Olympics, etc...into one of the other bottom 3 forums in the Postwar section:

Either Boxing/Wrestling

Basketball/Cricket/Tennis

or Hockey and...........


If you can't fit the names of the sports in the Forum title, just take one of them and name them something like "All Other Sports", or even "All Other Sports and Non-Sports Talk".

Seems like there's enough eclectic collectors on this site to easily justify a name change. They just need to know which forum (not the testing forum ;) ) to go to.

In the organization of my own collection I have sections for Boxing, Soccer, Golf and Tennis, and everything else is lumped into "Miscellaneous Sports"

What is the likelihood that women will enter this hobby in a meaningful way? I don't ask that rhetorically.

That's so incredibly wrong it's hard to even respond.

Collecting Tobacco and other cards was big enough in England that they had a national society in 1938, And had excellent and fairly comprehensive catalogs by the 1940's. Lots of catalogs some detailing the issues of a single manufacturer. Wills produced their first cards in 1896, and continued at least into the 1960's. (And may still produce cards? I'm not up on their modern stuff)

Their collecting culture is geared towards complete sets in very nice condition. Not difficult, as the sets are generally small, 50 cards.

And they were saved in huge quantities.
That's why they're inexpensive, there are still loads of very nice complete sets around.

The collecting seems to be more of a "collect everything" type like Burdick.

https://card-world.co.uk/

+1

And yes please can we move soccer out of the testing forum???

With all due respect, what has any of this to do with vintage English SPORTS CARD collectors, and how many there are now?
Please try and stay in context...

And no.... they're affordable because very few collect them. It's simple.

.... I googled "vintage sports card shop London England" and three retailers came up, NONE of which sell vintage sports cards.
Additionally, checking eBay and entering "vintage soccer card" and then checking the sold listings.... not one single pre-1950 English card showed up as sold, just a couple small SETS selling in the extremely modest $8 to $20 range.
No surprise here...

As far as sections on the forum go the only thing I am positive of is it will never be to the liking of everyone. It is what it is and until a very convincing argument to change is made, they will be the way they are. They have already changed multiple times over the years.

People have fun collecting all sorts of things. It keeps it fun.

.

Those searches are almost designed to turn up no results.

That's because collectors there don't confine themselves to sports.
And most sets aren't collected as individual cards, unless they're very hard to find.


And as I said, most sets are inexpensive because they were saved in huge quantities.

Ogdens has golfers that do fairly well.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fro...&LH_Complete=1

The Ogdens football (Soccer) sets from the 30's are small, common, and sell for around $70-80

Older sets are better. but still usually not rare if they're from a big company like Ogdens. No, these aren't trimmed. Ogdens albums are paper pockets with cutouts to show the card, and the back as well. One of the reasons so many are in very nice condition.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/37359770314...p2047675.l2557

https://www.ebay.com/itm/20332216878...4AAOSwY81gXxFQ

Ogdens football are harder to find because of how many football players are named Ogden.
How about Wills?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/27483359485...cAAOSwYABgs-Lr

Cricket?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/32456017075...AAAOSwt65gbfyH

Dealers?
Of course you didn't find any in London. Have you checked London rents lately? (Just rhetorical, I'm sure you haven't) Plus... more cultural differences, they actually still have small shops in towns. Why pay a London (or S.F. or NYC or....) rent, when you can have a shop in a nice village not too far away. Or maybe even far away, we have this internet thing now.

https://www.rarecards.co.uk/

https://football-programmes.net/footballcardsuk.com/

A few British sports cards.

sports ?
 

I guess people collect what they want to collect, but personally ..I never had any interest in collecting cards from " non major sports "