Omnious sign in market?
 

Watching a few auctions close this week, I've seen an odd pattern where there is all of a sudden seemingly a wide disparity in where the same item is selling for in different places relatively close in time.

A ticket stub sold for 12K, then two months later sold for 10k, and now just sold for $4

Or a card that recently sold in a SGG 60 for over 20K sold for 12 in a PSA 6.

Or a photo sells for 6K that I was sure was going close to 20K.

Obviously there can be variations in eye appeal, but it seems like maybe the pool of motivated buyers from some nice new toys is perhaps drying up a bit.

Anyone else see anything like this in what they are following? Just wider fluctuations in price than what I've been accustomed to see.

Not sky is falling . . . .

Its football season, give it a few months- like during the holidays when people have more free time to shop.
Could be just a system overload with so many auctions at one time.

I think we would all welcome a bit of a return to sanity in the market, no matter how small it might seem.

Check your 401K.

You could be right Steve.

But I do not think it will be. Potentially a lull do the overload of auctions and the National Show.

But items I bid on and track seem to still be going really strong and the prices fluctuate but not drastically and it seems to seem to be more up than down.

Pictures I am no expert and I cannot explain why 1 type 1 from the same year and basic subject matter goes for such dramatic prices

Wow that's a big drop. Which card was it?

This one caught my eye. Others too.

I’m a Buyer of the S&P 500 and the Q’s doubling down in the middle of October. Then Up Up and Away. The vintage card market is a little too high for me. I view it as if you either have it or you don’t. I’m fine and love what I have, I’m good with never buying another card.

Last month a SGC 5 Mantle Sells for $306,000 in REA

Goldin Has a 5 Right Now it’s not as nice as REA’s ending tonight and it’s only at $122k plus the juice. Of course, we will hear $100,000 plus more is reasonable for eye appeal it's gonna get up graded/bumped yada yada yada but when is enough? People have a ton of money so I will contine to be wrong with cards, they're gonna only be going higher in auctions lol.

My financial guy says at least 6-9 months more of volatility and some more pain but clouds clear next summer sometime.

I've long subscribed to the wall street adage "no one knows 'nuthin. And if they do they're not talking.





QUOTE=Johnny630;2262249]I’m a Buyer of the S&P 500 and the Q’s doubling down in the middle of October. Then Up Up and Away. The vintage card market is a little too high for me. I view it as if you either have it or you don’t. I’m fine and love what I have, I’m good with never buying another card.

Last month a SGC 5 Mantle Sells for $306,000 in REA

Goldin Has a 5 Right Now it’s not as nice as REA’s ending tonight and it’s only at $122k plus the juice. Of course, we will hear $100,000 plus more is reasonable for eye appeal it's gonna get up graduate yada yada yada but when is enough? People gave a ton of money so ill on continuing to be wrong with cards only going higher in auctions lol.[/QUOTE]

Out of curiosity, what was the ticket and photo that you are referring to?

Ticket below.

The photo was the Ruth Gehrig barnstorming photo in SCP last night.

Maybe just outliers, but those strike me as pretty significant corrections, if that is what they are.

[/QUOTE]

Agreed. Most pundits are like broken clocks, inevitably they will be right once in a while, but mostly not.

Definitely agree with the latter, as for the former I have serious reservations and think the November election can and will heavily sway the market. Waiting nervously to see if 6-9 is the upswing or the start of much worse.

Just wondering if for your run of the mill nice $15,000 card, whether maybe there are 8 people really actively looking for one as opposed to 18 or 28 a year ago. Not that no one is ponying up, but maybe the number of people in the pool has dropped a good bit. Would make sense to me in light of everything else going on in the economy.

I do think that outliers can be a factor, particularly on the high side.

You get a couple of guys bidding against each other. They both get emotionally invested. They both start clearing a spot on their wall to display it. They both start thinking, “Who does this other guy think he is? I crap bigger than him! I make $X million every year!!! I’m not going to let this blackguard win!!!” Next thing you know, it’s been bid up by 4x the real price.

But maybe I’m just projecting…

I mainly follow 52 Topps cards, and not near as much as I use to, but I am not seeing a drop off.
If anything, I am seeing the opposite, at least lately.
Could have something to do with the 9.5 Mantle, but that is just a guess.
https://www.psacard.com/priceguide/b...952-topps/1129

Wow, that's pretty crazy. Not a great endorsement for SCP.

I saw that over a dozen of their items (including some of their bigger items like some of the Bill Russell rings) didn't appear to make the reserve and were therefore not sold.

Of course the one item I really wanted--a picture of Clemente after he hit the game winning home run in Game 7 of the '71 World Series tripled in price in overtime, and I lost it.

I jumped in late to the SCP auction and noticed the photos seemed lower in price. I liked that Barnstorming photo as well but I was too late to notice it. I was not planning buying, but i grabbed two items.

I won a lot which included 27 snap shots from Aaron’s 715th, 3 of which slabbed of the swing (it did not have a bid and I bid with 1 second to go). Also grabbed a photo from Home Run Derby TV show of Mantle. That exact photo sold on RMY earlier this year for $2,200, which I lost then. I won it for just under 1k after BP.

I will admit both kind of a weird niche vs cards that are easier to track consistent prices.

Not sure when the economy gets healthy again but I do know that it will and at some point thereafter it will get weak again because that is what happens. I guess I do not worry or focus on the ups and down. Way out of my control.

The results posted, while a small sample, are consistent with what has been seen in the overall market since April/May. Maybe now it is impacting prices more broadly.

SCP's auction last night looked pretty solid on the dozen or so card offerings I just checked. The fact is that there is a better chance now of something going light than there was 6 months ago. Fewer buyers willing to pay top dollar even for great items will have that impact.

I'm not sure you can make generalizations based on specific results, especially for items like tickets or photos, where the market is thinner. One guy who decides he's out and you can see a 50% drop in prices from auction to auction. As an ephemera collector and boxing type card collector, that is a consistent thing over the years: one or two people drop out and the market falls back significantly.

I've stopped thinking short term, except opportunistically. After nearly 50 years of buying and selling cards my focus is more on either whether I want to have something until I really liquidate, or on where I think the item is likely to be when I liquidate.

Centering!

I see that the SGC 3.5 52T Mantle didn’t sell in SCP last night. Anyone know what the final bid was?

I get this feeling too. FOMO is gone, quick flip is gone, cheap money is gone. I also think the collectibles market is a 6-9 month trailing indicator. You also have these investment groups/consortiums that have pooled money to "invest" in cards, they'll start losing money after the promised returns don't materialize and they'll move on to the next shiny object.

A good real estate analogy would be that the all cash offers 150K above list are no longer happening.

And it can't happen fast enough in my opinion. As a collector I would much rather pay 5k for a card I want instead of 8k. Your Gehrig is a perfect example, I would guess the 1st buyer was an investor and the second a collector. Beautiful card and worth what the 2nd guy got it for, not what the 1st guy got it for.

In the restaurant business we have an old saying, it's always the second guy who makes money after the first guy goes broke spending all the money building it out and the second guy buys the assets for pennies on the dollar.

51 Bowman Mantle PSA 7 didn't sell either. A lot of the top lots didn't sell. That would seem to be strongest indicator of all.

I agree Jeremy. Just wondering if there was a ridiculous reserve price.

Last I saw the 51 Bowman, it was in the low 60Ks, with buyer's premium. Centering was not good, but even so, I would expect that to be an 80K card, minimum.

I didn’t even know SCP had an auction ending last night.

Looking now at some of the results, the following cards that I would have tracked did very well:

T206 Cobb bat off psa 6 ($37k- record)
1914 CJ Cobb psa 3 ($50k - record)
E92 Dockman Wagner throwing PSA 4 ($9k - record)

So it appears that some cards did great, some flopped, and surely some did as expected. I don’t think any broad conclusions can be drawn

A major asset bubble is bursting. We saw this in 2007-10.

Good news: If you bought two years or more ago you will be fine.

Vintage Centered non-oddball Cobb, Ruth, Jackie, Mantle, and May's higher grades are in no way shape, or form in a bubble. Going Up.

Lower grade and oddballs yup they could be in a bubble.

I’m sorry but I’ll say it again ⬆️

If the 53T Mays PSA 8 closing tonight with Memory Lane is representative, then it’s definitely way up. Even if it closed at the current price, it would be nearly 7x higher than the last sale price (admittedly pre-pandemic).

And it could still go a lot higher, particularly because Memory Lane leaves their auctions open practically all night.

Never have bid with them but been told by many that their auctions usually go until 9AM the next day. Seems fishy since there are some incredible offerings auction after auction in other venues and those never have gone past 1 or 2AM.

I guess time zones could impact your results here, but my recollection from past auctions is that they often stay open until 6am or 7am eastern.

In the 2000s prices for generic T206 PSA 6 commons rose steadily from $100 to $200. Then prices went crazy around 2006 and doubled to $400 by late 2007. Pop goes the bubble. Prices sank back to about $200 by 2009. But they never went back to $100.

I expect something similar to happen this time, except due to inflation the floor is probably $300.

I think all of us still in the acquisition phase would be ticked pink if prices settled back down to about 25-50% higher than pre-pandemic.

Spot on!

N you will
 

If that’s your expectation then I think you may be tickled pink.

Really pretty absurd. I don’t know about any of you, but there is exactly a 0% chance I will increase my bid when I am asleep.

I take it they don't close lot-by-lot. So, two bidders battling over one random item keeps every lot open, yes?

That’s my understanding.

I guess that helps the AH, financially speaking. However, I wonder how many bidders they lose because not everyone wants to spend countless hours in extended bidding.

Staying up late is one thing. Waking up the following day to find the auction still going is sheer absurdity.

Expectation would be a strong word for it. Hope? Definitely.

My fear is that it will keep raging at or above the current level.

I look at it like this:

EVERYTHING went up during the pandemic.

Now pandemic is basically over, "many"(but not all) things are coming back down.

So 100% went up.

Now maybe 80% coming back down, but not all the way down.

I've yet to see anything come back down to pre-pandemic pricing. Things shot so high up plenty of room to fell back some, but not falling all the way down, but significant drops from those big highs at the height of the madness.

So again:
About 80% coming down.
20% still getting strong record prices.

My 2 cents.....which was 6 cents 6-9 months ago.

Signed cards...never been stronger. See memory lane

Just to clarify I don’t expect to see pre-pandemic prices again but would not be surprised to see a modest retrenchment from recent highs. I can speak only to T206 where prices appear to have plateaued recently as month over month real estate and stock prices have declined.

At some point in time it just happens...


Attachment 533792

Time zone issue or not, no other house has active bidders keeping the auction open from 10PM EST to 7AM the following day, auction after auction. Most end by 3AM EST which by most hobbyists' standards is absurd enough.

Seems like most AHs have moved to item by item closing to avoid that nonsense altogether.

What Happened to $306,000 last month in REA on an SGC 5 Now a 5 Sells for $146,000 Tonight? Was the other card in REA with 150,000 plus more cause had a little nicer corners and centering maybe but to me, it’s a bridge too far. I think last month was an outlier. There is still hope for us mere mortals who do not own a 311 52 Mickey.

I see an e126 ruth in mem lane in psa 4 almost 80K...some cards are rocketing to the moon...still.

Yeah it just makes so much more sense for everyone, imo. Not to derail the thread topic but the only thing more controversial than choice of auction ending is a discussion on what is a rookie card and anything political.

I was pretty happy picking up the the only known example of this 1958 Hillerich & Bradsby advertisement. This originally sold in 2016 by REA for $3,900 and I was able to pick it up for less than a third of that price.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...0f7c059203.jpg


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Just eyeballing those two gehrigs, the SGC one looks way nicer to me. SGC has gotten way tougher on grading, so not sure those two cards are the best comp.

I've never even heard of SCP Auctions until I read this thread. So there's that.

Yah, one with paper loss on the front

I didn't even notice that...it looked overgraded by todays standards regardless. makes me even happier to have this at 1/15th the price!

I fully agree
 

I think there are a number of factors at work:

1) Regarding the Gehrigs - The SGC 6 is a considerably nicer "eye appeal" card - not even close to the PSA 6(imho)! More of the discerning collectors/buyers in the marketplace are starting to pay attention to the cards in the holders beyond the numbers on the holders and are willing to pay premiums sometimes large ones for clearly nicer cards. This makes a LOT of sense to me as on the best day of the week ALL grading companies are at least inconsistent.

2) burnout - I think many people have just hit sensory overload, between shows and auctions. I do this full time and there just aren't enough hours in a day to track it all! I suspect for most this is a hobby to which considerably less time is devoted - choices need to be made.

3) Auctions are not always the best indicator - auction houses like to tell consignors that an auction is going to get the best price for their items - suggesting that "all" potential buyers will see and have an opportunity to bid on their items - in most cases I strongly disagree (For certain marquee items - think SGC 9.5 52 Mantle - I do think a high profile auction with lots of publicity around a lot IS the best place to sell). For reasons above and others that have been mentioned in this thread - there is no "perfect" venue to sell every item - not every buyer looking for a particular item is looking at every auction! Stuff falls through the cracks.

4) Ticket stubs and photo differences - This ties into #2 and #3 above - I think the collector base for these types of items is, so far, considerably smaller than for "mainstream" cards. A better chance that if some of those collectors aren't looking - there is the opportunity for greater price discrepancies.

5) Ultimately it boils down to 2 overarching concepts - 1) Simple supply and demand economics - When demand outpaces supply it drives prices up, when supply outpaces demand it drives prices down. I have said it on a number of other threads - I see the high end biggest name players cards in continuously short supply relative to demand continuing to set records (I also think they are just getting warmed up). I see a little bit of a decline in the lower grade/higher supply cards due to slight softness in demand (arguably influenced by some of the larger economic impacts mentioned above). This will be the area I think has the greatest possibility of a bit further softness. I think it is a mistake to think of the "market" as a whole. I think it needs to be looked at in segments. 2) Arbitrage & inconsistency - the markets are inefficient - sometimes grossly so - there is no single place where all willing buyers can meet all willing sellers (despite what auction companies will tell you). Grading companies as much as they try to "objectify" the grading process will ALWAYS be inefficient - unlike buying a share of stock where 1 (common share) is literally "the exact same" as another. No 2 cards are exactly the same and 3rd party grader opinion notwithstanding - beauty is in the eye of the be - holder (pun intended).

Agree Howrd

Howard - great post. I think like real estate, there is no one market, but as you say different markets serving different interests. It always strikes me that people will cite some crazy ass sales of high end cards as evidence everything is soaring. It's not. A lot of segments of the market have stalled, some have gone down little, and some have dropped a lot. I also think as collectors we overestimate the number of people on the hunt for what we want. Take a really nice card like a $25,000 Ruth Goudey. At any given time there might be 20 people in total looking earnestly to acquire that. Sure, lots of people nibbling around the edges, but really ready wiling and able to pony up $25,000 tomorrow? 10? 12? 8? Less than you might think. And if 5 or 6 sold in the last two or three months or last week, you could see a lot less competition (and drops in prices) develop quickly.

Much better condition Program went for 2K less than same lesser condition one in Feb.

Feb Lelands $13,477 (Poor/Good condition)

https://auction.lelands.com/bids/bidplace?itemid=108454

Sept Memory Lane $11,395 (Very Good condition)

https://memorylaneinc.com/site/bids/...e?itemid=71998

All I know is the items I am trying to buy are not going down. An auction item sells for one bid over the second highest bidder. It could be that the differences in price is because of a lack of second bidder. On odd ball items, two bidders can drive a price up and a second auction close to the record sale could end a lot lower even though the underbidder on the first is willing to pay a lot more.

I love some of these older advertisements. Here's one I picked up off ebay 5+ years ago. I wish it was in color! https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...f83622f7da.jpg

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I can't speak to some of the other oddities, but on first glance, the SGC Gehrig has MUCH better centering and that affects value more than one would think it would. It also looks brighter, but that could just be the scan or photo doctoring. Centering plays such a huge role, and I am 100% guilty of paying large premiums for centered cards regardless of the grade.

This is the argument for private sales on scarce/esoteric items. If one person is willing to pay as high as X for a particular item and no other person is willing to pay over .5X then in an auction the item will go for one increment over .5X. In a private sale the item might go for X or very close.

Interesting example
 

Thanks Steve!

While I certainly stand by my original post, I'm not sure I agree with the 33 Ruth as a good illustration. Ruth (ESPECIALLY the high demand 33 Goudey's) in my experience happens to be a card where I believe there are considerably more people ready and willing to plunk down low-mid 5 figures than any of us would believe. I have bought and sold 33 Ruth's from graded 1's - to graded 5.5's. I am picky about nice eye appeal examples, but have so far, always sold them quickly for strong prices. Now if you want to talk about the high end of the market Like graded 7's and higher in the 6 figure range, perhaps I would join you, but then again, they didn't get to 6 figure cards (with multiple sales) by just a couple of guys chasing them! BTW I do have a #144 PSA 8 on consignment if anyone is looking!

I'm curious Howard,
How close did you get to a signed complete set?

This difference is very curious to me. Quite glaring. A very similar card, for half the price, just 6 weeks later.

Assuming the winner of the REA example was bidding against actual bidders who wanted to win the card, I suppose it is entirely possible that nobody but 2 bidders were going for it once it got to 150ish?

I have not looked closely at images of the two cards so simply going off of what has been suggested here--that the cards were pretty close in condition. If they are similar examples then I would not feel great as the buyer of the REA example.

+1. I told a friend this exact same thing today. Outlier sales happen. I just wish it would be on my consignments (not specific to any AH)....
.

I suspect a couple of collectors with cash to burn decided that this was their turn to get one. So they went nuts until one of them finally decided to throw in the towel. Naturally, if the underbidder ended up getting this next one, then it worked out well for him in the end.

Just as we start to question the market...these two cards remind us just how crazy things still are...

Wow, that’s awesome, I have never seen that one.


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The set break loophole to the eBay AG program appears to have closed?

I noticed that the set break loophole is gone too. I think even Greg Morris is authenticating their high value raw cards now.

What's this about set break on eBay? Don't know about it.

I bid on both-as well as the O’Hara, based on the PSA 1 sold last month. The 1.5 sold for over 7k- and I was hoping for a deal at 5k. LMFAO. There is no downturn in the market- and this week has-is-and will prove it!!

Set Break in the title still works. Appears Greg Morris has to hyphenate the two words now which makes the cards eligible for the AG program.

I bought it cuz I collect Ernie Lombardi. I already had the LS Famous Sluggers yearbook and this went with it.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...b77fd901cd.jpg

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Saw this listing that had "Set Break" in the title but also required the "Authenticity Guarantee" so I thought the loophole wasn't working.

This is a fascinating discussion.

A modest proposal: For anyone with one of those subscriptions that show realized auction values, why don't you pick 50 vintage cards (or photos that have >5 sales) - 40 HoF-ers and 10 commons from key sets and run the numbers to see the % change month to month for the last 36 months? I'm guessing someone has already done this. If so, can someone post this? Otherwise, it is all anecdotal, which includes some really compelling examples, but it is hard to extrapolate for the whole vintage market from just a few examples.