will anyone be able to purchase a koufax 7 @ $1750....
 

Bob, I can only tell you that Leon, with the depth and wide diversity of his contacts within the hobby, as well as the numerous posts from knowledgeable collectors expressing shock and amazement at the rate at which key cards are increasing in value over the past MONTHS, has led me to retreat from my former rather ignorant stance that the purchasers of these key cards at enormous prices were true collectors, rather than investors. I am a devout student of collectibles, acquiring as much information as I can and analyzing it, which is essentially exactly what I do in my appellate law practice. That study, carried out over the course of the last few decades, leads me inevitably to the conclusion that collectibles do not increase as rapidly in value as key cards from the '50's and '60's have been when the demand is originating from true collectors who know the field, rather than investors, who may have some knowledge, but not nearly enough, and are not in it for the long term.

I made reference to the current market for such cards resembling a Ponzi scheme in another post: when the market is comprised primarily of investors selling to other investors, with higher prices at every stage, the market can be sustained only as long as new investors are coming on the scene. That is the very heart of a speculative boom. When those new investors fail to appear to purchase the cards at greatly inflated values (i.e., substantially more than any true collector would pay), the bottom drops out of the market as it mathematically must--value is proportional to demand divided by supply. If the value is set by investors who have entirely or largely departed the scene, the value of the item will fall to the level of that which a true collector would pay for it. If indeed this is such a speculative boom, as I now have come to accept (Leon and the other long term collectors on the board can be quite persuasive, and I try to always be open to reason), then no other result is even possible.

As to how long such a speculative boom lasts, it has usually been no more than several years duration in coins, and perhaps a bit longer than that in car collecting. The Koufax rookie, if we are indeed in the midst of such an unstable, unsustainable boom, will fall back in value, but how much it will fall or when would be anyone's guess.

May you profit from your purchases,

Larry

PS: my post began before the original poster made his request to limit comments.

That worked well. (and I voted no)

Another post in the wrong section

Actually it's a thread :) and is a continuation of another already here so it got let go. Everyone should try to put stuff in the correct sections...thanks

But as Leon has himself said, Pete, this kind of post has an overflow effect on pre-war. IMHO, that is because the conditions referred to have the potential of diverting our $$$ from where they might well be better placed to the direction in which the herd is travelling.

Best wishes,

Larry

6/13/16 eBay Auction | Image probstein123 e***p 22 $4,161.11
6/12/16 eBay Auction | Image pwcc_auctions o***c 32 $4,900.00
5/31/16 eBay Auction | Image probstein123 a***i 30 $6,127.00
5/22/16 eBay Listing | Image livin4thefiftytwos n***s BIN $6,100.00
5/22/16 eBay Listing | Image rookiesandchampionscom b***1 BIN $5,999.99
5/22/16 eBay Auction | Image gunther713 s***n 29 $5,211.00
5/10/16 eBay Auction | Image pwcc_auctions m***o 23 $3,175.00
5/6/16 Mile High Auction | Image 13 $4,393.44
5/2/16 eBay Listing | Image rambel 9***8 Best Offer $2,600.00
5/2/16 eBay Auction | Image pwcc_auctions n***l 26 $3,901.00
5/1/16 REA Auction | Image 22 $4,200.00

Bob, what am I missing here. The 55 Koufax 7 is trending around $4,500+; was about $2,800 three months ago. This is only about 2x. Several other cards are 3-6X over the past few months; seems those would be better poll takers.

Anyway, no, I do not believe you will get this card at $1,750. But if the poll is will I short this card at most recent sales avg, I would say yes.

We get you have a different opinion. Now can you chill out . Everyone here can come up with a different idea of what is going on. It's really just human nature to search for answers. How ever far fetched or basic your personal idea is it is just as credible until hard evidence is presented.

But to go around posting all over the site about is more irrating then anybody's option. So let's leave that dead horse alone .

Demand and supply aren't a number. You can't devide them. Quanity demanded and quantity supplied or QD and QS you can. If you are going to attempt to speak in high level economic terms at least know them.

What everyone is missing is when collectors purchase more than one card and in some cases many more it can distort outcomes significantly. There are buyers taking positions and assuming they are soon to be sellers is an unknown. You can't determine what their motives are hence you will never know what future supply actually looks like.

If any of these high end pieces make their way into strong hands they aren't going down much if at all. More common or available cards such as a Koufax 7 can easily come back down but they won't do 100 retracement.

Collectors will move up their bids that feel like longshot prices and support the market.

A Nolan Ryan PSA 8 went for over 14k. It isn't going back to $800. Probably not going back to $3,500 and sides with the OP.

This may, or may not shed some light on the topic?

http://247wallst.com/investing/2016/...stment-prices/

Honestly
 

1750 may be a touch low. I figure around 2250-2500 they will settle back down to. I am an optimist about such things though.

This thread and one other on net54 answered one question I had. Emphatically. :rolleyes:

I think buying and selling in the next year might be the only way to make a buck on the card. I don't know this for a fact, but I would think it's baby boomers who are pushing the prices up. If that's true, 10 or 15 years from now many of them will be gone. Their collections will flood the market as heirs look to cash in. Without a steady supply of people who value Koufax as a player, his cards will fall out of favor. Mantle I think is a solid "investment" but I don't think guys like Koufax are if your goal is to buy now and sell later.

Disagree on the Koufax. As a sextogenerian (yes, I am exactly the same age as Sixto Lezcano), I can tell you that Koufax is firmly ensconced in baseball lore and will not fall out of favor - he's beyond a legend, and not only for those of us who saw him pitch, either in person or on TV. A good friend of mine who is also a friend of Sixto - and both his (my friend's) children, boy and girl, who never saw Koufax live, know precisely who he is and can quote you his bio and stats as easily as they, and the rest of us, can quote Mantle or Wajo. They don't live in a vacuum. Why do those of us now still buy and covet prewar vintage of players we never saw.

But really, comparing the 52T Mantle with the 55T Koufax rookie is unfair: it's like comparing the T206 Wagner to a Young or Wajo. I think one piece of $$$ criteria between now and then is the fact that we take much better care of the postwar than people did in the prewar era: there's so many of them, and nowadays encased in plastic.

Anyway, gotta run. Me and Sixto need to catch the Early Bird Special at the diner.

Again I could be totally wrong, but I would think that's the exception and not the norm. If I asked 100 people between 10 and 20 if they bought a pack of baseball cards recently I'd think I'd get 99 no's. I have a hard time believing that a kid who never collected cards growing up would suddenly decide to collect them later in life.

If I am reading you correctly, then I think it would be naïve to assume that only 1 in 100 who did buy a card then in that age group are the only ones who are driving up the prices now. I saw this in the Eighties (before tpg) when the 52T Mantles started to get media attention. Card shops that I frequented that would usually only have a few customers in it now had lines for any Mantle cards.

I can think of at least a dozen things my father, and myself began collecting in our 30s and 40s that we had no interest in or contact with as youths.

No, what I'm saying is the people I believe are driving the prices up are boomers. And they collect now because they collected as kids. I'm saying that kids today who are between 10 and 20 aren't buying cards at all, even as children. So when boomers and their collections exit the picture, what makes you think people who are kids today will take their place in collecting when they aren't collecting as children.

Are they things associated with childhood, like baseball cards are? Or are you talking about cars and things like that?

A mix of both but I assure you my parents didn't play with 19th century cut glass, toothpick holders, clocks, duck decoys, art, stamps, coins etc etc as children. Nor did their parents collect it. I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't see a concrete correlation

Right but those things aren't related to childhood. I would make the argument that most adults return to collecting to recapture some part of their youth, whether its conscious or not. Those things are hobbies that are unrelated in my opinion to any type of nostalgia from your past.

[QUOTE=packs;1551882]Right but those things aren't related to childhood. I would make the argument that most adults return to collecting to recapture some part of their youth, whether its conscious or not. Those things are hobbies that are unrelated in my opinion to any type of reclamation.[/QUOTE

Oh, so that's the reason I have 12 different colored 1971 Hot Wheels Redline Pythons!!!:)

packs
 

Many do buy cards as kids they are just more often Magic or Yugi Oh or another form of game card. That said 4 different boys in my 30 home neighborhood collect football cards. I now because my daughter has traded with them.

[QUOTE=Stonepony;1551884]I have to admit handling the 1968-1972 Topps again (rookies and such...), after doing it in childhood, does bring back a lot of good memories. Those were the days.
So that part is true, 40-45 yrs from now kids will probablyt be remembering snapchat and other online stuff....

.

I hear you guys on nostalgia, but I have always been surprised by how specialized old Nintendo games are in terms of appreciating in value. Very few are worth a mint; I personally would have thought they would have appreciated like baseball cards from my dad's generation, but aside from a few key ones, they haven't really.

Also, I have read this thread, and I know I am stepping on a land mine here, but why this card specifically? What thread is this referencing?

Well like everything else the key issues are best. But NES games all have come a long way . When the first play station came out most not all of the NES games could be yours for .50. You can't find even the worst NES game for .50 now.unless it also has condition issues.

Thats an interesting trough to current levels on NES. Not all appreciation is linear. Something just becomes hot, I supposse, one day.

So, in reading some of these posts, I paid a pretty penny for a 1934 Gehrig SGC 84 at last year's national. Would that be a card that would benefit from rising vintage prices, or are we thinking that this is just a lot of short-term hot air? I really am sort of lost reading this thread, and I feel stupid for even asking this.

That card sound like a very very safe bet. Pics welcomed!

I am so effing scared to post it on here. You guys are a very well-informed group of people, but I feel like you could talk down the value of the Mona Lisa by 50% if given an endless thread and 2 scans. Haha. I love it just the way it is.

I literally walked the entire floor of the national and found this one and maybe an 8 or 9 for $100k which is many (many) more times than I paid for mine. I could not find anything higher than a 4, so I sorta felt like I had to, because I didn't expect it to be that difficult to find.

I collect 1933 Goudey, but I really love the yellow and green 1934 Gehrig's. I bought the yellow one, and I told the wife all the gory details. She responded with "I trust your judgement." It wasn't happy or mad, but deadly serious.

There are all types here! Some will flash a Frederick Foto Ruth or a Pinkerton Joe Jackson with zero fanfare, while others may toot a horn over a PSA 8 63 Rose . Makes no difference , we all love cards... So let's see it.

Unfortunately you will have to wait as I am en route somewhere far away from the card. But i just might eventually.

You can't go wrong on Gehrig, he's the Ironman. I have a photo of him on the wall of my 11 year old son's bedroom. We talk about him all the time, consecutive games, ALS, stats.

To say the next generation will not care or will not know these guys is bogus. I can imagine my son, if he ever had some disposable cash, would buy this card in 30 years; at a minimum, to rekindle the memories of our talks together.

++ it's just a forum; no harm no foul

In a free market, the value of something will ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS be proportional to the extent of the demand for it in relation to the available supply.

Larry

A great looking card like a '34 Gehrig is always going to have strong demand. As long as it is bought decently I don't think it's going to go down much in value.

And as for the supply vs demand argument, I am always on the demand side for valuing something. If there is no demand the supply doesn't matter.

2025. Getting close to 1750.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sandy-Koufax...718?rmvSB=true

Well I am sure there is something wrong with that one or it is too close to Thanksgiving or ended at the wrong time. The defenders have many explanations...however none of them have been posting since the summer.

Greg, the centering admittedly is not great on this example, but I think it still illustrates how much the market has dropped from that spring/early summer peak, when many thought we would never see certain price levels again.

I was watching this one last month and thought, wow, this sure is a far cry from the $80,000 this card (another graded 8) received back in the summer! :eek:
It was said, money didn't likely exchange hands on that one, (something I still don't understand?) but that was the final selling price.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1955-Topps-1...vip=true&rt=nc

Absolutely centering hurts this example but it demonstrates a huge market correction because examples like this were bringing 4K during the summer.

As individuals realize prices are beginning to drop they will rush to monetize whatever they can. The price drop will most likely then accelerate before eventually stabilizing. Wouldn't be surprised to see a psa 7 drop below $1000 within the next 6 months.

My guess is the exact opposite will happen. Instead of a massive sell-off, I bet many will hold on to their cards, restricting supply, and therefore stabilizing prices.

below a thousand?
 

Lol. Only if the economy is in the toilet. No way does a Koufax 7 unqualified drop below a thousand. I can see below 2000 but the card is not going to be 60% of the pre run up price.