Current state of the hobby-Vintage Cards
 

What is YOUR opinion of the current state of the hobby when it comes to VINTAGE cards? With the current economy, how is it at card shows? eBay? Etc?

I asked this question on the modern board (regarding modern cards) BUT would like to now hear your opinions on VINTAGE cards in particular. Thanks.

Maybe it’s just the stuff that I collect, but in general, it doesn’t seem like much has changed in the last 6 months. Most stuff still seems to be selling at nice prices and no shortage of demand. Every once in a while you might see something sell at auction for lower than you were expecting, although often you can explain it away as being an inferior copy with an early cert or sketchy centering etc.

From my standpoint, both locally and online - things are very healthy. I usually have multiple weekend show options near me (within an hour or less driving distance) every month - and those shows are packed. For the pure vintage side, I see my bread and butter (postwar vintage stars, HOF, both slabbed and raw...) selling strong. Let's put it this way - there are still plenty of cards I would love to own that I can't afford - LOL.

I don't pay a lot of attention to other vintage cards, tbh, but, as far as I can tell, the 52 Topps market is still going strong with some significant increases with a couple/few players.

I don't collect in this area so please give a detailed opinion on what the current state of the hobby is for you. It is nice to compare.

Quality is king
 

Good quality vintage - both high grade examples as well as strong eye appeal for the grade lower grade examples have very strong demand and solid pricing. Demand appears to be outpacing supply.

Poor quality vintage of bigger name Hall of Famers has very strong demand, but due imo to the large supply - people are more patient and looking for competitive pricing.

Mantle and Ruth in particular seem to be pretty hot.

, Good thing then that I have only passing interest in the first and absolutely no interest in the second!

Granted I'm a set builder, and I've been working on adding critical mass to my collections of Topps 1954, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1962, 1963 and 1965 Baseball cards in the last few months. These sets though are huge! Fortunately therefore large lots of the commons are often available at semi affordable prices. With the higher priced star cards though, I've been taking a rifle shot approach. Would I pay that much for that player in that pose (I find head shots boring) from that year? I have of course certain favourite players (e.g. Stan Musial, Warren Spahn, Rocky Colavito, Ernie Banks, Roger Maris, Roberto Clemente, Orlando Cepeda, Hoyt Wilhelm, Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Lou Brock, Phil Niekro, Bobby Richardson, Nellie Fox, Luis Aparicio, Jim Bunning, Red Schoendienst, Earl Battey, Elston Howard, Bill Mazeroski, Ed Mathews, Willie McCovey, Jim Kaat) but pose is a very important factor to me and I'm very price sensitive.

;)

My opinion is that more people in our hobby are leaving modern and moving into vintage as a safer/better investment and ROI.

Some modern players will always stay hot, Brady, Mahomes, Kobe, Jordan and Ohtani however, I’ll pass on those all day, everyday for guys like Aaron, Mays, Clemente, Robinson, Mantle, Berra, etc. To me, nothing beats a good old fashioned vintage Topps card!

+1. Anecdotally, this is what I've found as well as I've tried to complete a couple of post-war vintage HOF player sets. Spreads are widening on prices of well-centered, strong eye appeal cards graded 2-4, versus lower quality cards of the same grade.

I also collect some modern baseball. Ohtani seems to be holding up well -- even his PSA 9 rookie cards haven't fallen as much as I'd hoped. But the other modern stars feels a bit soft based on my own experience building out player sets.

Vintage (1952-1972 is my focus) is currently holding steady but for the most part not going to experience long-term (20 years out) growth IMHO. As the collectors that remember the players of this era age out they are not being replaced by newer collectors that care about these players. It is my opinion that only the generational-era megastars will retain high value (Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Clemente, etc.).

I base this on conversations with many younger people that seem to generally be blissfully unaware of most of the HOF players of the afore-mentioned era, and as always the laws of supply and demand for many cards that to be honest are plentiful in decent grade will not likely let them retain their current value. Add to that the slow but steady decline of interest in baseball relative to the other major sports, especially for people today under age 30, and I can't paint a rosy future picture.

Definitely plenty of people worried about this sort of a doom loop. If it's coming, the market doesn't seem to be feeling it. But maybe it will sneak up on us when we least expect it.

Good stuff is getting harder to find. So are good deals.

Sent from my SM-G998U using Tapatalk

I bid on seven cards in the REA auction that I need for my 1952 Topps and I won one. I put in strong bids over high VCP and still lost. The 52 Topps market is strong at the moment.

My response may be irrelevant, but when I was heavily buying high quality Mickey Mantle items in the late 1980s to late 90s, the good stuff was very hard to find. I NEVER looked for a good deal; I was focused on looking for a great card.

I suppose my reflections are irrelevant because prices have skyrocketed since that time. Be that as it may, the pursuit for the perfect and a paucity in population has never ceased. --- Brian Powell

Lol. Yes its gonna be a slow decline. I did say 20 years but it took many years for baseball to kill their golden goose to the point that the World Series TV ratings are laughably low. Good things don't generally last forever -- and that applies to collectible markets like anything else in life.

No -- totally relevant. Mantle is the prime exemplar of the generational megastar that has staying power. But I personally don't feel that most baseball HOFers are going to be much remembered by a large percentage of fans. Every time a poll is taken the average harder core baseball fan is about 50 years old. I wish someone would do a creditable poll on the average age of Vintage (worthless term but lets say pre-1980) collectors. I bet it would also be about 50. Lol

I'd guess very close to 60.

:(

60 is the new 50...

I am doing very well selling postwar baseball. I offer good cards at reasonable prices and people buy them. Try to wring out every nickel and your inventory will rot and you will be running a museum.

With a few exceptions, most postwar cards are not rare and are more commodities than precious gems, so you make money on the buy. That's the cold fact that people do not want to believe: this stuff ain't rare, so it is all about the buy.

I agree. Pop counts are pretty high these days for most post-war vintage, even at investor grades PSA 6+. Eye appeal (and its surrogate, centering) is playing a greater role as people seek to differentiate their PSA 7 from the other 500 PSA 7s graded. Dead centered vintage is still a rarity (I venture to guess that well less than 4% of vintage is dead centered) and is commanding higher and higher premiums (30%-100% from my observations) over off centered cards of the same grade.

Centering?! I don't give a damn about centering! (I didn't when I bought packs of cards as a kid so why should I now?) But I want white and bright cards that look pack fresh. Meanwhile the grading companies penalize off center cards heavily but they ignore toning. That's why I have no use for their "grading".

:rolleyes:

Balticfox….i love what you said about not caring about centering when you were a kid. That’s how I feel as well. Toning is often underrated.

To me, problems related to the image - coloring, toning, fading, focus - have long been under represented in grading. It makes no sense that a card can be EX but not NM due to a few fractions of a mm on centering; but the worse centered card can be brilliant and beautiful while the "NM" card in some cases can have worse color and image focus, but yet still technically be the better card.

Technical grading was never meant to equate apples to apples with eye appeal. This is a perception problem now with many collectors, much as it was 30 years ago. I think some would say we still have to do our homework on what cards we want in our collections. Many hobby newbies anymore can't even be bothered with learning how to grade raw cards themselves. They want the (notoriously less than super consistent...) TPG's to do everything.

As Dale also said, the demand for 1952 Topps remains strong. I've tracked prices on graded 1952 Topps for 15+ years and mid to high end graded cards - even commons - have gone up on a consistent basis. Finding value in high end graded cards is becoming more difficult.

Adam,

Do you find collectors going after variations? Just curious whether that is still a thing...

I fully agree on all your points! The card must look "good" to me regardless of the number on the label.

:)

My observations about buying and selling vintage baseball:

1. Raw is making a comeback; priced right, they WILL sell
2. People pay up for highest end graded cards (waay over comp)
3. Softer prices for mid grade, mid tier HOF
4. Modern collectors coming into vintage all the time... tons of buyers under 40 online and at recent Shriners show.

And it's still a joy for most first, above $$...

It really depends on the variation in question. The classics: Milton Bradley, white letters, etc., always sell. I am also doing well with misprints and errors. There is a small but growing dedicated base of collectors who love to add flubs to their collections. I am an Aaron collector, so when I come across a screwed up vintage Topps Aaron, I gotta have it.

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