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Originally Posted by SMPEP
I'm in the cards values will decline substantially over time camp (look at antiques, stamps and coins) - but not because of the current scandal (although that won't help).
It all about demographics.
There are not as people going to baseball games. There are not as many watching baseball on TV. And bluntly, the game is not as important to society as it was in the 1950s and 1960s. And with all the specialist pitcher changes and all the take pitches to run up pitch counts stuff - I find the game WAY less interesting than when I was a kid.
Today it's NBA and NFL (with a HUGE life from Fantasy Football). They're fast. they're exciting.
So long term - those cards will go up in value and baseball will fall (especially for those insanely overpriced Mickey Mantle cards).
The current buyers are just too old to sustain the market that much longer (a decade at most), and the younger buyers are more into modern stuff AND they collect less stuff than the prior generation.
The only reason not to sell my cards now - I don't have enough money invested in them to matter! When you buy a card for $1, all you can lose is $1. And if I do, my heirs suffer - but I enjoyed having the card and I made the money - so that's a bad break for them.
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Disagree. Young buyers start with modern because it has a low entry point. If you buy the right card at the right time, you can make a lot of money. Those collectors aspire to buy early Topps & Bowman cards of Mantle, Clemente and Jackie or Prewar cards of Ruth, Wagner and Cobb when they can afford them. I can't tell you how many times I have heard "made money off of a prospect, want to buy vintage."
Popularity of the sport is irrelevant to collectibility. The NFL is the most popular league, but its cards lag behind MLB and NBA. World Series TV ratings were about double what they were for the NBA Finals. So, there is still enormous interest still in the sport. It is also the first sport that most kids play with Little League. I don't see baseball cards going anywhere.
I'll add a card too. I'm still buying the right high end cards. I don't think this one is trimmed or altered. I have always taken care in what I buy or who I deal with. This scandal has just caused me to slow down, but I will wait for the FBI to do a thorough investigation and all the facts to come out before I jump to conclusions.