[Ronnie73]

This is an interesting post. Mainly because most of us here collect true vintage items that are rare to begin with. Reguardless of player, the cards are old, rare, and were never meant to be a way of making money or seen as an investment, when they were produced. Because of that, the values tend to rise over a period of time. Now switch over to new products. In the 1970's, there was value noticed, but not really investment yet. In the mid 1980's, investment started to be an reason to purchase something. Early 1990's the realization of over producing cards, crashed the market, and nearly all the newer collector/investors disappeared. The old timers kept tradeing vintage. Nearly 25 years later, many of the original collector/investors from the mid 1980's returned and kinda repeated history. Except more money was involved and newer cards were shiney, serial numbered, auto'd, and patched. You could have two cards from the same set that had different players, but both serial numbered to 99, both autographed, and both with a jersey patch. So, both cards have the same rarity. But one sells for $3 and the other sells for $300,000. I get it that one player is better than the other, but these companies are basically printing money. And now they are finding out that the auto's and patches are fake. The modern collector/investor people are nervous and noticing a crash on a huge percentage of modern cards. Some don't even see a future in cards, but they also don't own anything before 1933. I saw this coming a few years ago. Because I experenced it in 1985-1992. I would determine print run numbers over the last few years. This February of 2022, When the base topps card of Wander Franco was selling for $100+, I did some math and determined that the final print run for that card was going to be in the 1.5 to 2.0 million cards. With those type of numbers, you can tell the value will eventually tank and many "investors" will lose money. Also, cases of new type cards selling for $4000-$6000 and they get the "case hit". I'm seeing case hit cards from a few years ago for ten dollars, and auto's in the one dollar box. When those cards were the reason for spending thousands of dollars. And now the fake products made by Topps and others, the big crash will happen again. Real Soon. But original true vintage will be fine. We might see a bump or ripple downward for a little while, but things will be ok for us. Also, I've been telling all my shiney collector friends to dump their Trout cards. Don Mattingly was and still is my favorite player. His cards took a hard hit because of his back problems and I lost money on many of his cards, but I was a collector and had no intension of selling any of his cards for profit. I even buy his new shiney cards.