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Originally Posted by Hankphenom
Thanks. I have never thought of anything, short of fraud, as good or bad in the hobby, just trying to understand it. Couple of questions from your answer: please explain how liquidity (meaning cash sloshing around, I assume) benefits the hobby outside of the modern sector--is it that some of that cash will move into other sectors?; what are base cards, and what happened during the first junk wax era, which I take to be the late 80s and 90s? Any other insights will be welcomed.
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Hi Hank. I don't collect modern sets, but I collect modern singles. In modern, Topps flagship is called "paper" versus Chrome. You have base cards, short prints, super short prints, parallels, inserts, and insert parallels.
You are asking about scarcity: manufactured vs natural. If you wanted to collect natural scarcity in the modern market you would want to collect SP and SSP. These do not come in parallel form. They are very popular, but they don't seem to command the prices of manufactured scarcity. Even non-rookie SP and SSP are highly collectable for stars.
I'm pretty sure you understand the parallels that are numbered /99, /76, /50, and etc. Today, set collectors have been replaced by "Rainbow" collectors. These collectors want to get all the border combinations for a certain player. Rainbow collectors have two choices - paper vs chrome. Paper rainbows cost less. Chrome rainbows cost more.
I don't collect rainbows because I don't have that kind of money. I prefer to get cards in just a couple parallels. I like Xfractors, and I like the new Mega Box refractors sometimes called Silver Pack. If you are collecting the rainbow, anything /99 or less is desirable. Some collectors I know start at /50 or less for what they collect.
Let's look at 1993 Topps Derek Jeter. This existed before Topps Chrome. However, it's a nice introduction to parallels. You have the base paper RC, and then you have four parallels: Topps Gold, Inaugural Rockies Set, and Inaugural Marlins Set, and Topps Mini.
In 1996, Derek Jeter's rookie year coincided with the release of 1996 Topps Chrome. However, Topps did not release Topps Gold parallels that year. So in 1996 you have his base paper card, his base chrome card, and a Chrome refractor.
By the late 1990s, Topps Chrome began to expand their refractor parallels into Gold and Black. And in 2001, Topps brought back the paper Topps Gold parallel. This coincided with the rookie season of Ichiro and Pujols, and those parallels are expensive. By 2002, Topps had introduced the Xfractor. The 2002 Bowman Chrome Xfractor of Joey Votto is the big ticket item from that year. I wish I had one! And the Bowman Chrome gold signature parallel is another card that brings big bucks. I'm not sure gold signature is still around - I don't collect Bowman prospects.
Bowman is the real set where collectors flip and make money. When people complain about flippers, they make their most money with Bowman First prospect cards. This is where people spend $100k for an unproven prospect.