Quote:
Originally Posted by dgo71
I think most people who follow baseball will always know Ruth, Cobb, Aaron, etc. but how many kids today can tell you who Bobby Doerr or Billy Williams were? And how many in 20 years will know them?
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It's just like the changing tastes of music (and music autographs/memorabilia) with each successive generation. When it comes to rock & roll, you can replace Ruth, Cobb, and Aaron in your statement with The Beatles (and maybe Bob Dylan), and Bobby Doerr and Billy Williams with every other band/musician. Beatles stuff will always be a sound investment; it's not going anywhere but up. But I guarantee you that every other rock & roller, no matter how huge they've been in the past 50+ years, is on the downslide. Even Elvis is losing a great deal of relevancy. Frankly, with Elvis, that makes sense to me. Beatles music and material aside, fewer and fewer people just won't care about the rest of it. It's really hard to fathom, but that's just the way of the world. I have a handful of truly historic and valuable rock pieces which I am stupid for not parting with today. I just can't bring myself to do it. Now is the time to sell, as the most interested people with the buying power are all senior citizens. The music and memorabilia of the biggest non-Beatles musicians from the rock era will continue to capture the progressively dwindling interest of later generations, but will ultimately nearly fizzle out.
Look at one generation prior: outside of someone like Sinatra, you can barely give away Big Band era material. There's still a somewhat strong niche interest in rare jazz and blues material, but that has been waning as well. Even Sinatra won't ultimately hold his value. I'll give a huge recent example of this playing out: not long ago, a manuscript purported to be the first draft of Hoagy Carmichael's "Star Dust" sold at auction. For younger people reading this, "Star Dust" was to earlier generations what "Yesterday" became to those people's children and grandchildren. It was the most famous, beloved and covered song of all time. Some say that it was covered by even more artists than "Yesterday". The selling price for this manuscript was barely over $10,000. The problem is that there are so few people alive today who understand and appreciate the esteem in which this song was held by so many. I'm a huge fan of Carmichael and his work, but knew enough to not bid on this cherished piece no matter how much I wanted to own it if I wanted to protect my money.