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Originally Posted by 68Hawk
Thanks, certainly interesting to see that rising tide.
Funnily enough, I think we're just at the beginning of a serious rise in prices of highly collectable vintage cardboard.
In the 50's/60's/70's hardcore collectors outside of kids buying/flipping/spoke splicing were largely seen as oddballs.
In the 80's there was a swell in the collector brigade as the hobby became full fledged, but it was still very niche and fixed to real collectors and their kids.
The 90's brought some broader speculation, but that again mainly came from within the collector base.
A die off in the early 2000's, then somewhere around 2-3 years ago the concept of enjoyment of collecting - as in owning and holding something that has rising value as well as its emotional sporting connection - crept out of the standard hobby masses into mainstream. With some media splash the broader population became aware that this pocket portraiture stuff was legit and somewhat interesting and not simply 'weird' for poorly socialized 50 something child-men to lovingly handle.
With the enormous growth in modern collector numbers over the last 24 months, mainstream sports fans have been chasing the 'goats' of various sports from within their living memory, and subsequently given over to a tsunami of money into the rarest or important cards of particular players.
IMO, the hard financial numbers of modern sportscards have largely eclipsed vintage in many cases and those modern collectors have started history checking back earlier and earlier to find the greats of each sport back to the 60's.
But they will sate that itch too and inevitably become intrigued in 'investing' and owning much earlier vintage card of the sort discussed on this site.
Because of the far more limited sportscard stock that's survived of early baseball greats, we may see a doubling or tripling of prices for vintage in the next 2-3 years as the relative value is considered highly desirable in comparison to 40k to 1.8m cards of 'modern' players.
If you want in, as hard as it may seem to digest now at current prices, you will be kicking yourself in 5 years if you again put off collecting what is very difficult to afford now - when it becomes unquestionably unaffordable for most tomorrow.
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I have to vehemently disagree with you: we collectors are still "largely seen as oddballs".
We're weird, we're here, get used to it.
But seriously, I hope you are right. My retirement window (proposed) is about 15 years, so if my collection doubles or triples in value in the interim, I might be able to exit the rat race a few years early.