I've seen this crazy rise, and agree with what most of the other folks in this thread have said. I think some cards will go down (e.g., Mike Trout RC, how good are his career stats going to be if he loses a season in his prime if most of this season is cancelled?) The rest, however, I think are going to stay at the current level with only modest drops, if at all.
The reason behind it is what most of the others have said. If you are employed, with a decent savings/investment account, where else are you going to put your money? This is a lot of the same reason why it seems the stock market is irrationally high even in a deep recession. The Fed is printing money like crazy, yet interest rates are near zero with little inflation. I think folks are treating baseball cards like gold because there are only "limited" quantities of it. And the fact that the values keep going up feeds more of the buying frenzy. If you've had your collection for a few years, it's most likely worth considerably more than what you paid for those cards. So if you sell some of them to lock in the profit, what do you do with that money? I have the feeling that people are just plowing that money right back into buying more cards.
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