Quote:
Originally Posted by Carter08
I read an interesting article that non-scarcity in some instances can help drive value to a certain extent. 1933 Goudey was the focus. A lot of the HOFers are fairly plentiful and the availability draws more people in to giving it a go. I got suckered in by that I admit. Obviously a fine balance because scarcity will still create high prices (see eg T206 Wagner) and overproduction will create low prices (see eg a Mike Piazza rookie).
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It definitely makes sense from an economic theory perspective. I would imagine that value likely follows some sort of an S-curve similar to an adoption curve with respect to scarcity/supply. If there are too few of something, it often doesn't have a strong demand simply because people are unaware of its existence, but if you make too many of them, then everyone has one. There is always an overall market cap for the current relative value of something (which, of course, changes over time with respect to market conditions that affect that item).
However, there's also an interesting phenomenon that comes into play where something that is extremely rare can still have remarkably strong demand if it is associated with something else that has high population counts & demand. A prime example of this is, of course, the T206 Wagner card. The reason that card is so valuable isn't just because there are only ~50 of them known to exist (or whatever the number is), but rather because there are ~50 from an otherwise massively produced and widely collected set. Contrast that with something like the 1929 Churchman's Cigarettes Babe Ruth card which is far more rare than many of his more popular and valuable cards (PSA's pop count is only 308), but because it belongs to a set that is otherwise not widely collected or known about, it has very little relative value today. This is probably pointing out the obvious, but it's still a fun exercise in market economics to me. It's the same thing with modern cards and the disparity between say a Prizm Gold basketball parallel card numbered to /10 and some other random gold parallel from a far less popular set. Both cards could be /10s, but it is the association with the widely collected Prizm cards that make the Prizm Gold 100x as valuable as a Gold parallel from some other random set that most people don't care about.