Vintage Card Performance During A Recession

[Santo10Fan]

Did anyone use vintage cards as a safe haven in 2009? I remember gold spiking after the subprime mortgage crisis, and I've seen some encouraging signs from key card dollar numbers during the recovery. I wasn't able to clearly ascertain if there was a spike similar the 2011 gold boom.

[swarmee]

I think traditional logic is that people sell trading cards/memorabilia at a loss during recessions to get liquid assets.
PWCC probably has the research done on it; look for some of their studies.

[SetBuilder]

Any cards not high grade (NM or better. i.e. trophy cards), I would expect prices to drop by 50% or more. That's due to less demand and the flood of supply from less affluent sellers trying to raise cash to pay the bills during a bad downturn.

I'd like to think the same thing that happened to stamps won't happen to cards, but that remains to be seen as the baby boomer generation is eventually replaced by millennials who don't seem to care that much for the pre-war stuff. With stamps, the super high end of the market keeps breaking records, but the lower tier stuff is pretty much worthless. There just isn't enough new collectors to pick up the slack.

Here's the silver lining for the lower tier cards: Inflation. The next downturn could bring in a horrific spike in inflation that could raise the price of all commodities by a significant amount.

The US is running $1T+ deficits at the late stages of the economic expansion and it's going to end in an inflationary spiral.

[Santo10Fan]

With clearer recession signs emerging last week, I am still interested to hear how the vintage card market looked during the last financial crisis. Can anyone confirm demand slowed significantly?

[packs]

Why would inflation be a silver lining for low tier cards? During inflation the rate of everything rises proportionally.

[Santo10Fan]

Originally Posted by packs

Why would inflation be a silver lining for low tier cards? During inflation the rate of everything rises proportionally.

I was wondering about that comment also, but it appears Manny was banned this year

[seanofjapan]

Originally Posted by packs

Why would inflation be a silver lining for low tier cards? During inflation the rate of everything rises proportionally.

Not sure if this is what was meant, but I assume he meant that if the rate of everything rises proportionally, including cards, then they are a safe asset compared to cash, which will lose its value over time.

Of course there are way too many assumptions built into that line of reasoning for it to hold up in actual practice, but I think that must have been what he was getting at.

About the bigger question of what happens to cards in a recession, there is this article here about the art market, which is an obvious parallel:

https://medium.com/@masterworksio/wh...s-2cc9c20451b8