A Mantle Price Bubble?

[MattyC]

If these hypothetical owners do sell them, there will be plenty of people (like myself) ready to buy them and hold them for long periods of time. And if people do sell, by the same logic there will be a waiting and hungry group of buyers (be they stretching themselves too thin or be they wealthy) ready to bid competitively on the card. So the mere act of anyone selling in no way ensures a drop in price. Unless, of course, all these hypothetical broke owners somehow go bust on the same day. And even then, the amount of ready buyers would support or drive up the price. Look what happened with a much, much less desired item: the 1975 Mini unopened hoard that flooded the market via REA years ago. Prices dropped for a moment, and now boxes have doubled since then.

No one has a crystal ball so there's no right answer here, but just curious, how can any of us know the specific financial situation of buyers? How can anyone tell if buyers of this card are "stretching themselves too thin?" Most guys I know who have one are quite solvent. Then we have guys like Bill and my brother in other threads, who are prudently saving up.

Originally Posted by bn2cardz

Too many people are stretching themselves thin to get one...

This seems like quite an assumption, unless one has financial records of various buyers. I certainly haven't seen many great looking, centered examples of the #311 card being offered up by owners in recent years, who have gone bust to pay bills and now need money. Most of what is auctioned are the standard, tilted or OC or background-issue plagued examples.

Originally Posted by bn2cardz

...it will be the first one to be sold...

This statement also seems to presume what collectors have in their collections; one could just as easily take the counterpoint, that the #311 would be the last card a collector would sell. This would be in keeping with the safe bet that it is a collector's centerpiece. A collector may choose to sell all his "satellite" pieces well before parting with the heart of his collection.

Also, I always have had a problem with the notion of a collectible being "overvalued." People are paying what they are paying. These are the prices the card costs now. In the present, in this moment, each individual #311 is neither under nor overvalued. There is just simply what an owner paid. Now, some may think prices will go up, or will go down. But then we have to deal with the fact that because these are cards, each individual #311 is unique. It is always strikes me as folly when people try to codify or generalize the card market, or the market for all examples of a certain card. Cards aren't exactly like stocks or real estate. Because each #311 is unique despite a TPG sticker, each example will be more or less desirable to certain buyers.

Many variables can seemingly point to a downturn in one instant, with an ugly #311 selling for less than the previous sale, then the very next day a gorgeous example can surface and shatter the last sale. In this instance, is the card going up or down?

The answer is that it is all about the specific example of the card in question. One cannot group OC #311s or beaten-up, heavily creased #311s and the elite #311s, which are quite rare-- especially relative to demand. There is definitely not an abundance of elite, eye-appealing #311s out there. Middling examples I would agree are much more readily available