CNN card story

[MattyC]

This is what happens in an entirely unregulated market. First come the fake sales, a tried and true scam in our hobby (either unpaid, or bought via proxy, as guys will happily pay a small percentage fee to change the optics and sales record on a card they own many copies of)...

Then people start buzzing: “You hear X card went for THIS MUCH?!” That creates legitimate Fear Of Missing Out among collectors— who now scramble to grab cards they’ve always liked in desperate hopes of staying ahead of the manipulation wave. Yet this behavior creates its own price spikes.

Alongside these elements comprising the perfect storm of today, you have sellers who witness these massive numbers and say, “Screw it.” So what do they do? En masse, they all raise their prices on cards that were fake sold. So now buyers’ eyes get “anchored” to the new optics, the new numbers.

You also have the self anointed new bosses of the hobby, online snake oil hucksters trying to be your life coach and tell you what to buy (which they own). These guys direct the lemmings to their “stock picks.” This is a separate dynamic from the aforementioned fake sellers who buy many copies of a card then fake sell it or buy it in various venues to get the higher price to “take” or stick.

And yes, there are some fractional ownership companies out there now cherry picking some higher end items. And perhaps there is even some truth to the notion that there are “funds” out there, but not major hedge funds with 5 billion under management— rather a few million in pooled funds that guys want to use to make some money. But overpaying grossly without regard for eye appeal or pricing history isn’t really what Ivy League money does to make money.

The guys who profit from this climate try to write off all this activity as “The Wall Street Hedge Fund Guys” coming in. Invoking the specter of Gordon Gekko and thinking we will shut our brains off. But the real Gordon Gekko’s and their firms don’t play with cards. They don’t wake up and go, “I’ve never been into cards before and don’t know anything about them, but I like sports so let me throw a ton of money at stuff.” That is not how smart, rich people shop. Bad actors out there don’t just want us to buy into this false caricature of “the rich man who has so much money, he doesn’t care, it’s a rounding error to him.” They want us to believe an army of this fictitious creature has descended upon the hobby.

Anyways, you brew all this together, and what we get is today. And to be sure, this storm does indeed generate some “real” sales.

Ultimately, a binary set of reactions emerges. We can be happy our cards are worth more— but we may find they are not, if we try to legitimately sell them. And many collectors love their collections and do not want to sell, which renders their new worth moot.

Or, we can realize that this mess is fundamentally toxic to the market and hobby, and to a collector its only real effect is rising prices for what you’d like to buy.

So pragmatically speaking, more money is coming out of collectors’ pockets. A collector wants to keep his collection and add to his collection, not sell his collection or pieces of it into a storm largely whipped up by unethical actors. I don’t know many guys shaking pom poms and jumping for joy because the value of cards they have zero intention to sell has allegedly gone up. They’re looking at the cost of what they’d still like to buy— and when they look into the cause(s) they see lots of shade in a market with zero regulation.

I’ve found a path to staying happy is simply continuing to enjoy my collection, and refusing to add cards that I feel have been swept up in the storm surge. I enjoyed my cards when they would have lost me money upon selling, and I enjoy them the same and not an iota more now that they might make me some loot if I sold. Because I’m not a seller. Nor am I some quasi-pseudo wannabe day trader mini Gordon Gekko who conflates his cards with stocks. I’m a baseball card collector. And I can choose to not be a buyer. Which renders the madness moot. When there’s a storm or bad weather I’ll hang inside and have a blast enjoying my cards, so it’s still all good.