Gas prices and buying cards

[ParisianJohn]

Originally Posted by Johnny630

The vintage card market had a major correction 2007 2008 with the financial /housing crisis, it could happen again. The effects of this won’t be felt until 6 to 8 months down the road.

Remember it’s never a gain until you sell for a profit and it’s never a loss until you sell for a loss, it’s all unrealized, staying in the game is the key !

I wondered about the exact impact of 2008 since I wasn't in the vintage game then.

I collected cards as a kid in the Junk Wax era of the 1980s and early 1990s, then came into vintage cards in 2012 in my mid-30s. I did a lot of collecting from 2012-2015 but then tailed off after my kids were born, but an circling back now.

In 2012 (if I recall correctly) people saying prices were just starting to get back to where they were in 2008 for low and mid-range cards in particular. By the time I stopped collecting in 2015 I noticed that many cards that I'd bought in 2012-2013 were selling for 20-25% higher than what I'd paid for them. It was a pretty rapid climb.

Last year I had heard about how during COVID people got into cards as a hobby (thanks in part of stimulus checks) and prices were spiking, especially for marquee names. I was pleasantly shocked to see, for example, that the PSA 3.5 Cy Young portrait I bought in 2013 for $600 was selling for something like $2,500. My PSA 7 of Babe Ruth's 1932 Sanella was somehow selling for 15 times what I got it at.

I imagined as COVID was waning and people stopped getting stimulus checks that prices would correct. And now you add inflation and then the war in Ukraine and all these sanctions (which will probably spur some massive cyber criminal activities) and now I wonder just how far they'll drop and for how long.

I'd guess things will discourage low and mid-range card buyers from snatching up as much as they have the past few years, and that this will drop prices for several years. Then again, I'm really bad at predicting things!