Is this really a buyer’s market?

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If you are one of those who watch YouTube content regularly, you have surely heard just about every channel lately touting what a great time it is to buy sports cards with prices being so far below levels of a year or two ago. Well, today I did some exploring on eBay, searching for the GOAT vintage basketball cards that have come down the most over the past couple of years. As a buyer looking for good deals on ‘61 Fleer Wilts, Oscars, Jerrys and ‘69 Kareems, I came up empty handed. Beginning with the lowest PSA priced of each one of those cards, all I found was every single card with roughly 90/10 centering one way or the other or both with basically zero exhibiting what I would describe as superior eye appeal for the grade. I went up to around PSA 5 levels for each without being able to find a single example that I would be looking to jump on if I had the excess funds to make a purchase right now. As just a small sampling, I didn’t do any football, hockey or baseball but would expect to find similar results.

So, my conclusion is that no sellers or extremely few sellers are willing to part with their high eye appeal cards in this market and if they could possibly just hold on to all of them without selling, they absolutely will do that. Thus, where does that leave the astute buyer looking to take advantage of the down market as everyone is promoting? Take what you can get? This doesn’t seem like an ideal buying strategy to me.