Rea

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

Stuff keeps coming to market.

I'm not surprised at what's out there, just at how much money people have to devote to this thing of ours seemingly every week.

As long as quality items get strong prices, it will keep happening, if for no reason other than natural attrition out of the hobby (aka collectors dying or getting old) of many under-the-radar great collections that belong to Boomers who don't do the grading thing (and whose cards are not reflected in the population reports) and who don't post their holdings on chat boards. Their families call the auctioneers when gramps is ready for the home or discorporates, and we get a nice flood of cards.

I attend a lot of non-card-centric collectibles events and one thing that strikes me is how generational the flow of merchandise is. Right now, we are in the middle of the liquidation of the estates of the Greatest Generation and the Korean War era Silent Generation, and the material out there from WWII and immediately after has proliferated over the last few years. I see big caches of photos, postcards and ephemera that was clearly amassed by or generated by servicemen in Europe or Asia. The families see little or no value there, so they blow out the stuff at estate and garage sales, and diligent pickers grab it. Some of those men were the early card collectors so no wonder we are seeing caches of vintage cards emerge.