Some Reflefctions on an August Afternoon

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Posted By: warshawlaw

waiting for my case to be called and I looked down at the logo patch on the handsome case I purchased at the National to lug home all the cards I inadvertently [don't laugh, the wife bought it ] purchased and noticed something: the logo says the show was the 26th National. The National is 26 years old. This isn't a fad or a passing fancy, nor is it technologically-based and vulnerable to new developments (given the refractor detractors out there, probably the opposite), this is a real, maturing investment field. If you'd been in the field 30 years ago and had plunked all your ducats into prewar cards you'd be sitting on a hell of a nest-egg today.

That said, I think some people are perceiving one of the indicators of a bubble-type hard asset market, namely, people sitting on inventory who might not otherwise do so. One of the driving forces in real estate prices in many areas of SoCal over the last few years was lack of inventory; with nothing to buy, home buyers wanting to use low interest rates to purchase homes fought over the properties that were there. Now that lots of homes are coming on the market in previously short-supplied areas [on one well-heeled street near my house my wife and I counted seven new listings], selling time is lengthening and prices are flattening in many areas (there was an article on the subject in the L.A. Times a few weeks ago; I'm not bright enough to have figured out all of this myself). I think the same is true of cards. I haven't seen explosive growth in postwar HOFer values; the core of my postwar collection is worth about what it was worth five years ago. The supply and demand have reached an equilibrium of sorts in that field. The more "obscure" prewar cards (D-E-M-W-?) are not there yet, IMHO because the price increase hasn't pulled the hidden inventory into the market so far. I know I have acquired caramel cards that I would not otherwise have purchased and I am holding them as the prices skyrocket. I've seen prices up 20% on stuff I bought last month. I guess the trick is to get out at the right time. I don't think that time is now.

Quite a change from being a dork in a church basement trading cards with other men who should know better than to waste their time...