Are Baseball Cards Destined to Slowly Diminish in Value?

[Rich Klein]

Your dreams were your ticket out

In all seriousness, like I say on many occassions, Bruce is absolutely correct when it comes to high end merchandise. In just about any field; the highest end merchandise is not only going to maintain it's value but will grow exponetially higher than most other items.

For the rest of us mortals, the decision is a bit harder; the odds are real good that not all the value of cards will maintain. The longer we are away from when the cards were produced; the less we care about the Jim Qualls of the world. Thus, we do need a lower Barrier To Entry (BTE) to get collectors back into the game. I'm giong to use the National as an example. I may be a couple of dollars off here but stay with my point.

In 1984, The National was hend at the no longer existing Aspen Hotel in Parsipanny NJ. There was no fee to park and admission was somewhere between $3-5. One also received a free autograph, granted the best player was Bobby Thomson with the admittance if so desired.

Nowadays, the cheapest admission to get in is $18 -- (usually Sunday about noon it does become Free) and there are advanced MVP badges which gets one double the promo sets, some free autographs, etc. I think that cost is about $150 and yes it is worth it on many levels. But just like when our pack price went from 50 cents or so in 1991 for the basic packs to whatever some of the most expenisve packs are today --- and some go past $50 -- then we are shutting out future generations which is problematic.

Yes, even when packs were cheap -- people only wanted the good cards. At the store I used to frequent in the late 80's -- people would buy the 1985 packs and if Gooden, Clemens, Big Mac, E Davis, etc did not come out -- then the rest of the cards would be left on the counter. Same principle Adam brought up about the commons from his box after he sold the "chase" card. But again, the issue is the cost of entry -- whether it is to the National or to an unopened product.

So, unless we can get future generations in at a level they can afford, the hoddy many decrease just because there are less people entering because of the price.

Regards
Rich