The next five years- what do you see for the future of the hobby?

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by packs

We will be able to buy all the E107s we want at T206 prices in just 30 years.

Ha, Ha! Would that that would be true, but I'm afraid E107 will follow the trend of coins, where rare and significant haven't even really been subject to price cycles. Instead, the price trend over decades for coin series analagous to E107's has pretty much been steadily upwards. Over the next five years or slightly more, I think that the focus will shift somehat from pre WWI cards to the twenties and early thirties, where there are quite a few very scarce to downright rare and significant cards available at mere fractions of the cost of pre WWI.

It's also going to prove to be a good time to buy some of the better (read "rarer" and "high grade") Williams and DiMaggio cards, as they are undervalued compared to Cobb, Ruth, Wagner, Mathewson and the like.

Eventually even key 50's and '60's cards will once again rise in value, perhaps even dramatically, once they begin to be perceived as undervalued in relation to those that preceeded them. There are, however, easily enough of these out there that their prices will be extremely subject to price cycles, going through ups and downs.

And there will be demand for key '80's and even '90's cards--its just that there are so many available that ecomonic principles demand that they will see very slow growth. The '89 Upper Deck Griffey Jr., for example, is a very significant card, but with somewhere around a million of them out there, and most of them in nice shape, the number of collectors seeking that card would have to rise astronomically for it to ever see a really appreciable rise in price. I like the stars and HOF'ers from the Topps Tiffany sets to see their day in the sun, as these were, IMO, the best of the mainstream cards produced during their time period insofar as relative scarcity and card quality are concerned.

Mantle values in general will depend upon whether the current trend to evaluate players based on stats going well beyond such traditional statistics as batting average continues. Those of you that think that Mantle was in any way inferior to either Mays or Aaron, during the time that all of them were playing, will be in for a rude awakening upon consideration of the statistics that more closely approximate run-producing ability. Mantle, for example, created approximately 212% of the runs of an average player per every 27 outs made OVER HIS ENTIRE CAREER during his era (by way of comparison, Lou Gehrig was at 200% for his career, during his more run-prolific era), while Mays and Aaron were in the 170-180% bracket--quite a distant second. While this is admittedly a statistic originating with Bill James, the Mick similarly wipes out the other two in OBPS, .978 for the Mick, compared to .941 for Willie, and .929 for Hank. While Mays and Aaron posted better career numbers due to better longevity, they were really never quite in the same class at producing runs during the time they were active. Mantle simply hit homeruns more often than they did, walked more, and scored more runs per game played (Aaron scored .659 runs per game played; Mays .689, and Mr. Mantle .698 runs per game. As Bill James has said, the number of runs a team will score is directly proportional to the number of runners they get on base. In this vein, Mantle's career on-base-percentage was .421; Mays .384; and Aaron .374. You will also find that if you take a trip to baseballreference.com and use their tool to neutralize for eras, Mantle's stats do not suffer at all in comparison to Gehrig. Given a chance to take any of the three in their prime without regard to longevity, an educated GM would take Mantle every time. I love the other two--they were among the greatest ever--but I'm sorry, they never stood on a level plane with Mickey Mantle in prime time! He was simply the best of his era.

Great thread--sorry I saw it so it so late!

Regards,

Larry