Liquidity & Investing vs collecting

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by thenextlevel

This would be immediately after the era of overproduction. Everybody in the late 80's and early 90's were buying cards to put away for retirement. People were paying ridiculous prices for OPC premiere, Stadium Club, Kevin Maas rookies, etc, etc. That crash cost a lot of people money. Now of course this wasn't across all areas of collecting, but nevertheless, the "card market" dropped big time. I understand that this was the overproduced crap, but the people who were dumping money into the hobby had no clue(maybe like the people now dumping money into the sportscard market and inflating prices), and the rug was pulled out from under them. It all comes down to choosing wisely. If you know a collectibles market, then you can use it as an investment vehicle and limit the downside.

This is exactly right. Collectors thought 1990 Leaf Frank Thomas rookies, 1989 Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck rookies and the like would only keep going up, up and away (like the Fifth Dimension, in their beautiful, beautiful balloon). Many dollars were being put into huge lots of these cards, but a liquid market for those lots never developed. The impact of huge production set in, and much of the market, mostly new cards, but with an overflow effect even on '50's and '60's cards, tanked. By recollection, the '52 Topps Mantle dropped in NrMt grade from $30,000 or so to around $15K by 1995. I don't think this market is like that one, because much of the $$$ is going into truly desirable, proven cards which are at least condition rarities, and seldom seen in high grade (note based on my previous posts above that I do not include the '86 Fleer Jordan in gem mint "10" in that group because it is so prevalent in only slightly lesser grades).

Regards,

Larry