So I walked into a card store today, and was puzzled by...

[bobbyw8469]

Originally Posted by conor912

TBH, it’s gotten to the point where even walking into a vintage heavy show, I know finding the card I want in the grade I want for the price I want is highly unlikely.

^^^^ This ^^^^

[Mike D.]

Vintage makes so much more sense online...why buy the best value T206 or Mantle within 20 miles of you when you can buy the best value one anywhere in the country (or beyond)?

A LCS dealing in mostly unopened modern has more in common with a hardware store (order product from manufacturer or distributor, mark up, sell, pay rent, repeat) than with someone selling vintage on eBay.

I guess if they’re breaking boxes to sell singles the analogy breaks down...no randomly inserted “gold 1/1” nails mixed in with the regular ones.

[abothebear]

The three shops near where I used to live were similar to what you described in some ways. Having talked to the owners, I have a few theories, some have already been mentioned. Vintage cards are found in the full range of conditions (whereas modern cards are near the high end of the grade scale or else they aren't in the market). All three of the shop owners priced their vintage cards at HBV. No one was going to pay HBV for those cards. The one guy who I'd say was the most market knowledgeable had a sign with his to make an offer. But it is hard to make an offer 75% off the HBV with a straight face. So any vintage buyers are going to buy from ebay where they can get a real time market price aligned with the condition rather than these shops. If the knowledgeable guy had a card come in that was of a quality that would fetch HBV, he would sell it on ebay, not in his case. The other side of it is that if they did take the time to figure out what the market price of what they had was, they could probably move them, but they weren't the kind of shops that could spend the time to replenish their vintage supply at costs they could then profit from.

Now, the one thing that one of the shops had going for it was that he had a bid board, so collectors could bring in their stuff and put it on the bid board for a small consignment fee. That was fun to check out every week because you could get vintage stuff there at a good price. Very rarely anything pre-war. And nothing major, but I remember one week getting a bunch of 1968 Topps stars for $27.

[Tyruscobb]

I fear that demographics may severely affect vintage’s supply and demand equilibrium over the next 10 years and tank prices. We are potentially at the peak. Baby boomers are the reason.

Unfortunately, over the next 10 years, baby boomer deaths will significantly increase. Their heirs will liquidate collections and flood the market. This will increase the supply side. This is inevitable.

The question is whether the demand side will have enough buyers to support price levels. Right now, baby boomers are primarily supporting the demand side. They are retired and have nice disposable income levels. Baby boomers are buying legends, such as Mantle, Mays, Aaron, etc., they grew up watching and legends, such as DiMaggio, Ruth, Williams, etc., their fathers grew up watching and telling them about.

So, will the next generation have this same love of vintage to support prices?

[cardsagain74]

Originally Posted by Tyruscobb

I fear that demographics may severely affect vintage’s supply and demand equilibrium over the next 10 years and tank prices. We are potentially at the peak. Baby boomers are the reason.

Unfortunately, over the next 10 years, baby boomer deaths will significantly increase. Their heirs will liquidate collections and flood the market. This will increase the supply side. This is inevitable.

The question is whether the demand side will have enough buyers to support price levels. Right now, baby boomers are primarily supporting the demand side. They are retired and have nice disposable income levels. Baby boomers are buying legends, such as Mantle, Mays, Aaron, etc., they grew up watching and legends, such as DiMaggio, Ruth, Williams, etc., their fathers grew up watching and telling them about.

So, will the next generation have this same love of vintage to support prices?

My generation may have loved baseball cards (and baseball) during our '80s childhood almost as much as the boomers in the '50s. So, once we are retired with that disposable income factor, I'm hoping that enough of us are still interested in vintage, at least post-war anyway (in the same manner as many of the boomers here love their T 206s and Goudeys today).

But not long after I was a kid, the landscape changed, and football and basketball became the American pasttimes. So once my gen X is gone, I'm not sure if Mantle, Aaron, and Mays will still stay so prevalent

[nat]

The comment about the boomers is exactly right. There's no way that post-war prices stay as high as they are, long term. Baseball card prices are driven, in large part, by nostalgia, and when the people who are nostalgic for Mantle can just watch the guy playing on the other side of the pearly gates, that force driving prices is going to crater. The post-war market will come to resemble the pre-war market, which of course still has its high points, but doesn't have the force of nostalgia driving it.

As for card shops: I suspect that selling unopened modern is just an easier way to go. It's basically just a commodity. You can get a pretty good sense of how much product you're going to move each month, you put in an order for that much from Topps, and you've got a predictable income stream. Selling vintage is more work (you've got to hunt down collections that you can profitably flip), and much less predictable. If whether or not I eat next month depended on how many cards I sell, I could totally see ignoring vintage.

[todeen]

Originally Posted by Tyruscobb

I fear that demographics may severely affect vintage’s supply and demand equilibrium over the next 10 years and tank prices. We are potentially at the peak. Baby boomers are the reason.



Unfortunately, over the next 10 years, baby boomer deaths will significantly increase. Their heirs will liquidate collections and flood the market. This will increase the supply side. This is inevitable.



The question is whether the demand side will have enough buyers to support price levels. Right now, baby boomers are primarily supporting the demand side. They are retired and have nice disposable income levels. Baby boomers are buying legends, such as Mantle, Mays, Aaron, etc., they grew up watching and legends, such as DiMaggio, Ruth, Williams, etc., their fathers grew up watching and telling them about.



So, will the next generation have this same love of vintage to support prices?

Baby boomers' kids don't want Hummel, Oak furniture, milk glass, brass, plate collections, spoon collections, most photo albums, etc etc etc. Who knows about vintage? But if millennials are the first generation expected to make less total wealth in a lifetime than their parents, it stands to reason a lot of vintage collections will pay for college, houses, retirement investment, etc.

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[Mark17]

Originally Posted by Tyruscobb

I fear that demographics may severely affect vintage’s supply and demand equilibrium over the next 10 years and tank prices. We are potentially at the peak. Baby boomers are the reason.

Unfortunately, over the next 10 years, baby boomer deaths will significantly increase. Their heirs will liquidate collections and flood the market. This will increase the supply side. This is inevitable.

The question is whether the demand side will have enough buyers to support price levels. Right now, baby boomers are primarily supporting the demand side. They are retired and have nice disposable income levels. Baby boomers are buying legends, such as Mantle, Mays, Aaron, etc., they grew up watching and legends, such as DiMaggio, Ruth, Williams, etc., their fathers grew up watching and telling them about.

So, will the next generation have this same love of vintage to support prices?

Not sure if I agree with the nostalgia regarding Mantle, Mays, etc. being all that important.

Look at all the collectors here of guys like Wagner, Cobb, Plank, Speaker, and so on. Few people alive today saw these guys play, so there's zero nostalgia effect from personal experience with these players. No reason why collectors of the future won't also eagerly seek Mantle, Mays, and Aaron in the same way.

[todeen]

Originally Posted by Mark17

Not sure if I agree with the nostalgia regarding Mantle, Mays, etc. being all that important.



Look at all the collectors here of guys like Wagner, Cobb, Plank, Speaker, and so on. Few people alive today saw these guys play, so there's zero nostalgia effect from personal experience with these players. No reason why collectors of the future won't also eagerly seek Mantle, Mays, and Aaron in the same way.

I collect Speaker because he is a distant cousin (I have a great uncle who is named after Tris, died in Korean War), and I was enamored by that as a 6/7 year old just learning about baseball. Similarly, my wife is distantly related to Enos "Country" Slaughter. It's a way I might affect my son to consider collecting vintage, since Slaughter doesn't seem as difficult or costly to acquire as Speaker at the moment.

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[glynparson]

Ignorance that’s why he said it. I have heard fools saying this since I started collecting over 40 years ago. Anybody can say anything. Put absolutely no stock in what he said. He doesn’t have a clue.