What the hobby is becoming

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by seanofjapan

I’ve been away from North America for a long time. Can somebody fill me in on the series of events which have transpired in my absence which led to 1990 Fleer Michael Jordans becoming the dominant card in the hobby?

Well, it's not the "dominant" card in the hobby, it's just the currently most graded one. Saying dominant makes you think it's a card most people want in their collection. It's still not.

Here's the Cliff Notes:
1) Worthless cards not graded very often for the last 30 years.
2) Basketball modern going nuts from 2017-2020.
3) Jordan '86 Fleer PSA 10s going from $20K a couple of years ago to $750K on Goldin a few months back. (This is obviously despite how many are trimmed by Robert Block and his friends that PSA couldn't catch, and some sellers at the National in 2018 having an entire case full of them.
4) Trickle down effect to '87, '88, '89 Fleer Jordans since those are some kind of all-important run of the GOAT.
5) COVID keeping everyone at home hearing about sky-high prices and finding their old collections.
6) Run on junk wax going for 10-100x what it went for a few years ago.
7) The Last Dance ESPN series in April 2020 reminding people about Jordan being best ever, forcing everyone and their grandmother to look for PSA graded copies. Since they were worthless until then (basically) and "LOW POP!!!21!@@!!!" and PSA ran a grading special for just Jordan cards, all those people sent in their heretofore worthless raw Jordan card to make dolla-dolla bills y'all.

Also, there was a huge increase in crypto valuations and the Fed kept giving away "free money" and there was nothing else to spend money on (vacations, restaurants, movies, sports games) for about a year, and much of it flooded into sports cards, since that was a great place to beat inflation. Well, it was at the time. Let's see what it is in Jan 2022...

Update: added image showing some price progression information.