Where Cards are and are going - Link to Josh Luper's "statement"

[Exhibitman]

One of the more interesting comparisons is the condition rarity of modern vs. the absolute rarity of vintage. They are truly different markets. Extremely low grade prewar cards are busting records. I mean, Heritage closed a fair condition 1925 Exhibit Gehrig RC for $105,000; think a fair MJ RC will get anything like that??

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

One of the more interesting comparisons is the condition rarity of modern vs. the absolute rarity of vintage. They are truly different markets. Extremely low grade prewar cards are busting records. I mean, Heritage closed a fair condition 1925 Exhibit Gehrig RC for $105,000; think a fair MJ RC will get anything like that??

I would expect the huge price jumps for the big name pre-war players like Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, and Wagner, even though their condition is nowhere near all the 9 - 10 grades these modern manufactured rarities get. These new investor/collectors know to focus on the big names when it comes to pre-war cards. And they also realize they don't have to be 9s - 10s to go for big money, as long as the PSA pop reports show they're just as rare as the high value modern cards. The bigger question I see is, what is happening to the prices of the pre-war commons, and/or pre-war cards not in PSA holders?

[Fred]

??

Are modern cards are like the gateway drug to vintage collecting... So, an Ohtani rookie is like primo weed that will lead to a Ruth/Cobb heroin addiction?

[Brian Van Horn]

It should be interesting in the "hobby" how a few not so legal and a few, well.....figure in to the overall prices.

[FrankWakefield]

Gateway drug...

OK, I think almost all of "us" collected cards to some extent as kids. Who of us started with collecting old cards instead of cards contemporary with our youth? The cards I got were from small grocery stores, and then a bit later in trades with childhood friends. I think that's true for most of us.

We didn't start with bidding on 4, 5, and 6 figure graded cards.

Most of us didn't start collecting old cards until after we became aware of, to varying extents, the history of baseball. For me it started with reading Carmichael's My Greatest Day In Baseball, an early 1960's edition. It took that mental stimulus, coupled with encountering an opportunity to buy an old card (years before there was internet or eBay, never heard of a card show then and couldn't have gotten to one if I had heard).

I think that article is fairly well written. I think his deductions are tailored to the finding he wanted to make. I feel like there's a significant disconnect with a deep pocketed speculator in a slabbed basketball card, and an armchair baseball semi-historian collector of 90 to 140 year old ballcards. From the outside they both look like card collectors. But they aren't. For those of us who own a few shares of stock in some NYSE or NASDAQ listed company, did we invest in those shares or did we collect them????

I don't want a room, closet, safe, safety deposit box that smells like slabs. And I think I like it that people with deep pockets have recently paid 6 figures for slabbed basketball cards and slabbed hockey cards. I'm not gonna buy any of those. I hope those guys continue to chase shiny cards in shiny smelly slabs (do they really smell?) and may they never develop an interest in old baseball cards. I almost always eat a big bowl of Cheerios, Rice Chex, Frosted Flakes, whole milk and blueberries for breakfast. I hope there's not a big influx of moneyed buyers who start buying massive amounts of that stuff resulting in an increase in prices on my breakfast stuff. I hope they stay focused on graded Jordan's and graded Gretzky's.

So maybe that article describes what could happen to the old ballcards. But I hope not.

[Seven]

I'm hoping that the people that collect modern, and continue to chase after the shiny new autographs, continue to do just that. Vintage has gotten difficult enough as it is, I shudder to think about the prices rising again. Especially for some of us that collect on a fixed budget.

[Gorditadogg]

I gotta give Josh Luber props. He helped make second-hand sneakers into a $30 billion market. And he spends a lot more on sports cards than I do, so he is plenty interested in the card market and is invested in its success.

As Josh points out Wall Street is recognizing our hobby and investing in it. He thinks this is a good thing and will help make card-collecting cool. I guess I am happy the hobby is getting more interest. Although corporate backing doesn’t necessarily mean long-term health for our hobby – companies have a track record of making short-term decisions – if corporate attention can add new collectors some of them will get hooked and that is a good thing. Because while it is nice for card manufacturers to sell more new cards, at the end of the day the most important factor for the health of the hobby is whether there will be continued demand for the cards that already exist, and we need new collectors for that to happen.

I am not sure how much I agree with his take on the market over the last year. I’d say his “Mark y Mark” theory is true: some people with a lot of disposable income and limited options on how to spend it (like Cuban and Wahlburg maybe) started buying cards, and as prices rose other people who had cards were happy to cash out and take profits. But I would say the run ended when vaccinations got people out of the house again. All the other things he mentioned were minor, and while PSA shutting down did choke off the market (and still is), prices were already falling and anyway a lower supply of graded cards should cause prices to go up.

Also I don’t know how much you can tell about the state of the hobby by looking at sales of $1 million cards. Those are out of range for 99.9% of the hobby, and the future of collecting is not going to be determined by what the ultra-rich decide to put in their vaults. Card Ladder’s Low-End Index, which focuses on $1 to $500 cards, shows prices have not stabilized since the bust in April, and have continued to drop over the last six months. Looking through individual cards in the index, vintage seems to be holding up better than modern, but it would be nice if they had a specific index to show that.

My personal take is that buyers are being pickier right now. High-quality and low-population cards are going up, while run-of-the-mill cards are sliding. This to me is a sign that we don’t have many new collectors building their collections, but instead a lot of Net54-veteran types upgrading their sets and dumping their discards. I don’t know if this will continue but it is not a good direction to be heading.

[glynparson]

Originally Posted by Fred

??

Are modern cards are like the gateway drug to vintage collecting... So, an Ohtani rookie is like primo weed that will lead to a Ruth/Cobb heroin addiction?

What is this reefer madness. The myth of cannabis being a gateway drug has been credibly debunked many times.

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by glynparson

What is this reefer madness. The myth of cannabis being a gateway drug has been credibly debunked many times.

So true. In fact, weed has gotten me away from booze entirely. A nice edible mellows me out way better than a shot of whiskey and without the deleterious side effects. Just a little cottonmouth.

But I digress...

Investor-Collector? Collector-Investor?

--When I was a kid and $3.25 could get you a good condition 1952 Bowman Mantle at auction at a local card show (true story) no one was an investor.

--When I got back into the hobby in the late 1980s, it was as a Collector-Investor. I collected for myself 80% but would keep an eye out for a good deal I could flip.

--Now, it is Investor-Collector. I still have stuff I collect purely for $hits and giggles: I don't sweat the future value of sub-$5 cards. But the rest is strategic, so I guess investment. Even if I like the card I have to be convinced of its future potential because if I am fortunate enough to be able to retire in the next decade, I plan to use my cards as a main occupation to gradually unwind my collection at retail over the course of the early years of retirement.

[Seven]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

So true. In fact, weed has gotten me away from booze entirely. A nice edible mellows me out way better than a shot of whiskey and without the deleterious side effects. Just a little cottonmouth.

But I digress...

Investor-Collector? Collector-Investor?

--When I was a kid and $3.25 could get you a good condition 1952 Bowman Mantle at auction at a local card show (true story) no one was an investor.

.

This is the stuff that kills me, obviously we can't pick when we can go around the sun, in this world, but none of us will ever experience prices remotely close to this for modern cards (not that I'm a modern guy, but still) , let alone vintage.

I'm happy with my 52 Bowman, but I had to pay a decent penny for this one. Some cards seem so unreachable nowadays, like #311 for example. A double printed issue, with a good amount of cards known to the world. Hell I wouldn't mind If I even had to pay $5K for one of them. But $30K, for a PSA 1? I say to myself that hopefully by the time I retire, which is a LONG time from now, that I'll be able to get one, because collecting is a journey.

Vintage, has a STEEP entry point, for newer collectors, especially those on fixed budgets. Kids will never be able to enter the hobby as they once could. What 10 year old can afford a $100 card let alone something that's $1000. Well every thread needs a card, here's my 52 Bowman.