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

[Rhotchkiss]

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

As a collector of old cards viewing them as an "asset class" and looking at them as an investment (and I am absolutely NOT that kind of collector), it seems to me that such an asset class collector would be buying cards of Cobb, Ruth, Gehrig, Wagner, Young, Johnson, Lajoie... stuff like that. And they wouldn't be buying common cards or making any effort whatsoever toward collecting sets.

Lawyer Rotchkiss, is that how it's done? Or do you collect a little bit on the side?

Hi Frank. Actually, almost my entire collection is comprised of Wagner, Cobb, Ruth, Joe Jackson, etc. I do love t206s and that’s sometimes where I “collect” - I have the set, plus several back runs and I am working on others and a set of all one type of back. Plus I am working on back runs of Cobb/Wagner in other issues. I do love cards, so I do stray sometimes, but for the most part I stick to the blue chips. I find that the back variations give me enough latitude to be a collector of investments. A link to my collection is in the area below all my posts.

I haven’t practiced law in over 16 years, and I don’t miss it all!!

[FrankWakefield]

Sounds like you're enjoying life after lawyering, congrats!

[samosa4u]

I read about half of this article scholarly essay and the author does make some interesting points. However, he feels that the 2020 boom would have happened, even if the pandemic hadn't occurred, and I don't agree with that at all. And just like how he doesn't believe the role the pandemic played in bringing the prices up to astronomical levels, he also doesn't believe that mass vaccinations and restrictions being lifted played a role in the big decline that we saw earlier this year. And finally, he makes no mention of Gary Vaynerchuk. Does he fail to realize the kind of impact this man had on card prices? Think about it: he has 2.6 million followers on his Twitter account, and there are also millions more followers who are non-subscribers. Now, this guy is considered an "investment guru" and what do you think happened when he started posting pictures of himself with basketball, wrestling and soccer cards? Prices went insane. There was one member on this forum who would get ripped to bits by everybody whenever he shared pictures of his cheap wrestling cards here - does anybody remember that? Well, when somebody offered me $500 USD for my Hulk Hogan, I thought that person was insane, and of course I did the deal. Today, this same card is selling for thousands. And at the same time, when Gary stopped promoting cards to his millions of followers and moved on to NFTs, then what happened? Card prices dropped while NFTs went nuts.

[Exhibitman]

Sounds like Gary V is into creating yet another tulip mania [per Wikipedia]: Tulip mania (Dutch: tulpenmanie) was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels, with the major acceleration starting in 1634 and then dramatically collapsing in February 1637. It is generally considered to have been the first recorded speculative bubble or asset bubble in history.

Lots of money to be made on manias; just don't be the last one standing holding the asset when the bubble pops. You can't readily bubble a vintage card because there are not enough of them to generate the fast flips that build momentum for a mania. Can't do a FOMO post on a card that only sells a few times a year.