Does The Stock Market Influence Your Vintage Purchases?

[Yoda]

I feel that, with the rise in interest rates, many speculators who have used their bank LOC's and overdrafts to buy high value cards may be over leveraged and are starting to feel pain.

[Aaron Seefeldt]

In the last 2 weeks I have received strong offers on 2 of my most valuable cards. I did not sell, I can't (or won't be able to afford to) replace them.

I did not even list them for sale.

The new stuff is getting spanked. When I was a kid and I'd open a pack of '80 Topps I'd be thrilled to get a George Brett, Rod Carew, or Nolan Ryan because, get this... they'd be worth a whole 50 cents! Maybe Nolan was a buck. Now new cards sell for 6 or 7 figures, reminds me of the dot com stocks some 20 years ago. BE CAREFUL

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Aaron Seefeldt

In the last 2 weeks I have received strong offers on 2 of my most valuable cards. I did not sell, I can't (or won't be able to afford to) replace them.

I did not even list them for sale.

The new stuff is getting spanked. When I was a kid and I'd open a pack of '80 Topps I'd be thrilled to get a George Brett, Rod Carew, or Nolan Ryan because, get this... they'd be worth a whole 50 cents! Maybe Nolan was a buck. Now new cards sell for 6 or 7 figures, reminds me of the dot com stocks some 20 years ago. BE CAREFUL

For a strong enough price I will not only sell any card I have, I will carry it to your car for you.

[ajjohnsonsoxfan]

Man this will be one interesting National if the market keeps its downward trajectory. Will the hobby be back to pre covid bubble prices? Will prices sink even lower, erasing gains over the last 5+ years?

If Adam is right and the card market lags 9-12 months behind, it will be very hard to figure out what prices to both buy and sell. There will be lots of price frothiness in the marketplace. I think as a buyer you have to try and buy with an outward price projection of that 9-12 month lag time to try and price in the downward trend. As a seller you hope the quality and or rarity of your item is enough to get you something as close to bubble pricing as possible.

I think both stock market and card prices have quite a ways to go down before stabilizing.

[parkplace33]

There are now definite buying opportunities. I sense a lot of “panic”. I can’t tell you how many collectors are now doing the following:

Retooling/refocusing their collection
Getting out of the hobby
Selling below comps
Selling collections to move into other investments

Definitely an opportunity now and probably in the near future.

[Johnny630]

The problem is the good stuff is going to go deep under....the people that have it won’t sell in this upcoming, notice I said upcoming, we haven’t gotten there yet market. They will have in their minds that it was worth x amount in mid 2020-early 2022 mentality. I can see the vintage market as slightly lower but mostly stagnate with little to no change over the next few years. The past two years of growth were ridiculous and unsustainable to continue.

Hold on tight.

It’s never as good as it seems and it’s never as bad as it seems.

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by ajjohnsonsoxfan

Man this will be one interesting National if the market keeps its downward trajectory. Will the hobby be back to pre covid bubble prices? Will prices sink even lower, erasing gains over the last 5+ years?

If Adam is right and the card market lags 9-12 months behind, it will be very hard to figure out what prices to both buy and sell. There will be lots of price frothiness in the marketplace. I think as a buyer you have to try and buy with an outward price projection of that 9-12 month lag time to try and price in the downward trend. As a seller you hope the quality and or rarity of your item is enough to get you something as close to bubble pricing as possible.

I think both stock market and card prices have quite a ways to go down before stabilizing.

It’s gonna vary. Some stuff is gonna crater (overproduced modern). Last place I'd want to be right now is holding a stack of shiny crap basketball. Ditto all of the mainstream postwar PSA 7-8 level cards. I'm selling off everything marginal at that level except for the guys I really collect (Aaron, Koufax, Ryan, etc.) or the cards i got when I was a kid. At the depth of the last go-round I was picking up that sort of stuff for as low as $1.99 a card, slabbed. Made really nice profits turning those out during the bubble.

Some stuff won’t budge. A T206 Wagner isn’t gonna fall because the market for it is like the art market: people with so much money that inflation and recession are just gnat bites. Absolute rarities too. A card with a handful of examples will be a hold and you will be able to name your price. As always. I have never been squeamish about those kinds of cards because I know that there are buyers.

The squeeze will be in the middle. Abundant stuff will take a hit. Even the good stuff. I'd guess that a 40%-60% decline is in store for most mainstream cards that are basically demand driven. Personally, I am looking forward to a nice, fat decline on some cards. 1959 Topps Bob Gibson, you will be mine again!

The other thing that won't be affected--that will in fact do well--are cheap vintage cards. The dollar boxes. Collectors need their fixes. During the last one the dollar boxes were where all the action was at the shows.

The real question for me is what is a long term keeper. I think a well curated collection emphasizing top players and rare cards will be a great performer as long as you’ve gotten in well below the peak. Even a marquee card is a bad buy at the wrong price. The question is whether I want to play the arbitrage game with a card by selling it now and hoping to repurchase it after the decline. I am disinclined to do that with cards I always dreamt of owning: to finally get one that presents nicely, I am happy to own it for a decade or more. If it goes up a bunch in ten years, fantastic. I can seem really prescient and smart. If it doesn't, I can play with it until I am food for worms. Either works for me. Owning a great card isn't like taking a position in a stock. I can't play with 100 shares of Tesla but I can sure as hell play with my cards:

[ahmanfan]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

It’s gonna vary. Some stuff is gonna crater (overproduced modern). Last place I'd want to be right now is holding a stack of shiny crap basketball. Ditto all of the mainstream postwar PSA 7-8 level cards. I'm selling off everything marginal at that level except for the guys I really collect (Aaron, Koufax, Ryan, etc.) or the cards i got when I was a kid. At the depth of the last go-round I was picking up that sort of stuff for as low as $1.99 a card, slabbed. Made really nice profits turning those out during the bubble.

Some stuff won’t budge. A T206 Wagner isn’t gonna fall because the market for it is like the art market: people with so much money that inflation and recession are just gnat bites. Absolute rarities too. A card with a handful of examples will be a hold and you will be able to name your price. As always. I have never been squeamish about those kinds of cards because I know that there are buyers.

The squeeze will be in the middle. Abundant stuff will take a hit. Even the good stuff. I'd guess that a 40%-60% decline is in store for most mainstream cards that are basically demand driven. Personally, I am looking forward to a nice, fat decline on some cards. 1959 Topps Bob Gibson, you will be mine again!

The other thing that won't be affected--that will in fact do well--are cheap vintage cards. The dollar boxes. Collectors need their fixes. During the last one the dollar boxes were where all the action was at the shows.

The real question for me is what is a long term keeper. I think a well curated collection emphasizing top players and rare cards will be a great performer as long as you’ve gotten in well below the peak. Even a marquee card is a bad buy at the wrong price. The question is whether I want to play the arbitrage game with a card by selling it now and hoping to repurchase it after the decline. I am disinclined to do that with cards I always dreamt of owning: to finally get one that presents nicely, I am happy to own it for a decade or more. If it goes up a bunch in ten years, fantastic. I can seem really prescient and smart. If it doesn't, I can play with it until I am food for worms. Either works for me. Owning a great card isn't like taking a position in a stock. I can't play with 100 shares of Tesla but I can sure as hell play with my cards:

Great post. On the sell and hope to purchase later dilemma. It’s tough because eBay/PayPal fees and/or taxes eat up with a big chunk.

[Rhotchkiss]

A PWCC premier auction just closed. In it were two cards that sold a year prior. These are the same exact cards being sold again (not just same grade, but exact same cards)

One was a 1952 Topps Jackie Robinson, PSA 8. It sold in REA’s spring 2021 auction for $384,000 and the exact same card just sold in PWCC’s auction for $276,000.

Meanwhile, a t206 Magie error, PSA 2 sold in Heritage in May of 2021 for $20,400, and the exact same card just sold in PWCC for $24,000, a record for the grade

The Jackie is down 28% in a year and the Magie error (again same exact cards) is up 17.5% over the same period.

I understand it’s only one example, but it is interesting considering both are major cards, both were sold in major AH in spring 2021 and both were sold by same AH a few days ago with very different results.

Thoughts?