What is the one thing that has changed most since you started collecting?

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by parkplace33

What is one card collecting thing that will change in the next 10-15 years?

My suspicion is that we are on the road to developing a very stratified, two-tier, (or more) collecting system where an entire piece of the hobby infrastructure caters exclusively to the hobby upper class and has no meaning to the rest of the collectors, and an entirely different segment caters to everyone else. We already see the start of this stratification in a variety of ways:

--Walk a show and see how readily the groups of collectors self-differentiate by class. Not many vintage collectors hanging around the breaking pavilion, and very few card bros are unloading their Zion cases at mom and pop tables of vintage cards.

--The proliferation of vaults. No true collector in the classical sense would give a s*** about a vault; what's the point in owning a card you can't even hold in your hand? An investor, on the other hand, would rather not risk the loss of transporting or bear the cost of insurance on a valuable asset.

--I don’t think it is any accident that the rise of organized investment-collecting catering to the hobby 1% and modern speculators has resulted in a two-tiered auction system where there are expensive catalog auctions and internet only $10 starting point auctions. Now I also happen to think that much of the monthly auction business is stuff that used to go to eBay instead and represents a shift in sale venue rather than an expansion of material per se. The way eBay's fees have gone up (owing to the quirks of eBay's system, the spread between eBay and a typical BP is around 5.5%), and the hostility towards sellers, make the monthlies quite attractive. Do I consign a $300 card to a monthly at 20% or do I sell it via eBay at 14.5% and be responsible for shipping and potential losses? It is becoming a closer question. But the salient point for our analysis is that there is a secondary tier of auctions that are quite popular with less well-heeled collectors.

-- Walk the floor at the National now as compared to a decade ago and it is obvious that the total number of retail card dealer tables at the National has declined markedly, while the total floor area devoted to auctioneers, service providers, corporate booths, card breaks and manufactured memorabilia (e.g., autographs and related paraphernalia) has filled in the gap. I think we are in for more of this, perhaps even to the point where the vintage card dealer is no longer the backbone of the National, as is the case with Comicon’s show floor versus all of the other activities.

In sum, the tectonic shift is already under way. What we make of it depends on us. The move to vertically integrate in a way that most collectors do not like or value leaves an opening for businesses to cater to the mass of collectors, and I suspect that is one reason why local shows and modestly priced auctions are thriving while a venture like Collectable, which sought to securitize cards and create a card stock market that required mass participation, fell on its face. The clientele who likes the financialization of card collecting can buy the big cards directly rather than trading theoretical interests in them and ceding control over the asset and its sale to the promoter, and the group that cannot afford them doesn’t want to screw around with a share of a card they never actually touch and cannot control.

Of course, this is all just spitballing: if I knew the future I would be buying and selling, not screeding on a chat board