The next five years- what do you see for the future of the hobby?

[Yankeefan51]

Whilst the future is not ours to see, the hobby's history tells us
that prices for the rarer issues are in large part determined by the
number of "whales" who compete in a given auction.

Apparently, the big whales from the early years of this decade, with a few
notable exceptions. have been beached Some just quit collecting, some found themselves in a difficult divorces and one or two found their way to that great stadium in the sky.

Logic states that extraordinary prices for PSA 8.5. 9 and 10 cards is subject to a great deal of risk. How many 52 Mantles can command a 6 figure price?

I think there will be some serious investigations into the grading firms, and the results will impact prices.

I also wonder what will happen to the 19th century cards as the baby boomers turn 70 and retire.

At the end of the day, while everyone of us cares deeply about the value of our respective collections, the real value emanates from the pleasure we receive from collecting.

I once authored a paper, "When It Was Hobby' . It is my sincere hope that the hobby lives on. Hopefully, we will be able to attract sophisticated collectors, promote the joy collecting and remember the wisdom of Bill Mastro who told me back in 1977- remember it is only Old Cardboard.

Happy Collecting to all

Bruce Dorskind
America's Toughest Want List

[barrysloate]

Bruce made many good points, and the one that I've been thinking will have a big effect is the aging of the baby boomers. There will always be younger collectors coming in and taking their place, but they may not collect in the same way, or with the same fervor, as the generation of collectors who came of age in the late 1970's-early 1980's, and set the engine in motion for the hobby explosion that followed. Today, it's more like business as usual. Plenty of collectors, lots of buying and selling, but certainly not the meteoric growth that their predecessors experienced.

[packs]

I'm a younger collector (27) I have maybe seen one other person my age looking at the cards I do at a show. I don't think there is a lot of interest from my generation and even if there is an influx of new collectors, they will most likely be after new cards. Which is great for me.

[HOFautosChris]

Add me to the list of "young" collectors (32) interested in old cardboard and autographs.

[goodtricks]

26 here....

[packs]

We will be able to buy all the E107s we want at T206 prices in just 30 years.

[Matthew H]

Originally Posted by packs

We will be able to buy all the E107s we want at T206 prices in just 30 years.

Packs, I disagree. It's natural for a collector, with any collecting habit, to desire something rare. It happens in every genre of collecting, from Car collecting to beanie babies. I don't think you will ever be able to buy an e107 for a t206 price.

I also don't believe the baby boomers make such a big difference (other then with the post war cards they grew up with)

The population is still growing and there is a finite amount of prewar available. Baseball is still popular, and it's still human nature to want to collect stuff.

[sportscardpete]

Originally Posted by packs

We will be able to buy all the E107s we want at T206 prices in just 30 years.

T206 old mill blue back prices!

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by packs

We will be able to buy all the E107s we want at T206 prices in just 30 years.

Ha, Ha! Would that that would be true, but I'm afraid E107 will follow the trend of coins, where rare and significant haven't even really been subject to price cycles. Instead, the price trend over decades for coin series analagous to E107's has pretty much been steadily upwards. Over the next five years or slightly more, I think that the focus will shift somehat from pre WWI cards to the twenties and early thirties, where there are quite a few very scarce to downright rare and significant cards available at mere fractions of the cost of pre WWI.

It's also going to prove to be a good time to buy some of the better (read "rarer" and "high grade") Williams and DiMaggio cards, as they are undervalued compared to Cobb, Ruth, Wagner, Mathewson and the like.

Eventually even key 50's and '60's cards will once again rise in value, perhaps even dramatically, once they begin to be perceived as undervalued in relation to those that preceeded them. There are, however, easily enough of these out there that their prices will be extremely subject to price cycles, going through ups and downs.

And there will be demand for key '80's and even '90's cards--its just that there are so many available that ecomonic principles demand that they will see very slow growth. The '89 Upper Deck Griffey Jr., for example, is a very significant card, but with somewhere around a million of them out there, and most of them in nice shape, the number of collectors seeking that card would have to rise astronomically for it to ever see a really appreciable rise in price. I like the stars and HOF'ers from the Topps Tiffany sets to see their day in the sun, as these were, IMO, the best of the mainstream cards produced during their time period insofar as relative scarcity and card quality are concerned.

Mantle values in general will depend upon whether the current trend to evaluate players based on stats going well beyond such traditional statistics as batting average continues. Those of you that think that Mantle was in any way inferior to either Mays or Aaron, during the time that all of them were playing, will be in for a rude awakening upon consideration of the statistics that more closely approximate run-producing ability. Mantle, for example, created approximately 212% of the runs of an average player per every 27 outs made OVER HIS ENTIRE CAREER during his era (by way of comparison, Lou Gehrig was at 200% for his career, during his more run-prolific era), while Mays and Aaron were in the 170-180% bracket--quite a distant second. While this is admittedly a statistic originating with Bill James, the Mick similarly wipes out the other two in OBPS, .978 for the Mick, compared to .941 for Willie, and .929 for Hank. While Mays and Aaron posted better career numbers due to better longevity, they were really never quite in the same class at producing runs during the time they were active. Mantle simply hit homeruns more often than they did, walked more, and scored more runs per game played (Aaron scored .659 runs per game played; Mays .689, and Mr. Mantle .698 runs per game. As Bill James has said, the number of runs a team will score is directly proportional to the number of runners they get on base. In this vein, Mantle's career on-base-percentage was .421; Mays .384; and Aaron .374. You will also find that if you take a trip to baseballreference.com and use their tool to neutralize for eras, Mantle's stats do not suffer at all in comparison to Gehrig. Given a chance to take any of the three in their prime without regard to longevity, an educated GM would take Mantle every time. I love the other two--they were among the greatest ever--but I'm sorry, they never stood on a level plane with Mickey Mantle in prime time! He was simply the best of his era.

Great thread--sorry I saw it so it so late!

Regards,

Larry