will anyone be able to purchase a koufax 7 @ $1750....

[midwaylandscaping]

This thread and one other on net54 answered one question I had. Emphatically.

[packs]

I think buying and selling in the next year might be the only way to make a buck on the card. I don't know this for a fact, but I would think it's baby boomers who are pushing the prices up. If that's true, 10 or 15 years from now many of them will be gone. Their collections will flood the market as heirs look to cash in. Without a steady supply of people who value Koufax as a player, his cards will fall out of favor. Mantle I think is a solid "investment" but I don't think guys like Koufax are if your goal is to buy now and sell later.

[Paul S]

Disagree on the Koufax. As a sextogenerian (yes, I am exactly the same age as Sixto Lezcano), I can tell you that Koufax is firmly ensconced in baseball lore and will not fall out of favor - he's beyond a legend, and not only for those of us who saw him pitch, either in person or on TV. A good friend of mine who is also a friend of Sixto - and both his (my friend's) children, boy and girl, who never saw Koufax live, know precisely who he is and can quote you his bio and stats as easily as they, and the rest of us, can quote Mantle or Wajo. They don't live in a vacuum. Why do those of us now still buy and covet prewar vintage of players we never saw.

But really, comparing the 52T Mantle with the 55T Koufax rookie is unfair: it's like comparing the T206 Wagner to a Young or Wajo. I think one piece of $$$ criteria between now and then is the fact that we take much better care of the postwar than people did in the prewar era: there's so many of them, and nowadays encased in plastic.

Anyway, gotta run. Me and Sixto need to catch the Early Bird Special at the diner.

[packs]

Again I could be totally wrong, but I would think that's the exception and not the norm. If I asked 100 people between 10 and 20 if they bought a pack of baseball cards recently I'd think I'd get 99 no's. I have a hard time believing that a kid who never collected cards growing up would suddenly decide to collect them later in life.

[Paul S]

Originally Posted by packs

Again I could be totally wrong, but I would think that's the exception and not the norm. If I asked 100 people between 10 and 20 if they bought a pack of baseball cards recently I'd think I'd get 99 no's. I have a hard time believing that a kid who never collected cards growing up would suddenly decide to collect them later in life.

If I am reading you correctly, then I think it would be naïve to assume that only 1 in 100 who did buy a card then in that age group are the only ones who are driving up the prices now. I saw this in the Eighties (before tpg) when the 52T Mantles started to get media attention. Card shops that I frequented that would usually only have a few customers in it now had lines for any Mantle cards.

[packs]

No, what I'm saying is the people I believe are driving the prices up are boomers. And they collect now because they collected as kids. I'm saying that kids today who are between 10 and 20 aren't buying cards at all, even as children. So when boomers and their collections exit the picture, what makes you think people who are kids today will take their place in collecting when they aren't collecting as children.

[Stonepony]

Originally Posted by packs

Again I could be totally wrong, but I would think that's the exception and not the norm. If I asked 100 people between 10 and 20 if they bought a pack of baseball cards recently I'd think I'd get 99 no's. I have a hard time believing that a kid who never collected cards growing up would suddenly decide to collect them later in life.

I can think of at least a dozen things my father, and myself began collecting in our 30s and 40s that we had no interest in or contact with as youths.

[packs]

Originally Posted by Stonepony

I can think of at least a dozen things my father, and myself began collecting in our 30s and 40s that we had no interest in or contact with as youths.

Are they things associated with childhood, like baseball cards are? Or are you talking about cars and things like that?

[Stonepony]

Originally Posted by packs

Are they things associated with childhood, like baseball cards are? Or are you talking about cars and things like that?

A mix of both but I assure you my parents didn't play with 19th century cut glass, toothpick holders, clocks, duck decoys, art, stamps, coins etc etc as children. Nor did their parents collect it. I'm not saying you're wrong. I just don't see a concrete correlation