Most over-valued card

[glynparson]

People have been saying 1952 mantle since I started collecting in 1980 they were wrong then and wrong now. There is far to much demand for that card from even people that don't own any baseball cards for it to be that one just like it's not the Honus. I'd honestly go with Psa 9. 1968 topps Nolan Ryan right now. Or possibly rose or even my favorite player Stargell. The leaps they have taken in the last month are unprecedented and don't look sustainable.

[glchen]

Originally Posted by glynparson

People have been saying 1952 mantle since I started collecting in 1980 they were wrong then and wrong now. There is far to much demand for that card from even people that don't own any baseball cards for it to be that one just like it's not the Honus. ....

I'm not saying that this card value is going to drop anytime soon. It is, without a doubt, one of THE iconic cards in the hobby. However, saying that, I still have trouble with the thinking that this card (or cards like this), will always continue to go up in value.

First, people also once upon a time thought that real estate could never drop in value because people had to live somewhere. However, that has now been thoroughly disproven even with the rebound in housing prices. I know this isn't the best analogy, but more aimed at the thinking that card prices for these iconic cards will never drop.

Also, demand for these cards has to come from somewhere. I could have missed them, but I still haven't seen many articles saying there is a rebound in kids collecting baseball cards. I have two boys, ages 5 & 7 (almost). Even though I am an avid collector, they have ZERO interest in cards. I've never seen anyone in their school collect cards. At Target, I see ZERO kids in the baseball card aisle (and in some ways, shocked they still sell them there). Joe Orlando's column in the latest SMR magazine notwithstanding, I've never seen or heard anyone in "real" life randomly talking about cards since I was in middle school nearly 30 years ago. (not including these boards, ebay, or card conventions)

I know there are a lot of folks from my generation who collected cards as a kid, who now have disposable income, who are now spending it on cards to buy a lot of cards they couldn't even think of affording as kids and expanding into other areas. However, it also makes me think that a lot of the folks buying cards these days are purely investors and not even collector/investor. And for investors, if they think the value of a stock has peaked out, they'll drop it like yesterday's Yahoo stock.