Changing of the Guard: The Commoditization of Sportscards

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Brent Huigens

Within this new “commodity” element, the only two variables that matter are supply and demand; that’s it. And there’s the catch… supply. Sportscards are some of the rarest commodities in the world where even the highest population high-profile cards (i.e. Jordan RC PSA 10s, Clemente RC PSA 8s, etc) are rarely seen on the market at any one time in quantities higher than 2 or 3. Sure the populations of these cards may be 100 or more, but who cares? Any highly-prized commodity with population in the hundreds or less is absurdly low; perhaps to the point of creating a sheer frenzy when these investments surface on the open market. And that’s what we are seeing.

I'd agree with nearly everything Brent has written except for the above. Being involved in multiple hobbies all of them for a good deal more than 10 years, I'd say that demand is the primary and nearly only driver in hobbies.

What's considered "rare" varies from one hobby to the next, and in general even the things that would be rare in any hobby also need a couple other elements to create demand. Popularity of the subject or object is of course almost a necessity, as is a good story that either explains the rarity or Adds to the interest in the item in some way.

That tends to be true in any hobby, cards for sure, stamps as well. perhaps less so in coins and I can't quite get a handle on it for art since each piece is unique unless you collect prints.

I stopped counting the number of things I had collected that were more rare than the top tier items in the various hobbies. After decades of collecting needless to say it's become a fairly large number.
Wagner? maybe 60 plus a few known. There are lots of cards that are less common than that.
The upside down airplane stamp (Scott C3a ) 100 issued. There are probably more US stamps that are less common as there are C3as
But none are airmail stamps which is a popular area, and none have the same sort of great story behind them. (The CIA invert is less common, and has a great story, but about 60 years less time to become legendary)

The larger point is that sportscards is unique in some respects compared to other hobbies. With the very rarest coins and stamps (And bicycles and whatever) There is no lower grade population for prices to trickle down to. So whatever a 1913 liberty nickel sells for really only applies to that coin and the other 4 known. The coin market has embraced condition rarities for more common coins but as far as I can see, there's been little effect on the prices of lower condition examples.

With cards it seems to be sorting itself out. As the 10s and 9s become too much for most of us, the number of people willing to settle for an 8 rises, and so does the demand and price.
In the same way, one of the "special" cards being in a set boosts the whole set. T206s are generally pretty common, and benefit from the popularity of the Wagner. The same could be said for 52 Topps, 86 Fleer basketball and a few other sets. Without the special card they'd simply be another set.

All that is the sort of thing that any hobby is based on. Trust me on this, a couple of my hobbies are so obscure there are no items like the Wagner etc, and luckily for me very little monetary value. Good since I can afford a lot of cool stuff. Not so good since that same cool stuff often gets thrown out because it's "worthless" - Just like cards when I first got into them more seriously in the late 70's. People would toss out worn old cards because only the nice ones were worth anything.
Without dealers tracking the stuff down, collectors wanting it, and yes, investors of varying degrees of disposable income any hobby would be less than it is.

Steve B