Market Manipulation: Can it Happen Again?

[Baseball Bob]

Who's to say that the bulk of the money is coming in from individuals? The secrecy of auctions makes that hard to substantiate. There is a lot of cash held in private equity firms, and it may be that they are market participants as they are looking for high rate of return investments. No evidence of collusion to drive up prices, either. I think that, like any market, there will be a severe correction as supply outstrips demand, and even the vaunted Mantles will take a hard fall. When price growth is following an exponetial trend, watch out!

[samosa4u]

Originally Posted by Baseball Bob

Who's to say that the bulk of the money is coming in from individuals? The secrecy of auctions makes that hard to substantiate. There is a lot of cash held in private equity firms, and it may be that they are market participants as they are looking for high rate of return investments. No evidence of collusion to drive up prices, either.

Yes, I agree that no evidence exists, but there are a lot of questions that remain unanswered. For example, there was a popular thread started last summer titled “Changing of the Guard: The Commoditization of Sportscards,” and here is what the OP (Brent) wrote:

Yes, I do believe this hobby is getting pushed hard by a limited number of collector/investors. Not sure exactly how many heavy investors there are, but I’d say the people most responsible number more than 10 and probably less than 30.

This sentence freaked me out for some reason. More than 10 and probably less than 30? Really? I would love to find out who these people are. So in 2016 these guys just suddenly went nuts buying cards and then stopped?

Originally Posted by packs

Everyone is talking about PSA 8 Mantles so it seems like you'd only have to worry about manipulation at the highest level, which doesn't really have much of an affect on most collectors. If you want to manipulate at the low level, it'll take you forever to do it. In summation, I'd like to posit that it won't ever matter much to most of us.

The lower level cards were on fire as well. I think that people just use the PSA 8 Mantle to show how bad this whole thing was. The lower-end stuff dropped in value too.