10K for a Young portrait in a 5

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

If you're a new collector prepared to spend some big money on baseball cards, and you need some advice about what to buy, and you find an experienced dealer to guide you, I bet nearly every one of them recommends T206. New collectors are invariably told they can't go wrong buying nice examples of key Hall of Famers. So the demand for this stuff is off the charts.

+1


To Larry's point about limited supply due to collectors keeping the cards, I believe that is at play too. So you combine the increased demand with a more limited supply, one doesn't need to be an economist to predict what that will do to price.

To Peter's point about why now is this happening when these forces have been around for years, what might be different now, which Barry's post alludes to, is investment advisors have entered the fray and are steering people toward no-brainer-can't lose baseball cards (which if that doesn't apply to a nice looking card of the all-time win leader who has an award named after him in arguably the most storied set of all time that contains the famous Wagner card, that term has no meaning). There is a lot of money looking for a place to be invested, and unlike commodities, a product that offers one no satisfaction in ownership (how many people take pleasure in looking at their soybeans), investing in aesthetically pleasing vintage baseball cards of players that everybody has heard of offers the card owner the additional intangible return of satisfaction of ownership.

As Peter correctly says, time will tell if this is just a passing phenomena, but my belief is that it is not and as long as the 8 prices hold, these new 5 prices of NICE LOOKING 5's, as exemplified by the $10k Young, are here to stay.