Vintage Card Performance During A Recession

[SetBuilder]

Any cards not high grade (NM or better. i.e. trophy cards), I would expect prices to drop by 50% or more. That's due to less demand and the flood of supply from less affluent sellers trying to raise cash to pay the bills during a bad downturn.

I'd like to think the same thing that happened to stamps won't happen to cards, but that remains to be seen as the baby boomer generation is eventually replaced by millennials who don't seem to care that much for the pre-war stuff. With stamps, the super high end of the market keeps breaking records, but the lower tier stuff is pretty much worthless. There just isn't enough new collectors to pick up the slack.

Here's the silver lining for the lower tier cards: Inflation. The next downturn could bring in a horrific spike in inflation that could raise the price of all commodities by a significant amount.

The US is running $1T+ deficits at the late stages of the economic expansion and it's going to end in an inflationary spiral.