Card prices skyrocketing

[joshuanip]

Originally Posted by cardsagain74

The liquidity of the new digital marketplace benefits collectibles so, so much. Back in the junk wax era and before, a dealer could have stuff like a 1961 Topps Al Kaline sit in his display forever unless it was highly discounted (especially at small town card shows).

Now, you just auction it off on ebay and get paid what it's worth whenever you want.

The digital marketplace helps, but to take it to the next level, we need to reduce transaction costs. This will never happen and a little crazy talk, but a page from the stock market, if we can get critical mass in a central repository, then we can reduce storage/transaction costs as a whole, and with a card depository, you don’t have the escrow issues we have right now, which will bypass the 10-20% juice we give to auction houses.

Basically it would be the pwcc vault, with a significantly reduced maintenance fees to scale up, and when an investor wants to sell his card, he can sell it in a marketplace or auction format for a much smaller nominal fee. Say flat fee instead of percentage. The buyer has the right to demand settlement upon purchase and pay shipping, or keep the card in the repository fee free for a year...

[Exhibitman]

BST the bitch and save the vig.

The price rises are fueling the momentum in a true FOMO cycle. The cards I am tracking are not the five and six figure headliners but they are setting price records every day. A card I thought of as a reasonable buy at $500 in October is a steal at $1500 today.

[conor912]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

BST the bitch and save the vig.

I think we just found the new Net54 tshirt slogan.

[cardsagain74]

Originally Posted by joshuanip

The digital marketplace helps, but to take it to the next level, we need to reduce transaction costs. This will never happen and a little crazy talk, but a page from the stock market, if we can get critical mass in a central repository, then we can reduce storage/transaction costs as a whole, and with a card depository, you don’t have the escrow issues we have right now, which will bypass the 10-20% juice we give to auction houses.

Basically it would be the pwcc vault, with a significantly reduced maintenance fees to scale up, and when an investor wants to sell his card, he can sell it in a marketplace or auction format for a much smaller nominal fee. Say flat fee instead of percentage. The buyer has the right to demand settlement upon purchase and pay shipping, or keep the card in the repository fee free for a year...

The transaction costs are a major issue and often really overlooked (especially during a raging markets), but I can't imagine the logistics of a central depository being feasible for cards. And even if it were, most people like to have big parts of their collection in hand to look at.

I always thought the best chance of solving the problem was simply forums like this becoming huge. If the traffic at places like this got anywhere near even 1/3 to 1/2 of ebay levels, we'd really have something.

[JollyElm]

With the big guys (especially Mantle, duh!), I believe the prices are here to stay and up, up and away they will continue to go. Sure, some of the less valuable and more overproduced cards will decline, but I don't see any sort of market-wide drop in cards of the all-time-greats ever coming. Now, when you see the ridiculous prices being asked for lesser HOF'ers and whatnot, etc., that thing is unsustainable!!! No way that's ever going to last.