CNN card story

[MattyC]

I agree much of what we are seeing today will stick; some waters may recede a bit, and other hitherto “slept on” cards may even wind up getting more deserved appreciation in terms of attention — and then further rising in value if collectors all feel that way and act accordingly with their wallets. Just to be clear, in my post I do not point to one type of manipulation as the cause for this current climate, and I also take into account and acknowledge how once Fear Of Missing Out is ignited by fake sales, that very powerful dynamic alone leads to price spikes across the vast sea of different cards. And those rising prices can certainly be viewed as legitimate, despite their initial spark. As to fake sales, there are myriad guys out there pulling fake sales with myriad cards; it’s not just one cadre by any means. It is when all these many ingredients come together that we get what is happening today.

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by MattyC

I agree much of what we are seeing today will stick

So good question, and I did research on one card which was part of the initial explosion of modern basketball card prices.

The 2018-19 Panini Prizm Silver Prism (what Topps calls a base refractor) Luka Doncic RC. Initially it started selling in the hundreds when they were first getting graded. Then the "bass card/Prizm revolution" started happening and the cards shot up to the thousands fairly quickly. My thoughts at the time were that this is unsustainable, and that every new card graded would flood the market and the price would crater. That doesn't seem to be happening based on this graph. This specific card is being absorbed into the market at a rate of about 2 cards selling for $8K each EVERY DAY. There are ~2000 PSA 10s of the Luka Silver Prizm, and almost 2000 PSA 9s. The base chrome/Prizm of the same card has nearly 16K PSA 10 copies, and those are averaging $1200 each selling gobs every day.

That is mind-blowing, and it's only one example. There was a thread only last summer (mid-2020) about the $42K sale price for a PSA 10 1986 Fleer Jordan RC and was it too much? As we all know, they shot to $100K, then $200K, and the last couple have sold for $700K. But there are many less of them than there are Doncic Silver Prizms.

They fixed the PSA multi-lot sales and the graph is much more readable now