Card prices skyrocketing

[glchen]

Originally Posted by Tabe

I'm seeing lots of people talking about this being a bubble, unsustainable, and so forth. So my question is this:

Has there ever been a time when vintage cards have dropped in price? For more than 6 months? Not talking about the cratering of modern nonsense in the early 90s but vintage - Mantle, Ruth, Cobb, and so on.

???

Chris, this is what folks said in 2008 before the real estate crash. Has anyone ever seen housing prices go down, especially in the big markets like California? Just because it never happened before doesn't mean we're not in a bubble now.

As others in this thread have said, I fully believe the reason for the card prices to skyrocket is that we are awash in money supply looking for a place to land when interest rates are basically 0. And that is exacerbated by the pandemic where families who have jobs are saving a lot of money because they are not going on vacations or eating out as much, so there is even more money looking for a place to be spent. Therefore, I don't really expect the bubble to pop until we start seeing inflation and rising interest rates.

Also, I don't think the bubble is as bad in prewar as it is in modern. I somewhat justified the prices of modern in the past because hey, if you wanted to get an autograph of Michael Jordan, how much are you going to have to pay for it? MJ is a billionaire so he doesn't need to go to card shows to sign, so it's never going to be easy to get one of the autos of the big stars like him or Lebron, etc. You might was well buy a card with his auto on it, so that adds to the premium there. However, prices these days have just gotten completely out of hand given the supply out there.

Given what I just said, why don't I just sell out if I believe the market is going to crumble? It's that collector part of me that has a hard time doing that. I have cards in my possession that I've wanted for a very long time, and some of them have pops that are very low, that if I sell, I may never be able to buy back again even if the market goes down. For the other cards with higher pops, it's still back to my collector possessiveness. I just love having that card in my collection even if I could get a bundle by selling it. I don't need the money right now, so there is no urge to let it go. Of course, I will probably regret this all if the card market crashes.