At last, the boxing price surge???

G1911 · #1 03-28-2021, 11:43 PM

It's ridiculous and absurd, prices skyrocketing this much this fast are not the result of an under appreciated segment gaining greater interest or natural. T218 Johnnson's going up several hundred percent almost overnight for an incredibly common superprint is not a natural growth or newfound appreciation. He was heavily in the news and public consciousness in 2018 and almost no uptick happened; this isn't natural or a newfound surge in interest in old-time boxing or in Johnson happening.

I don't follow the modern guys but it looks about the same thing on them to me.

Cards are less and less about collecting and more and more about trying to print money via plastic slabs in which the cards themselves hardly even matter with every year, the 2020-2021 craziness feels like the result of this "collecting" approach. If the investors think they can make money by instilling a hype train and pump, they will. It appears to work well.

Exhibitman · #2 03-29-2021, 08:29 AM

All very good points.

I'd like to think that people are suddenly awakening to how great boxing cards are but I don't see where the sudden surge of people paying these prices is coming from other than speculation on superstars. Look at the Panini Tyson prices: that's a common card yet even in lesser grades it has quintupled. The PMG is /125 and is a beautiful card as well but has been a few hundred dollar card forever. Slap it in a slab and it goes into the several thousands? I know they are condition sensitive but come on.

I suspect that a lot of the boxing pricing is circular: speculators selling to each other, probably because boxing is a cheap bet, relatively speaking. If so I imagine we will see lots of action on the biggest names and not much changing otherwise. That would differentiate it from the surge in baseball cards, which has been very deep and very real for a lot of vintage and postwar (forget the modern riverboat casino shiny stuff). If we see across the board gains, I will be a believer. In the meantime, maybe time to unload the Ali, Tyson, Johnson and Louis cards, let the speculators play it out, then repurchase after the crash?

maniac_73 · #3 03-29-2021, 08:33 AM

I was an underbidder on your Clay Olympics. Great cards!

Peter_Spaeth · #4 03-29-2021, 01:21 PM

To me, the one who should be going through the roof is Joe Louis.

jimjim · #5 03-29-2021, 01:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by G1911

It's ridiculous and absurd, prices skyrocketing this much this fast are not the result of an under appreciated segment gaining greater interest or natural. T218 Johnnson's going up several hundred percent almost overnight for an incredibly common superprint is not a natural growth or newfound appreciation. He was heavily in the news and public consciousness in 2018 and almost no uptick happened; this isn't natural or a newfound surge in interest in old-time boxing or in Johnson happening.

I don't follow the modern guys but it looks about the same thing on them to me.

Cards are less and less about collecting and more and more about trying to print money via plastic slabs in which the cards themselves hardly even matter with every year, the 2020-2021 craziness feels like the result of this "collecting" approach. If the investors think they can make money by instilling a hype train and pump, they will. It appears to work well.

I agree with everything you just said 100%. It drives me crazy when people on Facebook groups talk about how such and such card was so undervalued last year. And that is why they have gone up 1000% in 12 months. Cards are only worth what somebody will pay for them. And they were worth a certain amount for years and years. And most just started climbing last summer. And most of these people just got into the hobby last year but they seem to know so much lol

Exhibitman · #6 03-29-2021, 03:08 PM

I agree, Peter; happens to be my favorite heavyweight. He was as important an historical figure as Johnson or Ali but wasn't colorful, so his stuff is comparatively cheap.

Peter_Spaeth · #7 03-29-2021, 04:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

I agree, Peter; happens to be my favorite heavyweight. He was as important an historical figure as Johnson or Ali but wasn't colorful, so his stuff is comparatively cheap.

In the context of the times, I have to believe the decimation of Schmeling was as big as anything Ali ever did.

I haven't checked but I also believe his string of successive title defenses still stands.

As the incredible Jimmy Cannon quote goes, he was a credit to his race. The human race.

Exhibitman · #8 03-29-2021, 05:28 PM

G1911 · #9 03-29-2021, 07:16 PM

I'd much prefer it be a reflection of a growing interest in the sport and its extensive history and great card sets, but I don't think the evidence supports this, sadly. I guess all the "real collectors" who didn't jump aboard with the 2020 hype train stand to make considerable profits by joining the pump, but a pump it is. Maybe it will crash, maybe the hype will be self-sustaining as it sometimes has been for sports cards (the entire Rookie card concept started as a pump by dealers to artificially inflate values on some cards, but has continued and continued to grow constantly for almost 40 years now). 'If you bull**** long enough, it becomes true'.

As a collector, I hope it crashes. I treat card collecting as beer money, I'm buying valueless pictures of men because I like the hobby, the research and pieces the little details of T card sets together, and collecting. I might sell a couple Johnsons in my dupe trade bait box, but none of my collection.

I would predict (and will probably be proven wrong) that some of the more common material returns to earth at some point (like the aforementioned superprinted T218 Johnson's, the insane prices on 1938 Churchman Johnson's of which there seems to be an EX+ condition copy for every person on the planet), but more difficult items may not. some % of pumpers will jump on board for a longer time, and there are many items with a very low surviving population. I would expect the pop report to explode, most boxing items just don't get graded because there hasn't historically been the "print money" attitude (key reason I focus on boxing) that has taken over the major sports card collecting. The modern guys may return to earth a bit less, as they have a surviving affluent fan base. Johnson is attractive to modern eyes as he was 1) truly great, 2) outspoken and has a fascinating story and 3) that story fits contemporary popular social narratives, but he lacks the living fan base of Ali, Tyson, etc. Baseball worships its history (and thus sustains Cobb, Ruth), boxing generally does not. I would think Ali has the highest chance of sustaining the growth.

I've thought for years that eventually people have to wake up and realize that a plastic slab and slip from a company that grades absurd numbers of altered cards and has been caught in bad business practices and inconsistencies too numerous to enumerate means absolutely nothing, and that the plastic multiplying a cards value 2x, 3x, 1,000x now for some cards is insanity. Thus far I have been wrong for decades. The pump seems to never end. None of this is in any conceivable way rational, which makes it hard to predict how this ends up.

I would say Joe Louis was priced about fairly pre-pump. He was a more valuable card, the guys driving bigger prices all doing so because of personality or modernity. Only Johnson and maybe Dempsey and Sullivan, I think, really outsold Louis, relative to period/population for guys before living collectors memory (his peak was before the memory of almost all surviving collectors). I value boxers more on ability than narratives, so I think of it as more that Ali/Johnson/Tyson are overhyped narratives than that Louis is unfairly forgotten.

Exhibitman · #10 03-29-2021, 10:50 PM

I definitely think Tyson is an overhyped figure, and the specific generational placement of the newbies rushing into the hobby, especially for investment in this wave of whatever it is, buys into the narrative because they remember that baddest man on the planet stuff. The card sales would have us think he is second only to Ali, but all the sales in the world doesn't mean he is an ATG. I think he's #3 in his generation behind the guys who beat him, Holyfield and Lewis. The rest of his record are tomato cans, has-beens and never-wases. Granted, he messed up his prime years with jail, but then Ali was exiled for three of his prime years too and Louis lost prime years to WWII, so no excuses there. Also, if Cus D'Amato had lived, maybe the story is different, but he didn't and it isn't. Louis, Johnson, Dempsey, Marciano, Frazier, Ali, they all would have beaten him, prime to prime. I also happen to think both Klitschkos under Emanuel Steward's training would have beaten him--styles were all wrong for that matchup. If I could pick a match I'd most like to see with Tyson it is Ali, just for the trash talking; can you imagine what Ali would have done with Tyson's voice and personal narrative? It would have been priceless.

The interesting thing, from my perspective, about the whole market situation is whether the price hikes will draw out really nasty stuff. It has been years since some of the tougher cards in the field have come to market. Normally, someone has to die or get divorced for it to happen. That's the difference with baseball cards and boxing cards: in boxing the known pop of so many issues or of specific cards in those issues is in single digits that they stand apart from the market. Tyson's RCs are pricey but easy; try an N386 Sullivan. Now, if anyone wants to trade my Tyson RC for an N386 Sullivan, drop me a line.

samosa4u · #11 04-09-2021, 01:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by G1911

It's ridiculous and absurd, prices skyrocketing this much this fast are not the result of an under appreciated segment gaining greater interest or natural. T218 Johnnson's going up several hundred percent almost overnight for an incredibly common superprint is not a natural growth or newfound appreciation. He was heavily in the news and public consciousness in 2018 and almost no uptick happened; this isn't natural or a newfound surge in interest in old-time boxing or in Johnson happening.

It's not just boxing, but the same can be said about everything. Are there suddenly more Pele fans out there? More Messi fans? Are there more people watching Barcelona games on TV?

Are there more hockey fans? More Gretzky fans? The answer is a big NO! It IS ridiculous and absurd - you got that right!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Now where the hell did you find that? I love it!

Exhibitman · #12 04-11-2021, 12:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by samosa4u

It's not just boxing, but the same can be said about everything. Are there suddenly more Pele fans out there? More Messi fans? Are there more people watching Barcelona games on TV?

Are there more hockey fans? More Gretzky fans? The answer is a big NO! It IS ridiculous and absurd - you got that right!

Now where the hell did you find that? I love it!

Ahh, the saga of the NX5s. The issue was known to Burdick since it is in the ACC, but never came up for sale. I do not recall seeing any examples in Burdick's collection at the Met when I went there to research. I know of three total accumulations, all surfacing in the 2000s. A quartet of the exercise cards came up for sale, as did a single specimen of a boxer. A large lot went in the Legendary Auctions liquidation of the Dreier Collection. That big group was won by them in an earlier auction.

My strong suspicion is that the few existing cards were carried back to the USA by American servicemen posted to the former US colony and sat for decades until those men passed away and their estates were liquidated. There is also one wrapper known, which I suspect made its way here the same way.

I would guess that whatever there was of these cards in the P.I. were destroyed in the war.

That is the only known Louis. I've posted it for sale on eBay. https://www.ebay.com/itm/203342001750. 10% off if sold here instead.

maniac_73 · #13 04-11-2021, 12:07 PM

In December, I was buying sealed boxes of Kayo cards for 10 bucks. Last night I saw them ending auction at 80. It's bonkers

D. Bergin · #14 04-11-2021, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by maniac_73

In December, I was buying sealed boxes of Kayo cards for 10 bucks. Last night I saw them ending auction at 80. It's bonkers

They were going for about $160-170 or so for a brief period before they started heading back down.

I thought something funny was going on when I sold like 15 boxes off my website in a couple days span for about 40 bucks each..........and I thought I was probably high on them already. I jacked up the price right away just so I could hold onto a few myself for now.

I think people suddenly realized it's Roy Jones true Rookie card, even if it is really plentiful. So are all of Ken Griffey Jr's Rookie cards.

People are casting out for the greats in the various other sports as they are getting priced out of the Big 4 or 5 Sports.

The AW boxes from the same year have a great selection of old-time boxers and are probably more attractive then the Kayo cards, but there's no notable Rookies in that set, so are still pretty affordable.

Exhibitman · #15 04-12-2021, 02:16 PM

The other 1991 set that is definitely worth considering is the Ringlords for the nicest looking (IMO) Lennox Lewis RC.

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