The Future

[Casey2296]

Card collecting is like real estate. The "good stuff" will weather the storm, high quality rare cards, popular pre-war sets, etc. will hold their value through a downturn. You might pay 8k for a Ruth that went for 15k at the top but it's still a Ruth. And the downturn is coming, anybody who lived through the 70's knows this. You can't overstimulate the economy without inflation. And once inflation sets in it's a painful beast to beat. Smart people know this, politicians ignore this to get re-elected.

I try to think 30 years ahead after I'm dead when my kids open 3 suitcases of cards with Al Crisafulli's kids and they all say "Jesus, he put together a nice collection".

Just before they auction it off to use that resource to live their dream.

[sreader3]

Originally Posted by Casey2296

And once inflation sets in it's a painful beast to beat. Smart people know this, politicians ignore this to get re-elected.

I could not agree more Phil. Your kids are in for a treat!

One other thought: Price hikes by professional graders will raise the price floor on slabbed cards, especially in the sub-$200 category. This price hike will not translate to raw cards. Thus, the price disparity between graded and raw cards will increase, especially at lower grades. This is not advocacy, just opinion.

[jcmtiger]

Just keep collecting what you like, don’t’ worry about it unless you are in this for money only joe

[sreader3]

Originally Posted by jcmtiger

Just keep collecting what you like, don’t’ worry about it unless you are in this for money only joe

Hi Joe, I confess to mixed motives: I’m in it for both the joy of collecting and the money. I would not be involved at the level I am if either one were completely absent.

[hcv123]

Imo supply has a significant piece of the equation as well. High demand/low supply cards have the greatest opportunity to sustain and grow, followed by low demand/low supply cards, followed by high demand/high supply cards which are already seeing some price retreat and finally low demand /high supply cards.

[obcbobd]

Originally Posted by Casey2296

Card collecting is like real estate. The "good stuff" will weather the storm, high quality rare cards, popular pre-war sets, etc. will hold their value through a downturn. You might pay 8k for a Ruth that went for 15k at the top but it's still a Ruth. And the downturn is coming, anybody who lived through the 70's knows this. You can't overstimulate the economy without inflation. And once inflation sets in it's a painful beast to beat. Smart people know this, politicians ignore this to get re-elected.

I try to think 30 years ahead after I'm dead when my kids open 3 suitcases of cards with Al Crisafulli's kids and they all say "Jesus, he put together a nice collection".

Just before they auction it off to use that resource to live their dream.

I think short term, prices will be somewhat stable. The guy who paid $15K for a Ruth will hold onto it (for a while at least) rather than sell for $8K. However, long term, over 20-30 years as the first big generation of collectors goes to the big BB Diamond in the sky, I could see a large influx of cards, being sold by our heirs, people with no emotional attachment to the cards and who will take what they can get. At that point I could see prices for many items go down significantly. Actually, I won't see, becasue I'll be dead, but you get the picture.

[oldjudge]

I don’t think you can talk about baseball cards in aggregate. We have seen a price spike over the last six months, but most of that is concentrated in certain big name stars. Major portions of the collecting market have showed minimal if any gains (read 19th century). I don’t think the spike was attributed to people working from home during the pandemic, or government stimulus checks. I think it was a result of a growing belief amongst some well healed parties that sports cards are an asset class that they need to add to their portfolios. These people obviously have deep pockets so even if the market turns down some there will be no reason for them to dump anything. On the contrary, as long as they believe that their initial premise was correct, they will be adding to their portfolios during any pullbacks effectively placing a floor under the market.
As for inflation, it’s been a long time since we have had any significant inflation. I think there is a lot of noise in month to month numbers and I wouldn’t jump to annualizing them. If we are in fact coming out of a pandemic (hard to believe that we are out of the woods yet with what is going on in India and Brazil and the potential for significant viral mutations there, and the non-trivial percentage of idiots in this country who refuse to be vaccinated) then I would expect a few months of higher CPI readings dropping off later in the year, basically what a lot of economists are now predicting.

[Yoda]

I woke up this morning and had myself a beer.
The future is uncertain and the end is always near.


JM

[edjs]

Originally Posted by Yoda

I woke up this morning and had myself a beer.
The future is uncertain and the end is always near.


JM

So let it roll, baby, roll.

[Rhotchkiss]

Originally Posted by edjs

So let it roll, baby, roll.

All night long.....

[ullmandds]

Well i did get into town about an hour ago

[Orioles1954]

Originally Posted by obcbobd

I think short term, prices will be somewhat stable. The guy who paid $15K for a Ruth will hold onto it (for a while at least) rather than sell for $8K. However, long term, over 20-30 years as the first big generation of collectors goes to the big BB Diamond in the sky, I could see a large influx of cards, being sold by our heirs, people with no emotional attachment to the cards and who will take what they can get. At that point I could see prices for many items go down significantly. Actually, I won't see, becasue I'll be dead, but you get the picture.

Many of our consignments come from family members (mostly children or widows) who have zero emotional attachments to the hobby. The most memorable consignment was a widow who sold her dead husband’s 100K collection to go on a honeymoon with her new husband - always thought that was cruel.