Mia Hamm RC in Goldin Auctions

[Ray Van]

Originally Posted by Huysmans

"I can attest to the SMALL group of collectors" ....says it all.

That's all I said... some of you want to live in a fantasy world where there are supposedly tons of card collectors in countries like England to rationalize the ridiculous and sudden climb in card values... but if that were true, values of English cards would have LONG been increasing... but they have not. You said it yourself, the soccer card market is 20 years behind baseball... so if there are truly numerous collectors of these cards, there should have been a constant - not meteoric - increase throughout that time... but that has never happened. WHY?

I might be oversimplifying things, but I have observed soccer card collectors to traditionally be set collectors and not focused on individual players - that is, up until the past couple of years when things changed. That could fit both sides of the argument - lots of collectors and suppressed values. As an example, 1906 Ogden's Football Club Colours: sellers used to offer each team card for the same price. But now that collectors have identified Steve Bloomer as the player pictured on the Derby County card, that one card is 100x or more valuable than a common card from the set. You could argue that this is driven by the relatively recent valuation-separation between commons and stars by collectors of this sport.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by Ray Van

I might be oversimplifying things, but I have observed soccer card collectors to traditionally be set collectors and not focused on individual players - that is, up until the past couple of years when things changed. That could fit both sides of the argument - lots of collectors and suppressed values. As an example, 1906 Ogden's Football Club Colours: sellers used to offer each team card for the same price. But now that collectors have identified Steve Bloomer as the player pictured on the Derby County card, that one card is 100x or more valuable than a common card from the set. You could argue that this is driven by the relatively recent valuation-separation between commons and stars by collectors of this sport.

This is most definitely the case. Back in the mid to later 90's I was mail ordering from The London Cigarette Card Company, singles of Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, and even occasionally Bobby Jones (who even back then was selling for a bit of a premium) and others, for the same price as any other common in the sets.

Of course, that eventually dried out once the internet made more people (especially in the U.S.), aware of these issues.

....and BTW The London Cigarette Card Company, along with Murray's Cards, were bigger then any Sports or Trading Card dealer in the U.S.., until well into the 80's, including the Larry Fritch's and Renata Galasso's.