Gas prices and buying cards

[ParisianJohn]

Originally Posted by Johnny630

The vintage card market had a major correction 2007 2008 with the financial /housing crisis, it could happen again. The effects of this won’t be felt until 6 to 8 months down the road.

Remember it’s never a gain until you sell for a profit and it’s never a loss until you sell for a loss, it’s all unrealized, staying in the game is the key !

I wondered about the exact impact of 2008 since I wasn't in the vintage game then.

I collected cards as a kid in the Junk Wax era of the 1980s and early 1990s, then came into vintage cards in 2012 in my mid-30s. I did a lot of collecting from 2012-2015 but then tailed off after my kids were born, but an circling back now.

In 2012 (if I recall correctly) people saying prices were just starting to get back to where they were in 2008 for low and mid-range cards in particular. By the time I stopped collecting in 2015 I noticed that many cards that I'd bought in 2012-2013 were selling for 20-25% higher than what I'd paid for them. It was a pretty rapid climb.

Last year I had heard about how during COVID people got into cards as a hobby (thanks in part of stimulus checks) and prices were spiking, especially for marquee names. I was pleasantly shocked to see, for example, that the PSA 3.5 Cy Young portrait I bought in 2013 for $600 was selling for something like $2,500. My PSA 7 of Babe Ruth's 1932 Sanella was somehow selling for 15 times what I got it at.

I imagined as COVID was waning and people stopped getting stimulus checks that prices would correct. And now you add inflation and then the war in Ukraine and all these sanctions (which will probably spur some massive cyber criminal activities) and now I wonder just how far they'll drop and for how long.

I'd guess things will discourage low and mid-range card buyers from snatching up as much as they have the past few years, and that this will drop prices for several years. Then again, I'm really bad at predicting things!

[Johnny630]

Originally Posted by ParisianJohn

I wondered about the exact impact of 2008 since I wasn't in the vintage game then.

I collected cards as a kid in the Junk Wax era of the 1980s and early 1990s, then came into vintage cards in 2012 in my mid-30s. I did a lot of collecting from 2012-2015 but then tailed off after my kids were born, but an circling back now.

In 2012 (if I recall correctly) people saying prices were just starting to get back to where they were in 2008 for low and mid-range cards in particular. By the time I stopped collecting in 2015 I noticed that many cards that I'd bought in 2012-2013 were selling for 20-25% higher than what I'd paid for them. It was a pretty rapid climb.

Last year I had heard about how during COVID people got into cards as a hobby (thanks in part of stimulus checks) and prices were spiking, especially for marquee names. I was pleasantly shocked to see, for example, that the PSA 3.5 Cy Young portrait I bought in 2013 for $600 was selling for something like $2,500. My PSA 7 of Babe Ruth's 1932 Sanella was somehow selling for 15 times what I got it at.

I imagined as COVID was waning and people stopped getting stimulus checks that prices would correct. And now you add inflation and then the war in Ukraine and all these sanctions (which will probably spur some massive cyber criminal activities) and now I wonder just how far they'll drop and for how long.

I'd guess things will discourage low and mid-range card buyers from snatching up as much as they have the past few years, and that this will drop prices for several years. Then again, I'm really bad at predicting things!

Agree John…..low grade and middle grade stars are not selling anywhere close to what they were selling for last year….they never should have sold for those numbers in the first place.

People are being very very frugal….as I mentioned before higher end graded in auction is immune from any downturn/bear market or recession….it doesn’t matter to them. They’re still gonna go crazy for PSA 8’s and 9’s.

[Rhotchkiss]

There are many things about today that remind me of the junk wax era, where card values spiked like the gold rush and then crashed like a Led Zeppelin (that’s how they got their name). There are also things today that remind me of the Great Recession in 2008, when card prices dropped and did not rebound, in some cases, until a decade later. Like those periods, I would think we are currently in a bubble, poised for a price tumble, but for several factors that did not exist during the junk wax and Great Recession: namely, serious outside investment by third parties, considerable innovation within the industry, and widespread press and acceptance as an “asset class” by large financial and media sources. Because of these new variables, I don’t think card prices go down. In fact, I think there is a lot of room for prices/values to grow. I am not sure this applies across the board- and I certainly don’t pretend to know enough about modern to make any conclusions there- but I believe that Ruth, Cobb, Wagner, Jackson, t206, cracker jacks, etc (the vintage blue chip stuff) has room to grow as the hobby continues to mature into an asset class. I believe this is true regardless of gas prices and/or a war in Ukraine; all bets off, however, if Ukraine turns into WWIII