Where is the market?...is a "crash" coming

[Yoda]

I would like to believe that the majority of Net54 members love baseball and its history and collect prewar to remind us of "when it was a game." At heart we are collectors who love our cards but, of course, keep a close eye on values. And when it behooves us, we will sell to upgrade or put the money into something else vintage.
Our board and a few like it are a financial prop against a collapse of prewar and AH's, like REA, LOTG and Heritage, benefit enormously for our support of prewar and some of our members, more well-heeled than others, are able to fork over significant sums for top items. That's just capitalism.

[Exhibitman]

Why does the market have to "crash"? If past performance is any indication of behavior, what is most likely to crash is level of activity on scarce and rare vintage cards. A lot of would-be sellers elect to sit it out for a while when prices level off or decline. If you look at price data for certain cards, there are often gaps of years with none sold, followed by multiple sales in a relatively short amount of time.

What is the "market" anyway? There is a vast difference between the market for a 1914 Ruth Baltimore News card, a 1933 Goudey Ruth card, and an Ohtani sparkly signed card. The latter two are commodities: you can get one any day of the week if you have the money. The Ruth is a true rarity. Commodity cards are more volatile, IMO, because the owners include many who make their livings selling cards and who need to keep the cash flow going. They can only differentiate their goods by price. A rarity, you can set the price and anyone who wants it has to pay it.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Why does the market have to "crash"? If past performance is any indication of behavior, what is most likely to crash is level of activity on scarce and rare vintage cards. A lot of would-be sellers elect to sit it out for a while when prices level off or decline. If you look at price data for certain cards, there are often gaps of years with none sold, followed by multiple sales in a relatively short amount of time.

What is the "market" anyway? There is a vast difference between the market for a 1914 Ruth Baltimore News card, a 1933 Goudey Ruth card, and an Ohtani sparkly signed card. The latter two are commodities: you can get one any day of the week if you have the money. The Ruth is a true rarity. Commodity cards are more volatile, IMO, because the owners include many who make their livings selling cards and who need to keep the cash flow going. They can only differentiate their goods by price. A rarity, you can set the price and anyone who wants it has to pay it.

Obviously there's no requirement that the market has to crash.

I do think when you have a 100-300% runup in prices over a short window, the mind tends to wander in the direction of whether that's really sustainable, or whether we might be in for a pullback of 30-50% or more, depending on your definition of crash.

The rest of your points are certainly taken. At the same time, anyone sitting on the sidelines and refusing to sell if prices decline will have to outlast a whole host of other potential stressors that might force an untimely liquidation. Anything from financial pressure to divorce to demise are all factors that come into play. And if we're being honest, as a group in the aggregate, we probably have our fair share (and then some) of those stressors given our personal demographics.