Is the Supply of Vintage Baseball Cards Drying Up?

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Posted By: T206Collector

"Given that theses are nearly 100 years old, supply couldn't possibly be increasing, if anything, decreasing, as do any 100 year-old treasures."

Well, that is true in terms of total cards in the world. But as far as cards being made available to the average collector, that has certainly increased since the advent of ebay. The barriers to entry into collecting pre-war cards simply does not exist anymore -- well, there will always be a little matter of cost, but you are no longer subject to the supply of your local card store or mall card show. So, in one sense, the availability of pre-war cards has risen dramatically in the last five plus years.

I recall searching for T206 cards on ebay back in 1998-2001, and there were always somewhere between 400 and 800 cards at any given moment. Now the numbers are staggering. And still, price rises. That means that with an increase in supply there is an even greater increase in demand. More collectors dumping their glossy new crap and heading back in history for Cobb, Matty and Lajoie.

Pre-war cards will no longer be thrown away with the trash. What cards exist will just about always exist, or at least won't waste away as quickly as they did during the first 100 years of their existence.

The real question is not whether the supply of vintage cards will dry up. To me, the question is whether the number of collectors of pre-war cards will continue to grow and whether those pre-war collectors will continue to absorb the available supply.

Because eventually we will all die, and unless we are going to be buried with our cards the cards will be redistributed to the masses. Even Frank Nagy's great collection is now part of all of our collections. As the great collectors of the 20th Century pass on their collections to the 21st Century collectors, will there be more of them -- how much will the pie continue to be cut?

When disposable income drops, you will not see as many people collecting cardboard heros. Baseball's popularity is at an all-time high. The Red Sox winning the World Series created a generation of new collectors of cardboard -- people who knew about David Ortiz, but now wanted to learn about Smoky Joe Wood and make that intergenerational connection.

There are a number of factors at work. I think it is amazing that the supply of T206 cards on ebay has grown as much as it has and am also amazed that the availability of the cards also actually drives the demand. Many people cite T206 as their favorite to collect because they can work on it on a daily basis -- they do not have to wait for the available AWH cards in the world to show up every six years.

The impatience of the pre-war collector is more important than supply.

I've waxed on long enough.