is ebay killing high grade 50's-60's market?

[smtjoy]

Nice thread.

I dont think you can compare ebay prices to smr prices. SMR at best is a guess on the current value vs ebay is an actual price paid for a card (for the majority of ebay sales). To me ebay helps establish a market value.

If not for ebay I would not be collecting, if you are in a remote location that does not have access to shows and dealers you really are down to auction houses and ebay and they both make collecting possible. Now ebay is a large factor in killing off the card shops and shows but to me it is only making cards available to anyone/anywhere.

On the "if I had 100k to invest in cards" I would be doing pretty much what Exhibitman suggested. I would not be buying any mainstream topps/bowman issues and for sure not in high grade 7-10 cards. If I wanted to collect the HOFer you mention I would look hard for Topps test issues like 1968 3D Clemente, 67 68 candy lids, or scarce regional issues like Franks Esslinger Aaron and 1958 Kahns Clemente.

The reason I feel that vintage is a smart buy is there is just not much of it out there. Scarcity is whats going to bring a future rise in price, when you have more people collecting an issue than the number of cards of it out there. An example I collect Exhibits and for a set like 1933 which had 16 cards, PSA and SGC have graded a combined 15 cards (of those 4 are the Ruth). So not even a full set has been graded so you can forget all that low pop stuff because with a set like this you are lucky just to find one in any condition and you can forget about getting a deal on them.