What is the long-term value of Game-Used cards?

[Bilko G]

Someone correct me if im wrong but i believe all these 2010 Topps bat cards of these legends are NOT actual game used bats from for instance Ty Cobb. They are dated to his era and are only "game model" bats. I was looking on ebay to read what the COA says from one of these 2010 Topps cards, but guess what? Not one auction posts a picture of the back of the card stating what the actual relic is. That is why these are selling so "cheap". There are older REAL game used cards that sell for much more, but these 2010 Topps cards are not actual Cobb game used pieces i believe.

[Bilko G]

Oh and to answer your other question, i don't collect these as in constantly adding them to my collection or actively looking to add more, but i do own several game used jersey cards of Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, Lou Gehrig and other vintage legends. I bought these cards many years ago back in about 2004 or so. I bought these cards and wanted them for my collection because it is the closest i will ever get to owning a game used item of theirs. I am not filthy rich where i can drop $50K buying an entire game worn jersey, but these cards allow to me to own a piece of a game used item for a fraction of the price. Even if it is a small 1 inch swatch on a card i can still look at the item and know it was worn by Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle in an era before i was born and it gets me as "close" as i can get to that time in history and to those particular players.

I do agree that i wouldn't want to see, say the last of a particular item get cut up or something that is on display in the HOF. But i will say that i am thankful to the card companies for giving the "average Joe' like me a chance to own a piece of history like this that i might never get to see in person, hold and own. I personally think that it is a lot better for say several hundred collectors to be able to own a piece of a Mantle uniform instead of one really rich guy, whose wife makes him "display" his Mantle jersey in his basement and it never sees the light of day again.

[bbcard1]

They have certainly moderated.

But I buy a few. I think they are kind of cool.

As for an investment, I am not counting on any ballcard I own...even the Ruths and Cobbs to act as an investment vehicle.

I honestly don't think the world is poorer for having one less pair of Ruth pants that becomes cards. I honestly wouldn't want a pair of Babe Ruth pants...but I am quite happy having a babe ruth uniform card.

[esd10]

In ten years they will be worth nothing and the autos will be found as fakes. Its so sad they cut up historic items just to sell packs of cards and what i always wondered what happens to the D on cobbs uniform? and the yankee's emblem from babe ruth jersey? they dont put them on the cards and if they do i have never seen one.I hate the idea of cutting up uniforms of deceased players its not like today where they get 1 or 2 jerseys per game.

[Exhibitman]

Forgetting for the moment the issue of whether GU cards should be made:

The GU items will always have some casual appeal, especially those made from items from contemporary players who are likely to make autograph appearances later on. The certified autographed will always have appeal to autograph collectors. Yes, there are bad ones--surprise, surprise, bad autographs. But the vast majority of the signed stuff is good. Players' autographs will always have appeal and a market, and signatures certified by a major MFG as real will always have buyers.

That said, the long term value prospects are crappy IMO. Very few of the cards have had great price gains year over year. They seem to peak the year of issue then plateau or even start to decline as the issue loses its cachet. Take the 1997 Topps Jeter autographed card as an example. Great looking card, nice signature, sure-fire HOFer and Yankee. I pulled one from a pack in 1997. The card price hasn't budged since then--I saw two for sale this a.m. on Ebay for BINS of $125 and $195. As I recall, they were selling for about $150 during the late 1990s. And the manufacturers keep adding more to the supply of GU and auto'd cards. All you need do is look at the bins and bins of them at the National offered on the cheap to know they are not a good investment.

[bbcard1]

Originally Posted by esd10

In ten years they will be worth nothing and the autos will be found as fakes. Its so sad they cut up historic items just to sell packs of cards and what i always wondered what happens to the D on cobbs uniform? and the yankee's emblem from babe ruth jersey? they dont put them on the cards and if they do i have never seen one.I hate the idea of cutting up uniforms of deceased players its not like today where they get 1 or 2 jerseys per game.

I am pretty sure many of the numbers and patches have been removed from vintage jerseys...every now and then I have gotten one where you could tell something had been removed.

[bbcard1]

Follow up question....do you think that today's players will make card show and autograph appearances with the frequency of old time players? They have made millions upon millions of dollars and Albert Pujols and Derek Jeter will NEVER have to make an auto appearance if they don't want to. Will he allure of say a Austin Kerns in ten years be the same of that as a George Altman was ten years ago?

[53Browns]

Yeah, bad idea slicing that stuff up! Nice Tootsie Toy Frank!

[NeuhartCards]

I tend to agree with the thinking...However, look at it this way:

Our hobby is on the edge of extinction as it sits now. I just opened a card shop, and I see very few children coming in the front door. If the thought of pulling a g/u Mantle or Pujols card gets them into the hobby, I am all for it.

The bigger problem I see is the fact that, like everything, the manufacturers over-do it. Instead of putting one or so per box, or making it a big pull, there are thousands of g/u cards and they are losing their appeal.

Our hobby will never return to the days of yesteryear...as much as we would like it to. It is our job to bring in the younger collectors...at what cost, I don't know.

My long .02.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by NeuhartCards

I tend to agree with the thinking...However, look at it this way:

Our hobby is on the edge of extinction as it sits now. I just opened a card shop, and I see very few children coming in the front door. If the thought of pulling a g/u Mantle or Pujols card gets them into the hobby, I am all for it.

The bigger problem I see is the fact that, like everything, the manufacturers over-do it. Instead of putting one or so per box, or making it a big pull, there are thousands of g/u cards and they are losing their appeal.

Our hobby will never return to the days of yesteryear...as much as we would like it to. It is our job to bring in the younger collectors...at what cost, I don't know.

My long .02.

I agree in some sense to this summation. If the mfg's would not overdo it they would do better long term. That seems to be the main problem. The card company(s) find something that has a market, produce a billion of it, then there is a huge diluted market and less demand. If they would strictly limit the GU cards, and only put in articles that aren't so rare they are actually harming history (imo), then everyone would win, and long term too. As far as extinction, if you look at the "meet and greet" thread you will see a lot of 30 and 40 somethings. As addicted as we are I think there are a few generations of time left in us (at least I hope so). But this is the vintage market and it seems to have a bit more staying power than the newer market. That is why I mentioned somewhere that anything that brings in the under-30-somethings, is all good by me. I definitely agree with NeuhartCards on that...but please don't tear up National treasures doing it.

BTW, NeuHartCards, I am fascinated with the idea of opening a card shop in today's economy and hobby climate. I don't see me doing it but it's definitely interesting. If you would care to elaborate on your thoughts on it and how you are doing, I am sure many of us would be appreciative. It's a subject that all of us vintage guys should have some interest in. Best regards and thanks for your post.

[barrysloate]

While I always hated these concoctions put out by the card manufacturers, you could make an argument that the cut signatures are more valid than the cut up uniforms or bats. At least with an autograph, even though it was cut down from something, you are still getting the full signature (for the sake of this argument let's assume it is real).

But what are you getting when a uniform or bat is cut into a thousand pieces? A square inch of material? A splinter of wood? I was never able to understand what the attraction was. I would love to own a Picasso, certainly never will, but I would have no interest whatsoever in owning a one inch square piece of canvas covered with oil paint that was made available by cutting one of his paintings into a thousand small pieces. I'd rather just go to a museum and spend an afternoon looking at a few real ones. To each his own, but a scrap of something is worthless to me. And I also would have no confidence that the thing was even what it was supposed to be. How would one even authenticate it?

[Republicaninmass]

close your eyes what do you see....

They are kinda neat, other than a novelty not quite sure

[Exhibitman]

Some points on a lazy Thursday afternoon:

--Whether or not modern GU/Auto cards are appealing depends in part on whether you like and follow the current game and want to collect something from it. If so, you obviously cannot collect vintage cards of modern players. For me, I try to pick up autographed modern cards of players I enjoy watching, like Jeter or Ichiro, and if I see a GU card that I find appealing I might pick it up too if it is cheap. When I had a chance to go behind the scenes at Dodgers Stadium some years ago I picked up a bunch of modern GU cards for my nephew and I to get autographed by some of the players we liked.

--Orioles1954, you are right and wrong. Some posters are not especially tactful in their responses and some posts do 'diss' modern cards for reasons that have little relationship to the question the original poster raised. However, you may also consider that there is a difference between criticizing a collector for collecting and criticizing the item being collected. Many people here loathe the practice of cutting up jerseys and bats to make cards with little chips of jerseys and bats on them. Their expressions of their disgust for the practice is not personal; don't take it that way. Also, the thread was opinions on the long-term value of GU cards, and there I think the posters discounting the potential future appreciation of those cards based on performance over the last decade or so have good points.

As is often remarked on this site, collect what you want. Just don't take others' negative opinions of what you collect to heart. Life it too short to worry about what other people think. Besides, we all spend countless hours playing with baseball cards. We're all dipsh**s.

[Rich Klein]

Like I said; I'm literally on both sides of the aisle here ---- more than most of you realize and frankly I'm more aware of the modern card market than I am of the vintage card market many times


A few longer bullet-points: I've posted most of these thoughts one way or the other in the past.

** In 2002, I gave a presentation at the first "Deadball" conference in Hot Springs, Ark. Mike D was not yet part of the group otherwise he would have been part of the "spirited" discussion. We were all expected to bring research topics to the table -- and with my lack of time to prepare -- I went a slightly different way and began a conversation about deadball era BB Cards and why did 1910 seem to be the key year.
During that discussion, I brought up the concept of game-used cards and you have to remember that was the concept of vintage players and game-used was still a reasonably new concept. It was also a good target audience in that none of the other six people there were really active collectors -- except for me having to chase down a Dave Egan card. (You had to be there to understand why).
We basically agreed, that if a player had used hundreds of bats during his career; that cutting up 1-2 of them for cards was not neccessarily a bad idea BUT if you had a situation such as In the Game cutting up the only known pair of Georges Vezina pads then you had a terrrible disservice to history. The middle is broad; but at the time, most of the card companies actually tried to keep track and if they knew it was the only one, they usually passed on cutting.

***** In today's world, collectors expect to get at least one "hit" (which in these terms mean autographs or memorabilia) out of every box. In some products the cards are of vintage players and thus the memorabilia is the same. ****

**** So far, and I would suspect in the future -- autograph cards have and will continue to hold their value better than game-used cards. As always there are exceptions, one of which is the 2001 SP Legendary Cuts Joe Jackson bat card. There will be no more Joe Jackson "game-used' bat cards issued by a licensed manufacturer unless he gets reinstated. Other non-licensced companies can used Shoeless Joe.

***** Sometimes, as has been pointed out, these cards *DO* generate interest in vintage cards and cards and more of these players can be the gateway to vintage cards. The same has been true of the Topps "Million Card Giveaway" which has spurred several people *I* have "spoken to on FB* to start collecting older cards. I know of one collector who now buys 5-10 small lots of pre-1970 cards on EBay each week and I'll bet he goes back into our cards soon


***** And if we want future collectors to have the same love for these old cards that we do, let's not diss them at this point. Just because *I* was able to buy my 1st T-Cards in the mid-1970's for $1-2 each including HOFers -- does not mean the same runs true today -- we have to nurture and realize that today's box dealer may be tomorrow's vintage specialist

**** And I love to point out this story, in my last year at Beckett we had a minor issue with the Almanac in which the 1993 Topps set checklist was missing about 200 cards due to a production error. You know, I swear we had several hundred complaints about that during the year --- and the Almanac was just as much for advanced collectors as basic collectors but if I forgot to put in a Pinkerton checklist, I'd bet I'd get 1-2 complaints during the year.

***** We have to remember, that we are an influential group, but a very small part of the hobby in many many ways

Happy holidays to all

Rich Klein

Regards and happy holidays

Rich

[bbcard1]

Also when there is a crappy local mall show, it gives you something to look at.

[ls7plus]

I agree completely with David--what the card companies have done with truly historic items (assuming they could ever be truly established as having that status now) falls into the tragic category. As to value, they are best categorized as a fad, with no lasting monetary value at all. If you take the time to actually study items that have become quite valuable in our collecting field, as well as others (with coin collecting especially having followed many of the same trends and patterns, but having had the benefit of having been around in an organized fashion for 120 years longer), you will find that they all have as common attributes rarity and signifance. Any gold coin bearing a date of pre-1834, for example, is rare and significant, because the vast majority of them were melted down for bullion value, since at the time, the bullion value exceeded the coin's face value. Most U.S. coins from the 1790's are enormously significant, as they are the first coins issued by the United States as an entity, and are not only rare in many cases, but enormously significant (they might be seen as this country's "rookie" coins). Any authentic Babe Ruth card from the 19-teens, twenties or thirties is significant and in many cases legitimately rare (with the obvious exception of the 'thirties Goudey issues). The game-used materials cards will never have these attributes.

[fkw]

Some are coming down on posts in this thread for knocking modern collectors. I wasnt doing that at all.
Some of them are very knowledgeable in their chosen field! I actually spend more time on FCB than here, they have more threads and really know their current players and future prospects... and Im clueless on some of the modern card topics so like to read some stuff I dont know already for a change

IMO its much tougher being an "Expert" on modern stuff, than an "Expert" on vintage stuff, for the simple fact that there is 100X++ more modern stuff out there to remember.

FWIW, I was just giving my opinion on the topic title.... "What is the long term future value of Game-Used cards?"
No one knows for sure, but many of us have followed trends in this hobby for many years and would make a good guess at the answer.

[JasonD08]

I think they will become worthless almost as in the days of the shiny new inserts of the early 1990s. I do however, see autographs on true vintage cards increasing significantly. Just do an ebay search and try to find some of those from the 50s and 60s. Those are on the flip side very undervalued. You can easily find 30-50 game used cards for one vintage card autographed in most cases.

[teetwoohsix]

Originally Posted by Bilko G

Someone correct me if im wrong but i believe all these 2010 Topps bat cards of these legends are NOT actual game used bats from for instance Ty Cobb. They are dated to his era and are only "game model" bats. I was looking on ebay to read what the COA says from one of these 2010 Topps cards, but guess what? Not one auction posts a picture of the back of the card stating what the actual relic is. That is why these are selling so "cheap". There are older REAL game used cards that sell for much more, but these 2010 Topps cards are not actual Cobb game used pieces i believe.

I think this is the case. Another thing Topps is doing now (maybe they have been for awhile, I don't know) are these "commemorative patches". On the back of the card it clearly states "The embroidered patch featured on the front of this card was created exclusively for 2010 Topps Baseball Series 2".

I don't think there was an issue here of dissing modern collectors, I think it was an issue of how people felt about cutting up pieces of baseball history and manufactured scarcity........

[cdn_collector]

Without getting into the debate of right or wrong with GU cards, I think the long-term value of these cards is pretty low.

As at least one poster noted above, if you're going to make money in these cards it's by pulling them from packs and flipping them while they're still hot. This is based on very little experience in that arena [I own exactly 1 GU card that I bought this year after waiting 5-6 years for it to be available for under $10], and as always, I'm sure there are exceptions.


Regards,

Richard.

[Rich Klein]

But I've been on both sides of the aisle on this --- and each side has tons of merit

I've posted on this before and will do either later tonight or over the weekend

Rich