Are Baseball Cards Destined to Slowly Diminish in Value?

[joeadcock]

Ian

There were 2 particular threads in 2010 dealing with the demographics of the net54 population such as age, career, education, etc.

[itjclarke]

Originally Posted by joeadcock

Ian

There were 2 particular threads in 2010 dealing with the demographics of the net54 population such as age, career, education, etc.

Thanks Joe.. I'll take a look for them. I joined a couple months ago, and am slowly, but steadily reading through some of the older threads. I'll venture to guess a large drop off in the 18-29 group for vintage/pre war.

[Rich Klein]

18-29 is that in many cases; these are the people who are just getting into the job world; marrying -- having kids, etc. They have not yet built up extra money for vintage cards and frankly in that age group -- they are usually more into modern cards.

Leon came to a little show my local card show owner had in his store and when I commented about how the audience at that show looked younger than at the more traditional card shows, he pointed out that the target audience was a bit different.

Yes for many reasons there are less 18-29 years old here, but that is not always a function of interest in cards; rather a function of interest in what type of cards

Rich

[ls7plus]

As long as there is baseball, the nature of the game is such that there will always be interest in its history--that history is what we hold in our hands every time we buy a Cobb, Ruth, DiMaggio, Matty, Jackson, etc. It is, as several previous posters have pointed out, a story of America, and early Americana that is both rare and significant has and will continue to gain and retain substantial value. Just a few weeks ago, I watched an episode of "Pawn Stars," where the pawn shop owner turned TV star made an offer of $125,000 for a rare John Wilkes Booth wanted poster WHICH ITS' OWNER, A COLLECTOR/DEALER OF SIGNIFICANT ITEMS OF THE ERA, TURNED DOWN!

Baseball cards, as collectibles, are not now and have not been in the past, separate and distinct from other collecting areas with regard to the forces driving collectible markets. Instead, they are merely different examples of the very same phenomenon. There have always been economic upturns and downturns, accompanied by many a prediction that "the sky is falling!" I have at least attempted to study the coin market dilligently for the last 20 years or so, because it became obvious to me that coins had already gone through many of the things our hobby later experienced (Topps and company didn't start the contrived scarcity phenomen with their insert cards, for example; Philadelphia mint officials did that with their creation of scarce to downright rare pattern coins in the 1850's, which were intended from the outset to generate a personal profit by being sold to collectors), and the same, basic collector mind-set prevailed in that forum. Coin collectors have believed that values had peaked since at least the 1930's! Yet the following examples of truly rare and significant coins well illustrate what has happened in the coin market over the last half-century or so (values taken from well-known coin dealer Jeff Garrett's book, "100 Greatest U.S. Coins," published by Whittman):

1796 "No Stars" quarter eagle ($2.50 gold piece)--1960: $2500;
1980: $20,000; 2003: $75,000; 2005: $85,000;
2008: $150,000 Note that this is a coin which is believed to have a
surviving mintage of 100-200 examples. Values given are for one in
about uncirculated condition [think ex-mint to near-mint for cards]

1802 half dime--this one is a coin where less than 50 examples are
believed to have survived (a number, which in coins, is deemed to
warrant being categorized as extremely rare)--1960: $2000;
1980: $25,000; 2003: $75,000; 2005: $100,000;
2008: $150,000 Values given are for an example in extremely fine
(think EX+ in cards).

It might be interesting to note that these two examples were picked entirely at random from the book, simply by opening it to the pages where they were discussed without forethought. It is also noteworthy that the advancing average age of collectors, and a seeming inability to attract younger participants to collecting, has been a source of major concern in that field for at least 20 years!

Coins also went through the equivalent of our late '80's, early '90's era, where cards like the '89 Upper Deck Griffey Jr., '90 Leaf Frank Thomas, etc., which were actually quite common, soared in book value, based primarily on speculative investing. Only in coins, the speculative but quite common items were the darlings of the late '50's to early '60's, like rolls of 1950D nickels (which went from $100 per roll to as much as $1300, then fell back to the $300 range), or later on, common date and mintmark Morgan silver dollars, graded and slabbed in extremely high mint grade (can anyone say modern PSA 10 cards?).

The point is, of course, that rare and significant items have an inherent ability to withstand changing trends and economic times and conditions--always have, always will. It's simply part of the human psyche that these things are highly desireable and thus valuable.

But what if I'm wrong? Can the bottom fall out of the market? I think the answer to that one lies in the reasons for the downturn, but would suggest that barring an ability on the part of counterfeitors to utilize modern technology to duplicate original vintage cards to the point that their product was truly indistinguishable from the original, what would happen is that there would be a lot of people like me and others who are members of this board that would be delighted to jump back into the market to pick up items like E107 HOF's, 1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruths, 1907 W600 Cobbs and 1910 T210 Jacksons at a mere fraction of their current values! So many, in fact, that there wouldn't be much of a fall in values to be had, for very long. As the bottoming out occurred and was followed by a resurgence as the market picked up steam, new collectors/investors would be drawn in, and it wouldn't be long before rare and significant items were booking at their old values.

As I've posted before, my wife, upon accompanying me to one of the Strongsville shows in the early '90s, thought $5,000 was too much to pay for a 1916 M101-4 Ruth rookie in near-mint/mint condition. Undoubtedly, she believed an old piece of cardboard with ancient ink on it would never be more valuable than it was at that time. The flaw in that line of thinking is that we collectors are not buying an old piece of cardboard with ink configured thereon to present Mr. Ruth's image--what we are buying is part of baseball's storied, glorious past; indeed, as best we can accomplish it, WE ARE BUYING BABE RUTH HIMSELF, just as purchasers of ancient Roman coins are buying a part of that empire, a still-preserved portion of days of glory and world dominance that we cannot help but see as utterly fascinating.

Just my $2.50 worth!

Best regards, and what a great thread!

Larry

[CharleyBrown]

Larry, incredibly well said..

[barrysloate]

Larry- I've always been wary of judging the soundness of any collectibles market by looking at the prices of extreme rarities. Most collectors don't buy 1802 half dimes; they more likely are buying coins, cards, or anything in the $50-250 range. In fact, I'll bet 90% of the transactions are for these moderately priced items. Studying those might give a more accurate picture of the strength or weakness of the market.

[Rich Klein]

Both Larry and Barry are correct

The very hiigh end material is not always indiciative *sic* of the market however, when the high end stuff goes up in price and gets noticed then in many cases the rest of the material goes up as well

2nd --- yes most of the trading is obviously done on a lower end, since we're talking about rarities, they just don't show up that often

And one other issue to go with why we don't have many 18-29 year old here (in addition, usually at that age we don't have the perspective that we gather a biit later)

The other issue is that beginning with the true movement of the hobby to a focus on adults after the BB Strike of 94-85, there ended up being an insane growth on number of products.

That culminated in 2004 when we had approximately 90 products issues or one ever 4 days. About 20 years earlier -- we really had maybe 5-6 major products for a year which also allowed collectors to go backwards in time easier.

That's another story for another day -- but the current monopoly in baseball cards by Topps is not neccessarily a bad thing because it controls the number of products issued. If, let's say Panini was granted a licence again to print BB cards --- then there would also have to be a limit on combined products from the 2 companies.

This is a different story, but we'll go more into this later as well

Rich