Are Baseball Cards going to disappear

teetwoohsix · #1 07-06-2011, 03:10 AM

I think modern cards will eventually climb in value (in general), but how far down the road is the million dollar question.

I had a hard time following what was what in modern cards, to the point where it was so confusing for me trying to look cards up in the Beckett big book that I just gave up. Still have tons of modern cards in binders w/ Ultra-Pro sleeves, and occaisionally will look through them, but I really don't know what is worth $$ and what is a dime a dozen. I also think if this is slightly complicated for an adult, it must be for a kid.

It would be nice if Topps "kept it simple" and quit mass producing cards, and quit selling "complete sets".......I think the modern "set" would be way more valuable if you had to put it together yourself.

I'm just rambling, sorry.......

Sincerely, Clayton

ls7plus · #2 07-06-2011, 03:28 AM

No, you're not rambling, Clayton--you've made some very good points. If I'm interested in a good young player, and want one of his better cards, I find its far too unwieldy to try to use Beckett's endless listings. It's far better simply to go to e-bay and search for his rookie cards by name, which gives you a pretty quick and dirty education of what's what out there. I did that with Brennan Boesch last year to acquire an orange refractor (one of 25) and recently checked on what comparable Alex Avila rookies were going for using exactly the same method. As you can see, I'm a Tigers fan, and enjoy watching the development of some of their better youngsters. A good card of them simply allows me to share to some extent in their successes and failures vicariously, all the while realizing it is highly unlikely any of them will be HOF'ers, and that the purchase is only for entertainment. I don't think this process is much different than what I did as a kid with Topps cards in the '60's, when I wanted to have my favorite players. Baseball cards, even new ones, can still be fun!

Good thread,

Larry

teetwoohsix · #3 07-06-2011, 03:45 AM

Thanks Larry.

Every now and then I search around on ebay to see what modern cards are doing and it seems like a lot of cards do not even get 1 bid. This is where the mass production is killing it. I have a lot of those refractor cards, also quite a few cards with #'s (1 of 99, etc.) but probably nothing too special.

Look at the Strasburg phenomena.....that was pretty wild !!!! I can't think of another modern card that went for that kind of $$ !!

Pre-war cards are by far way more fascinating to me, but I won't toss out my modern cards just yet either

Sincerely, Clayton

slidekellyslide · #4 07-06-2011, 10:52 AM

There will always be a market for non-virtual new cards...there may be fewer collectors for these items, but there will always be collectors. Cards are not like music which evolved from wax to vinyl to tapes to CD to MP3s. The evolution of music delivery makes sense..there are still collectors of all of those forms of delivery though. Cards are cards..have always been cards aside from making them shiny, I don't see virtual cards as the future of card collecting.

mark evans · #5 07-06-2011, 08:09 PM

As the discussion has evolved from the existence of future cards to the value of cards in the future, I can't resist offering the view that the vast majority of cards produced in the future, as with the cards produced over the last 30+ years, will fail to retain their original retail value. Once cards became "collectibles," the manufacturers simply began to issue far too many for demand to keep up with supply.

And, I don't think "insert" cards will offer an exception in the vast majority of cases because a short supply based upon manufacturing contrivance does not have the same relationship to demand as a genuine short supply based upon the passage of time, as with vintage cards. So, for example, while a 1/1 Strasburg autograph card might have once brought serious money, I would suspect that, over time, its value (even assuming his future prominence) would decline substantially due to the ready supply of other Strasburg autograph cards.

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