Skyrocketing Card Values Lately - Theories?

[Exhibitman]

Guys, basketball and baseball are two completely different markets.

--Basketball cards truly are global in reach. I've seen card shows in Europe and they focus heavily on basketball. Asia also has tremendous basketball collecting.

--Nearly all basketball cards are postwar, so there isn't the vintage-postwar-modern gap and resulting disdain that baseball card collecting has. No derisive references to "shiny crap".

--The better question is whether basketball cards are catching up to baseball and football. I think that with the exception of certain mainstream sets and stars basketball cards have been underpriced for years. The proof is that prices are going up across a broad swath of basketball, not just MJ, LeBron and current speculative cards like Zion. For example, a PSA 8 Dr. J. RC (1972 Topps) has more than doubled in the last year. Now, is it overpriced at $1900 or was it criminally underpriced at $800? The breadth of price increases in basketball signals that something is up besides just boredom.

Not to say that the other theories are wrong. Far from it. There is a lot of easy money sloshing around right now. Lots of white collar and professional class workers did not lose their jobs and haven't seen the reductions in earnings that were initially feared, and some of them (the ones who own small businesses) are even receiving substantial free money in the form of forgivable PPP loans from the SBA. Add lots of free time and limited entertainment options to the mix (which reduces expenditures on event attendance, vacations, movies, concerts, restaurants, etc., to zero) and you get some cash freed up for collecting.

I don't think the prices on basketball will hold but I don't see a slide back down to where they were either. I've sold off all of my early MJ cards--way too much profit there to leave it alone--but I am looking for other cards actively to fill out my earlier basketball collection at the right prices.