Are vintage basketball cards market saturated?

[chriskim]

Are vintage basketball cards market saturated? Here is one example


Goldiin auction ends last nite: Reserve not met, final bid $285,000

https://goldin.co/item/1961-62-fleer...sa-mint-9314ok



The same card sold at Collectable for $350,000.

[swarmee]

Card wouldn't get a 9 nowadays due to the 70/30 top-to-bottom centering. Surely that played into it not getting any higher bids. It really looks nice, otherwise.

[Dead-Ball-Hitter]

Agreed, the otherwise beautiful Chamberlain is a bit too off centered to bring the record dollars. Chamberlain is a strong investment, wait 16 months, hope the market doesn’t crash, post again.

[chriskim]

Thx for the analysis, i guess whoever paid $350k for it only bought a PSA 9 holder.

[slightlyrounded]

Originally Posted by chriskim

Thx for the analysis, i guess whoever paid $350k for it only bought a PSA 9 holder.

Well, since their ask didn't get hit they technically haven't lost a penny yet! "Only too soon, never too much" and all that.

[Exhibitman]

There's a lot of Fleer in nice shape (notwithstanding centering), more so than Bowman or 1957 Topps. Pre-1969 basketball is a backwater of regional, local and team issues, since there were only two mainstream sets during the first 20 years of the league's operations (excluding the NBL and 1948 Bowman). Those regional-local-team issues range from scarce to rare, so no saturation there.

[Arazi4442]

To get back to the OPs original question, I think it’s very possible that the vintage market is saturated. Seems to me like a lot of vintage basketball, especially ultra high end, is getting auctioned over and over in the last 18 months or so. If the prime driver of these price surges is flippers vs. collectors, I could see prices taking a decent dip pretty soon.

Feels like supply is significantly increasing and most of the demand is manufactured quick $ flippers. Someone has to hang onto these purchases at some point.

[Johnny630]

Much of this high end stuff is playing musical chairs from auction house to auction house push pump redo. All a game.

[LincolnVT]

Same argument could be made for vintage baseball. Same blue chip cards selling in the same auctions over and over again.

[Johnny630]

Originally Posted by LincolnVT

Same argument could be made for vintage baseball. Same blue chip cards selling in the same auctions over and over again.

True Statement……

[Eric72]

Originally Posted by Johnny630

Much of this high end stuff is playing musical chairs from auction house to auction house push pump redo. All a game.

I agree with this assessment.



Regarding the question posed by the OP:

If you're referring to "saturated" in terms of current supply vs. current demand, the mass exodus of recent hobby newcomers is likely exerting a short-term negative influence on the market. I don't believe this will last long, though. The amount of vintage basketball available isn't really that much.

In terms of actual quantity, vintage basketball cards are in significantly lower supply than baseball cards from the same era. They're in somewhat lower supply than football cards, too. At least, that's the conclusion I drew from an admittedly quick glance at PSA Pop Reports.

While that might be mildly interesting, try comparing vintage basketball pop counts to those of modern cards. It puts things into perspective very quickly. Here's a benumbing statistic:

There are roughly the same number of PSA 10 Zion Prizm Base Rookies as every single 1957 Topps basketball card they've ever graded. Let that sink in. One version, of one card, from one set, in one grade.

So, relatively speaking, vintage basketball is a tiny drop in the overall hobby bucket.

[Snapolit1]

Anyone who paid massive dollars for a Zion card ought to be a little concerned. Just sayin.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Anyone who paid massive dollars for a Zion card ought to be a little concerned. Just sayin.

Or 800k for a Jordan.

[Dead-Ball-Hitter]

No doubt, MODERN basketball is saturated. Still hard to find much of the vintage stuff, i.e. pre-1975

[aconte]

The prices can't keep going straight up forever.

[JustinD]

Originally Posted by Dead-Ball-Hitter

No doubt, MODERN basketball is saturated. Still hard to find much of the vintage stuff, i.e. pre-1975

This here.

The vintage is limited and I agree that this playing the game by auction house musical chairs. I think a market correction in all sports will take place in the next couple years as collectables are going to get hit hard as a tax shelter with the 600 dollar reporting. Modern will get designated as 90s junk wax values for 2015+ and vintage will go back to the prices of 5 years ago. Personal opinion.

[rjackson44]

Ive been buying vintage hockey i love it . Not easy

[parkplace33]

Originally Posted by aconte

The prices can't keep going straight up forever.

Definitely right. Seen a lot of speculators grab up 86 Fleer in hopes of striking gold. Unfortunately, those prices have fallen like a rock. Too much supply and now little demand.

[Dead-Ball-Hitter]

Originally Posted by parkplace33

Definitely right. Seen a lot of speculators grab up 86 Fleer in hopes of striking gold. Unfortunately, those prices have fallen like a rock. Too much supply and now little demand.

I agree there is a large supply of 1986 Fleer basketball, but "fallen like a rock"? Maybe a slight cool down, but I haven't seen that. Folks are still paying $200 for a PSA 8 Larry Bird, >$1,000 for a PSA 9 Barkley, and Jordan still strong. Agreed, not at its highest level, but still pretty high for that issue.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by JustinD

This here.

The vintage is limited and I agree that this playing the game by auction house musical chairs. I think a market correction in all sports will take place in the next couple years as collectables are going to get hit hard as a tax shelter with the 600 dollar reporting. Modern will get designated as 90s junk wax values for 2015+ and vintage will go back to the prices of 5 years ago. Personal opinion.

Makes a lot of sense, but not so sure about the vintage dropping back so much, depending on what your definition of vintage is now. Can see the modern stuff cooling off a bit, like back in the '90s. But thinking that maybe out of a lot of the new collectors and money that have been coming into the hobby on the modern side, if that modern side does start to falter and collapse a bit, we'll find that not all the new blood was strictly investors and not collectors. I would expect that some portion of these new collectors, albeit maybe just a small portion, will truly get bit by the collecting bug, and as a result, gravitate over to vintage. Just like a lot of us here on this forum started out.

Can see the high-end vintage coming down a bit, like a lot of it has already started to in some cases this past year. But that would likely be due to changes in the thinking of the high-end investors. Don't feel the lower grade vintage will take a similar hit. Can see some fallback, but not nearly as much as the high-end stuff may see. I feel the true collectors, plus whatever new ones get added to the ranks from the recent surge in collecting popularity, will keep the vintage market a lot less volatile.

And because a lot of this increased modern card popularity is in football and basketball, can see vintage for both of those sports getting a nice boost as well, as some of the modern collectors start looking back.

[samosa4u]

Originally Posted by chriskim

Are vintage basketball cards market saturated? Here is one example


Goldiin auction ends last nite: Reserve not met, final bid $285,000

https://goldin.co/item/1961-62-fleer...sa-mint-9314ok



The same card sold at Collectable for $350,000.

I am not really sure what you are asking here in regards to the Chamberlain rookie. Market saturation occurs when there is no longer demand for a product because everyone already has it.

[Exhibitman]

The correction is already a done deal for most cards. We clearly reached a market peak and had a significant correction on all but a handful of essential rookie cards some time last year. PSA 8 Dr. J cards peaked over $9,000 (non-PWCC and Probstein sales only) in early 2021 but have fallen back by over 50% to around $3700. Even the key cards of the era (1957 Russell, 1961 Chamberlain(s), 1961 West, 1961 Baylor, 1969 Alcindor, 1970 Maravich) have stagnated or fallen off their peaks. If you FOMO'd those sorts cards you lost a lot of money. Now, a lot of those cards are way above where they were when the price surge started (the Dr. J RC was a $800-$1100 card) so there is room to move either way, but one could easily argue that those cards were great bargains at the time and have legitimately risen as they were (re)discovered by collectors.

On the other hand, the non-mainstream cards haven't moved much either way. Amazing to me you can get a RC of a HOFer in a tough regional set for a fraction of the cost of a common as dirt mainstream card. Those sorts of cards do not move a lot but when they come up they sell readily. There are exceptions of course, like the legendary Bell Brand Lakers or the early Kahn's Jerry West cards, that are always expensive.