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.

[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.