Downward trend in card values?
 

This week I acquired a '56T common second series graded w/b. These are fairly rare and pricey in better grades, compared to the g/b's, and I'm not talking Mays, Mantle or Berra, but w/b commons. The same AH sold the same card / PSA 7 slab three years ago for 4x what I just paid. Dunno if the consignor was the purchaser in 2014, but if so, he got badly hosed. Does this represent the proverbial canary in the coal mine for dropping card values, just an anomaly, or what? Appreciate your thots . . . Thanks!

I think it depends on what you collect? I was going to post about the recent up tic I have noticed lately with 52 Topps cards. I have seen some pretty high prices lately but maybe those prices were higher at some point? I'll post some links later as I have to get ready for work.

as others...including myself predicted...as the old timers die off and/or get out of the hobby...the cards that will continue to be desirable to new/existing collectors are the big name HOF'ers...not common...2nd series 1956 topps.

Just my opine!

drop
 

I see the bottom dropping out of the vintage card market

Slowly all the cards are losing value, and someday will be totally worthless

A quick look at Mantle base cards on VCP shows a lot of red down arrows on the mid to high grade examples... come on bottom fall out so I can buy a nice 52 Mantle :)

Out of curiosity is there anything we can draw a parallel to, something that was once highly coveted in the way cards have been but as the collectors died off so did the hobby? I know there are many collectibles that no longer hold the same interest or value as they once had but I’m not sure any of them had the massive collector as that baseball cards. This is always an interesting subject.

Stamps and books used to be hot, not as much anymore, from my understanding.

I was thinking beer can collecting.

Coins have cooled in last few years, trend looks to continue.

Personally, I believe that baseball card collecting is slowly and surely becoming a dying hobby. Certainly less and less .....

Graded commons may not have a true place in 20 years, as no one is really stepping up and taking over our spots. I have coached Little League for many years. These kids know Trout and Jeter, but do not know about Johnny Bench. Babe Ruth is certainly known, but only as legend. Foxx? Walter Johnson? George Brett? Nope. Granted this is a small sample size but I think there is truth and merit regarding the future of our hobby. My son knows that I love collecting, and is well educated on the players of yesteryear (mostly on his own btw) but has zero interest in collecting. He loves the sport and is pretty good at it, but like all the kids that I know at his age, they simply do not collect. Most never did in the first place.

Will a high grade, low pop common variation from the 50s or 60s continue to be sought after? My guess is a resounding no.

Theories abound regarding manipulation of the market, and I agree with most of them. Are they recognizing this trend or just trying to grossly capitalize? My guess is both.

I still enjoy collecting a great deal. We all do. I am sure my collecting will continue to the degree I am comfortable with, but can't help think that the future "investment" may not be there.

Pretty much all collectibles go through cycles, particular things are popular for a time, then people move on to other stuff. Some of that is interest, some of it publicity, some of it just changing opinions on what is worth something.

When I started, cards were just beginning to be "valuable" nearly every postwar card was relatively inexpensive. The 52 Mantle hadn't topped 1000, and a decent Aaron rookie was 60. Hardly anyone collected the few insert sets and obscure stuff was either dirt cheap or really expensive (for then)

I've been into collecting a lot of stuff over the years, some hobbies have grown, some have not.

Coins
Stamps
Old Bottles
Beer cans
Telephone/telegraph insulators
Old radios
Old computers
Old bicycles
Action figures
Old books
Old magazines

All of them have seen some of the same things since the mid-late 90's. I've seen it called the Ebay effect.
Before Ebay, a lot of that stuff had value even for the relatively common things. (Old computers being the exception, they weren't old enough for the usual yard sale crowd. ) So you might see one reasonably nice old radio or bike a year if you went to yard sales and flea markets. More often if you were really into it and went constantly. So you bought what you could find at what seemed like a reasonable price.
Once Ebay got big enough you could find nice stuff a lot more often. Like anytime you felt like looking. And pretty soon people caught on to just how common the common stuff really is. That's true for any hobby. And once you realize that you can buy a perfect or near perfect example pretty much whenever you want to, there's no need to buy the lesser ones.
Late 90's I did pretty well buying boxes of late 80's cards for almost nothing, and selling lots of 100-400 for a few dollars. (Not counting the time I spent, which is only one reason I stopped) By say 2005 those lots wouldn't sell as well. Maybe half the time or less instead of nearly every time. People interested in random lots realized they could just buy complete sets, or much larger lots for less per card. Now there's a lot of "cheap" singles listed, commons I'd maybe want a few cents for listed for $1. Because when you need one card, it's easier to just buy it even of it's massively overpriced because in the end, it's just a dollar.

The really good stuff either continues to be really good with ups and downs, or it essentially goes into hiding until the prices come back up. (Old computers were very pricy for a while because all the dotcom guys were buying up the stuff they learned on or had as kids. )

Most hobbies never really die, they just change.

Steve B

Interesting thread and things to think about since I am back into card collecting. :eek:

I got into coins a little bit the past few years attending coin shows mostly for the junk silver. When silver was pushing $50, the dealers would say there were more bullion buyers than regular coin buyers at the shows. They mentioned how they hoped they would stick around after the coming crash. It looks like most didn't, which isn't surprising.

My kid plays baseball but has no interest in the cards. But, he is BIG into the Pokémon cards. Some of the graded "vintage" (1999:eek:) cards go for CRAZY money. Some kids still collect, just different things I guess.

I remember those days where a Mantle was 1K. I remember seeing one at "Joe's Dugout" and couldn't believe the ridiculous price lol

Big difference was that we were collectors then. Not too many kids who think like we did.

Elvis Presley rare record prices have dropped, and Greta Garbo and Rudolf Valentino autographs (once prizes of the hobby) fell off before that.

While I mostly agree with your assessment and it makes me sad more than anything. I do have a rebuttal to one of your arguments.
No one on this board knew the average player from the early 1900s when they were growing up and later learned about them and now collect early tobacco cards. I may be wrong about that.

But I will agree with you that most kids these days (at least from what I’ve seen and I have two myself) don’t collect much of anything. So in that regard the hobby may not have a great future.

True but vintage record sales overall have made a huge leap in the last ten years. Who knows if that will last?

Sell!
 

Top tier HOFERS will always do well.

50's and 60's commons could drop like rocks.

Threads like this always get a lot of traction.

Everybody always worried...but yeah lots of low level stars....if POP isnt super small..most people wont know who they are later on..

If you see record highs on the big big cards...that doesnt mean much for the rest of the market...

Here's the thing: the kids today are going to be the inheritors tomorrow of the cards we are saving today. Some of them will be enchanted by the hobby and will get into it, just as some collectors on this board got their starts with their fathers' old cards.

The stuff cycles. I have some cards that still haven't rebounded to their pre-crash price levels, when I bought them. And it isn't just cards. Check the spot price on silver lately? I remember trading some cards for silver bullion at a National a few years ago when silver was about twice its current price. D'oh!

It's all about the phones. Every single minute of every single day the youths of today are staring down at their phones. No one seems to even go outside and play anymore. If it's not something that appears on their phones, there is virtually no interest from a huge percentage of kids. When I was growing up (jeez, I sound old), every kid in class had at least some baseball cards. It was an absolutely huge part of the culture, but these days there are a bazillion other distractions for kids, so collecting takes a back seat...waaaaaaay in the back.

First $100,000 coin sold circa 1974, now there are many, many that have recently passed that mark. First 8-figure coins sold in 2012. I wouldn't worry too much about coin collectors in the long term. Their market, like ours, will have its ups and downs, but both are here to stay.

Best wishes,

Larry

These are some of the 52's I was talking about. Maybe these aren't as high as they once were, like in 2008, but from what I have noticed/tried to pay attention too, they seem like increases or very good realized prices to me?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-J...19.m1438.l2649
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-R...19.m1438.l2649
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-R...19.m1438.l2649
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-B...19.m1438.l2649
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-S...19.m1438.l2649
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-S...19.m1438.l2649
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-A...19.m1438.l2649
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-S...19.m1438.l2649
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-S...19.m1438.l2649
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-S...19.m1438.l2649
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-S...19.m1438.l2649
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1952-Topps-H...19.m1438.l2649

Granted, these are some very nice cards with nice grades, but I believe some of these are new highs, or sold higher than current VCP prices?
Please don't flame me if I am wrong, these are just my observations when I seen what these cards went for recently. :D

It always seems like the only things going up in price are the exact items on my want list!

Worth noting the dealers you listed are mega dealers and get insane prices for their cards.

I feel that way too...

Unless they handle my 1952 topps consignments, then they bring record lows!

Raw lots of 50s-60s cards in all grades have steadily been increasing over the past year.

Here is an example, this midgrade 1960 Topps lot of 340 cards with no major stars or high #s sold for almost $1.30/card. A year ago, a lot such as this the average price per card would have been 60-75 cents/card.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1960-Topps-N...p2047675.l2557


IMO, fewer sellers are selling on ebay and the supply has lessened. However, the demand has remained somewhat constant causing the prices of lots such as this to nearly double over the past year.


Almost 10 years ago I finished a complete 72 Topps PSA graded set...avg grade was 8.20. I got down to needing a few cards to finish. One was the notoriously tough 708 card and I wanted an 8. I paid almost $200 for a centered 8 then..... now you bid and win one for around $40. Too bad I didn't wait. IMO, many of these higher priced, previously low pop commons have come down in price due "prospectors" rooting these cards out in their raw state from shows, shops, etc and sending them in for grading. It is as simple as the increase of supply driving down the price in a case like this.

Based on cases like these with the low pops, I think it is unfair to argue that the collecting base is shrinking (dramatically if you read some assessments in this thread), it is just not growing as quick as it once did. These examples of price fluctuations are based on the changes in SUPPLY vs. demand.

It also seems like everybody is getting cards graded these days to try to cash in on PSA 9/10. As the supply of these cards increases, the price will drop. There are only so many buyers out there.

This is a very interesting thread. When I first got back into cards in 2012 I was surprised at the amount of interest and the huge increase in prices. I figured the uptick was fueled by guys like me in their late 30s who collected in the heyday of the late 80s-early 90s now with established careers and some discretionary income. Sort of reliving their childhood except this time with their own money. This concerned me because I did not know who was coming behind me to prop up the hobby and the prices.

Then I spent a few Saturdays at the local card shop. They were absolutely slammed with kids and their dads buying packs and chasing inserts and autos. They would count off every star they came across. Some of the kids were turning the cards they found right around and consigning them with the dealer on eBay (with the parents permission of course). It was quite a scene. Was there any mention of Mantle, Mays or Griffey? No. But they were just as excited to rip those packs as I was at 10 years old.

I think there are collectors coming behind us but it won't have the same gravity it had. They are not likely to value the card as a piece of history, art, or memorabilia. But they will remember the thrill of unearthing that card. I do believe that things will roll back some and in cases where there is not true scarcity quite a bit. But the big time HOFers and items that are truly rare will still have a market.

In the meantime, I'll hedge my card investments with solid stock and real estate investments just to make sure :)

Set building
 

Set building is not in vogue now everyone is buying rookies and superstar cards. This has made it a good time,in my opinion to build sets. Many of the low pop cards are selling for fractions of what they sold for when everyone was set building. It still has some pull on the hotly contested registry sets but on sets where there is less current competition prices are way down. 10s still often bring some head shaking numbers but tougher 8-9 from the 60s and 70s seem to be soft compared to their peak prices.

This reminds me of the great Kenny Rogers Song The Gambler; three things to do, hold, fold,walk away/run. I’m waiting for the walking away to occur to be able to buy lower. :-) ressessions are always a good time to buy.

Great Thread
 

For me, collecting is a hobby, not an investment. I don't buy high-grade cards for that reason - give me a raw, mid-grade card and I am quite happy. That said, I would like my collection to retain a reasonable amount of its value, and do think about the future of the hobby from time to time.

I agree that our culture today is at odds with the values that drive most people to collect things. I also believe that the card suppliers have done a great disservice to the hobby by saturating the market with way too much product and focusing on gimmicks to generate short-term interest and sales that have no lasting appeal to a future collector.

I hope that down the road there will come a time when our culture realizes the harm that all this technology is doing and people begin to find more balance in their lives. Should this happen, one of the side benefits will be to collecting. And the post-war era, I believe, will benefit from this rebound if only because there is such a smaller supply of product available.

I agree

I'm 50 and my 11 and 13 yr old boys who play baseball (rec, travel andLL) essentially all 4 seasons do not collect baseball cards. They of course have sports games on their devices but have no interest in baseball cards, old or new. Hardly any interest in reading any of the classic baseball books or Baseball Digest either.

But one of my younger son's PSA 9 Pokemon card is worth way more than my 52B Mantle or Mays, 57T Mantle or any of my 86/7 F Jordans.

I actually want to build more sets so wouldn't mind more correcting to come but I still covet those HOF RC's.

Will there be future generations of collectors of anything in the numbers we see today? I seriously doubt it. The digital world is much different than the one we grew up in and the passion for ephemera of all kinds is on the wane by the under-40 crowd. There will always be enthusiasts but they will become scarcer. Interest in hard-copy anything is decreasing overall.

We're already seeing an obvious decline it in the antiquarian book market as well as in comic books that are not first appearances, key issues or low-print variants.

Set building in almost all collectibles is slowly dying in interest and that trend should accelerate.

Hall of famers, key rookies and players with high name recognition for pre-1970 cards will retain value due to lower supply and condition issues. Demand will decrease but be offset by low supply.

These are my predictions as a collector for over 50 years of cards, comics and books. I seriously hope most collectors aren't investing big money in their collections. Leave your money to your kids in another form.

When it comes to the Millennials and play money, I don't think us Gen X collectors or the Boomers can appreciate the financial ass-kicking most of them have absorbed. The jobs that are out there don't pay or benefit like they used to (anyone remember non-contributory health insurance, profit sharing and defined benefit plans?) and the cost of living in any major city has gone way up. Add that to the debt burden resulting from the astronomical rise in cost of higher education (my law school has gone from $4500 a year when I attended to nearly $30K a year now) and you don't have a lot of play money. Most of my Millennial cousins are dead-ass broke even though they are employed, living with roommates or with parental assistance, at a time I was banking a large chunk of my salary and amassing my collection.

That said, one thing I've noticed in running my eBay store and the occasional show table is that cheap stuff moves, even during really bad times. I think it always will. People don't really mind spending a few bucks on a card. The things that are going down the crapper financially are the middling quality slabbed cards from mainstream sets. You can't even make back the cost of a slab on many 6-8 graded cards. I spend a lot of time at the National harvesting super nice $1-$5 raw cards, cards that we all used to send to PSA and then flip into the set building registry market. It is almost startling to see what you can get for a buck or two. If you are willing to go lower grade, you can pick up amazing superstars too.

Another factor is the worthlessness of most post-1980 cards. Take out the key rookies, chase cards and parallel sets and the cards that most kids start out collecting will never, ever gain any value. They're worthless cardboard. You could argue that a 'pure' collector wouldn't care, and that's a valid point, but when you're talking about putting money into something it isn't easy to watch it deflate to nearly worthless status. I imagine that would really disenchant a young collector. Remember these:

http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...%20big%203.jpg

I picked up a complete set, unopened, at a show for less than it was originally sold for in 1986. I remember sitting at a table at a show about ten years ago when a young collector brought me an album full of 1991 cards that he'd clearly taken a lot of time to collect and was very proud of, but that had no resale value at all. What do you say to a guy like that?

Good points, except a story came out recently that Millennials have more saved for retirement than Gen Xers. :eek:

So, they're doing something right.

I agree with everything above, except your last statement. Vintage sports cards are as good an investment that you can leave. That is what my son is getting. They are extremely easy to liquidate. I wish my dad had done the same instead of parking his investments with crooked financial institutions. If it wasn't for the few hard assets, precious metals, I would be screwed in taking care of my mother. Those people make those in the sportscard industry look like saints.

The death of set collecting is the high price of common no name players. Those who collected in the 50s and 60s chased sets because the fillers cost a penny, nickle, or dime. Dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars in no name fillers when you can put the same money into any of the top 10 or so names, easily recognized by any collector in the future, seems foolish to me. Invest smart by buying "waterfront property" and you will be ok.

I've heard more than one substantially younger person state that he or she "would die without my phone." And the craziest thing is that they aren't exaggerating all that much.

Best wishes,

Larry

Sounds like some sage advice to follow. Reminds me of a famous investor who once said that when others were selling their stocks in droves, he was there to buy them, and when the masses were buying, he would sell. The contrarian approach to buying high, and selling low--i.e., avoid the herd mentality. I don't think baseball collectors will abandon baseball history or the history of baseball cards. More common (but still relatively scarce) items may be a bit cyclical, a la coins, but demand for them isn't going to vanish from the face of the earth forever.

Best wishes Glyn,

Larry

That's why demand for truly desirable, rare, significant items is like a step pyramid--one layer falls off, but the value doesn't fall very far due to the tremendous strength of the base demand at a lower level value immediately below it.

Regards,

Larry

I'd be like Rick on Pawnstars when he was recently presented a collection of Pokemon cards supposedly worth approximately $400K. If you can't flip 'em quick for a nice profit, best to walk away rather than be stuck with them down the road.

Just my 25 cents worth,

Larry

Absolutely +1. As long as there is baseball, there will be interest in baseball history, and how the outstanding players of today compare to the greats of yester-year. That history gives the present game a great sense of context.

Well stated,

Larry

Sports card collecting will endure as long as there are folks on this earth who love sports and who also were born with the "collector gene."

+1

I also echo what Adam stated above, very well said.

Unlike most hobbies sports cards have one thing going for them that many others don't... people still love sport! As long as that is the case there will be a small portion of those that like to collect as well and will do so. The desirable items will change and evolve over time but that has always been the case.

In our hobby true rarity used to be the most desirable thing along with set collecting, then came condition rarity, then came type collecting, then came a few "rookie" card crazes, currently there is a big push for rarer mega-stars like Ruth items. Tomorrow it will be something else that is the hot thing. We may not see the meteoric growth of high end like we had in the past but there is a lot that has stayed essentially unchanged in price for decades (mid & lower grade Goudey's are worth the same now as they were in the late 1980's to early 1990's when I was buying them while T206's have exploded and back then they were actually seen as less desirable). One needs to stay in front of the coming trends in any hobby.

I have 4 children (3 born since being a member of this site). My oldest is 7. There are posts from back when she loved looking through my cards and reading auction catalogs with me. When one would come in the mail she would be ecstatic to go through it with me when I got home from work. She even, as a 3 year old, stole an Aaron card from me and I found it in her toy box. I went ahead and let her keep it and put it in her room on display.
As the years have gone on she has already started shifting, still a collector but with no specific focus (including but not limited to rocks, pokemon cards, shopkins, my little pony figures). She does enjoy the cards, but I can tell it is purely for the connection with me not the cards.

My 5 year old daughter has a very short attention span and only wants what her siblings want, but that could be anything at any given time so there is no special interest towards cards.

My 4 year old son desperately asks for cards all the time. His interest lies mainly with basketball, but likes the cards of any sport (so from me that is baseball). Packs of cards have been used by us to motivate him for a few years. He has been asking about storage for them recently and wants me to read the names of every card one by one to him.

My 3 year old son has just recently shown a true interest in cards. He has been delayed in potty training so they have been used as a motivator to get him to use the toilet. The other night when I went to check on them after they had gone to bed he had all his stuffed animals and blankets shoved to the end of the bed and was only cuddling his packs of cards (he insist they always be put back in the packs so he can "reopen" them at later times).

I am always aware that their interest is only there to feel closer to me, and I don't know where it will be in years as I try to transition out of the hobby. It has been interesting to watch the transition of each child and their interest in the cards.

Andy - very excellent post. I wish I had thought of using baseball cards for potty training and for other positive behavior rewards! Instead, we motivated with ice cream.

Yeah in retrospect I think I would’ve been willing to crap in a bucket for a pack of cards too.

I know from watching Star Trek that in the year 2366 a Topps 1962 Roger Maris card from the Kivas Fajo collection is worth a bunch of whatever the local currency was then. How they maintained the scent of bubble gum though is as much a mystery to me as transporter and warp drive technology