Posted By:
edacraI picked up an old Beckett Price Guide from 1988 and was shocked at how much of the vintage pricing was still accurate. Okay not, all - many cards had doubled in book value for a 100% profit, assuming you were buying and selling at that rate to begin with. Where many rare issues jumped in price, others had settled, or are just outright undervalued in comparison. That I can buy any pre-war cards today at 1988 prices or possibly even lower says everything.
It comes down to, what percentage of a profit do you need to make for this to be worthwhile? Even Mr. Mint (oh hush!) explained in his book (no really) how if the card market bursted, he would trade in his "pennies on the dollar" plan (shhh!) for say, pennies on the half dollar. Or quarter. In other words, if you buy a Christy Mathews silk for $50, and sell it a month later for $60, you just made $10. Was it worth the effort to get that $10? If you do enough volume then sure. How many older issue cards can you say are way below what the market demand is? 20's Exhibits are probably the most consistantly mentioned cards which are undervalued and hard to come by - but there's no way to really gage when to buy/sell without just working on intuition. Could it be it's a good time to sell now, while everyone is hot for them thinking they're the next investment? If you're actively buying these cards with a portfolio menality, what's a healthy buy price? Hard to say unless you know where the pricing will eventually land. So the only sure investment are cards selling for about half of their street market value. Great if you can find them.
All I know is there are few steals left on Ebay at the moment. Two months ago, a lot of nice cards were going bidless, or selling at their opening price with one bid. Not so much anymore.