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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Joe makes an overlooked point: everyone out here seems to assume that card prices will just continue to go up forever in a straight line, much the way investors thought that the stock indexes would never falter in early 2000 after 7-8 years of steady, large gains. I remember having this discussion with a friend of mine about Cisco stock. He told me that he had bought it two years prior and the price had doubled each of the two years. I asked him if it bothered him that Cisco's earnings had only increased 50% each of those two years, not the 100% that the price increase had suggested. He responded that the stock market was different now and prices could go up faster than earnings. I laughed. That was when Cisco was around 80 a share. Now it's in the mid-20s. Baseball card values will eventually have a similar tumble.