Quote:
Originally Posted by JustinD
I would actually doubt that hypothesis.
The production numbers are lower and the collecting base are adult due to the immense cost of anything other than base sets. It is also a collecting group that has fully embraced TPGs.
Anyone that is sitting on a childhood collection or has not been avid in collecting in the past 20 years is unlikely to have used a TPG and thus the cards are unaccounted for. As the boomers and older pass on, their children may look to move those inheritances and will be adding to the pop numbers for sale.
The first thing modern collectors do is sleeve cards from the pack and ship off anything to the TPGs.
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Agreed that modern collectors are likely to perceive investment value in their cards and treat them accordingly. But I would, as a Devil's Advocate, also say that despite lower production numbers, this perception would lead to a higher chance of more investment grade examples of a card. There are likely baby boomers sitting on ungraded collections, but how many of those cards are actually investment grade?
For example, there is a single example of the Nolan Ryan rookie at PSA 10, while there are 22 examples of the Derek Jeter 1993 SP at PSA 10. Despite the lower production numbers on the Jeter, I would contend that there is a greater likelihood that more possible PSA 10 examples of the Jeter are in collections and currently ungraded than there are ungraded of the Ryans (there are, of course, many more ungraded Ryan rookies out there, but I'm thinking there are very few investment grade examples).
Another example could be the 2000 Playoff Contenders Tom Brady rookie auto, which in my limited research appears to have a print run of 3,000 (saw that number on the Blowout forum). PSA looks to have graded 14/148 at 10, while BGS has 15/643 at 9.5 (Beckett's site is a bit confusing for me on this card, but I think I've read that right). That leaves (approximately) 2,209 ungraded examples of the card, and with the modern preservation logic, most would have been well protected by their owners. If the 3.6 percent of the current population at 10 PSA/9.5 BGS holds, thats an additional 81 Gem Mint Tom Brady auto rookies that could enter the market. Of course, it could be argued that demand would still exceed that supply, but I'm playing Devil's Advocate about the RISK of investment grade cards when it comes to the modern market. These numbers would indicate that it is more likely the market will see a number of these investment grade Gem Mint Brady rookies (or of the Jeter SP rookie) become available through new grading than the Gem Mint Ryan rookie.