Posted By:
Bruce Dorskind
The rare baseball card market is quite fragile and thinly traded.
Our best guess is that less than $50 million is spent on pre WW II baseball
cards. if one limits the discussion to individual items with a
value of $1000 or more.
With that thesis as our base, the influx of $7.5 million represents 15% of the market.
Most items that sell for $5,000 or more draw less than 5 bidders at that threshold.
Accordingly, an influx of a large amount of money from a few sources will
greatly influence the market.
The most knowledgeable collectors in the hobby, perhaps there are two dozen,
know a great deal about the history of certain cards, companies or remember
stories about collectors...but they have little influence on the direction of the market.
Much like the new power of Sovereign Wealth on Wall Street, a few sources are
now shaping the market.
It has long been our view (since Copeland) and certainly since the web became omnipresent,
that a the addition or loss of interest of 3-7 collectors will be the single biggest factor
in influencing the value of rare cards.
Some may argue otherwise, but we believe if as a few as eight major collectors lost interest
that prices would drop as much as 30% on certain issues and certainly the prices of PSA
registry sets, in Grades 8 and 9 would implode.
Certainly there are factors other than money which influence any hobby. However, this
hobby is unregulated, packed with many obscure issues with limited availability and
controlled whether one admits it or not, by a few suppliers.
It is not difficult to sell cards or buy cards in public auctions. It is, however, as Mastro,
REA, Goodwin and others will tell you to identify and obtain world class collections.
One factor that serves as a catalyst for brining said collections to market is the
record prices REA (and a few others) achieve. Which is why we believe that it is important
to understand where the "new collectors" are and where their interests lie.
Bruce Dorskind
America's Toughest Want List