there is a certain level that the speculators and investors will buy the autographs for so the market will never totally crash, but it certainly could take a hit. in the early 2000's when boxing autos really started going up, there was a point where a simple sonny liston signature on anything, a simple slip of paper, could not really be had in the retail market, ebay/dealers for under 900 dollars. It was about 900 dollars or you couldn't get one. Then when the recession hit and autograph took a hit, you could get one for 700, even 500 and I once saw one sell on ebay for 350 dollars, and it was a good Liston autograph. Now it has bolstered back up a bit but not at the high level mark, but I think some collectors join certain hobbies as adults. I started collecting boxing autographs in my 20's and didnt watch or following boxing much as a kid.
I know roman coin collectors didnt follow their favorite roman politician when they were a kid, but somewhere along the way they thought it would be fun to collect old roman coins. whether the market will be as strong for baseball autographs remain to be seen, but I think the biggest names will hold their value.
There is only a finite number of real babe ruth autographs in the hobby and even if the GROWTH of collectors slow down, the population increases as a whole and there might even be more collectors, just not as many as if the growth continued at its highest pace, yet there will still be the same number of Ruth autographs for the most part, (undiscdovered ones notwithstanding.)
I do think that card collecting is in for a bigger shock than autographs. The rare, old vintage cards will do okay, anything in the 80's 90's and newer will suffer i think.
There used to be an ad in the magazines showing Ken Griffey jr's rookie card for upper deck with the line "The Ken griffey junior college fund" with the hook that if you invested in Griffey rookie cards, in 20 or 30 years you could put your kids through college. didnt quite work out that way, and it's not Griffey's fault, he hit over 600 home runs. it's just they made millions of that card.
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