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T206Collector...things were a bit sluggish or stagnant in the 1990's. When I got back into baseball cards a couple of years after college in 1997, I recall T206 prices being about the same as they were in 1987 when I was knee-deep in Topps and Donruss cards, but had a friend who collected vintage stuff. With the advent of the internet, these things just took over.
You should get a copy of Scot Reader's T206 manuscript. I think it is available on T206museum.com, and other on-line sources. It is free and about the best T206 read going. He has some good explanations for the rising prices of T206 cards.
Ultimately, my opinion is that there are peaks and valleys in every market over time. If people always knew when the top of the peak was and when the bottom of the valley was then it would be very easy to live comfortably without much work. T206 cards are going up because there is a perceived lack of supply to meet current demand. If either of those curves change, price will change along with it.
I am amazed at the numbers of new T206 collectors that have been entering the market. I would guess that many of the collectors love baseball cards, but got tired of the glossy crap that was worth something upon issuance, but decreases to pennies on the dollar over a short time frame. These people want to keep collecting cards, but want something with a sustainable value. Vintage cards offer this and until someone figures out how to make modern cards valuable again, I think vintage will always offer a unique market in baseball cards.
But I think that it is very easy to imagine a world where baseball decreases so substantially in popularity that pieces of cardboard showing players on it would also decrease substantially in value. I also think it is easy to envision a world where the US economy takes a major hit and people do not want to spend cash on baseball cards which hold no inherent value. It is also a bit scary to think of all the money people in China or Russia spend on baseball cards -- i.e., zero -- and consider a world that is growing globally. Even if you include the Japanese and Dominican baseball influx, do today's Dominican kids want cards of Ty Cobb, who discriminated against minorities, or of the heroes of today?
In short, it would take a paradigm shift to cause vintage baseball cards to plummet in value. But it is not hard to imagine any number of scenarios where that would be possible. For example, in September of 1998, the popularity of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa was unprecedented. What changed in the world -- in baseball alone -- that caused their popularity to drop off so significantly? There were those, I am sure, that could have predicted such a dropoff for one reason or another. But in 1998, it was anyone's guess. Vintage cards are subject to the whims and fancies of an ever-growing and developing American populace. Where the world will take those interests is anybody's guess.