Downward trend in card values?

[cesarcap]

I'm 50 and my 11 and 13 yr old boys who play baseball (rec, travel andLL) essentially all 4 seasons do not collect baseball cards. They of course have sports games on their devices but have no interest in baseball cards, old or new. Hardly any interest in reading any of the classic baseball books or Baseball Digest either.

But one of my younger son's PSA 9 Pokemon card is worth way more than my 52B Mantle or Mays, 57T Mantle or any of my 86/7 F Jordans.

I actually want to build more sets so wouldn't mind more correcting to come but I still covet those HOF RC's.

[OlderTheBetter]

Will there be future generations of collectors of anything in the numbers we see today? I seriously doubt it. The digital world is much different than the one we grew up in and the passion for ephemera of all kinds is on the wane by the under-40 crowd. There will always be enthusiasts but they will become scarcer. Interest in hard-copy anything is decreasing overall.

We're already seeing an obvious decline it in the antiquarian book market as well as in comic books that are not first appearances, key issues or low-print variants.

Set building in almost all collectibles is slowly dying in interest and that trend should accelerate.

Hall of famers, key rookies and players with high name recognition for pre-1970 cards will retain value due to lower supply and condition issues. Demand will decrease but be offset by low supply.

These are my predictions as a collector for over 50 years of cards, comics and books. I seriously hope most collectors aren't investing big money in their collections. Leave your money to your kids in another form.

[Exhibitman]

When it comes to the Millennials and play money, I don't think us Gen X collectors or the Boomers can appreciate the financial ass-kicking most of them have absorbed. The jobs that are out there don't pay or benefit like they used to (anyone remember non-contributory health insurance, profit sharing and defined benefit plans?) and the cost of living in any major city has gone way up. Add that to the debt burden resulting from the astronomical rise in cost of higher education (my law school has gone from $4500 a year when I attended to nearly $30K a year now) and you don't have a lot of play money. Most of my Millennial cousins are dead-ass broke even though they are employed, living with roommates or with parental assistance, at a time I was banking a large chunk of my salary and amassing my collection.

That said, one thing I've noticed in running my eBay store and the occasional show table is that cheap stuff moves, even during really bad times. I think it always will. People don't really mind spending a few bucks on a card. The things that are going down the crapper financially are the middling quality slabbed cards from mainstream sets. You can't even make back the cost of a slab on many 6-8 graded cards. I spend a lot of time at the National harvesting super nice $1-$5 raw cards, cards that we all used to send to PSA and then flip into the set building registry market. It is almost startling to see what you can get for a buck or two. If you are willing to go lower grade, you can pick up amazing superstars too.

Another factor is the worthlessness of most post-1980 cards. Take out the key rookies, chase cards and parallel sets and the cards that most kids start out collecting will never, ever gain any value. They're worthless cardboard. You could argue that a 'pure' collector wouldn't care, and that's a valid point, but when you're talking about putting money into something it isn't easy to watch it deflate to nearly worthless status. I imagine that would really disenchant a young collector. Remember these:



I picked up a complete set, unopened, at a show for less than it was originally sold for in 1986. I remember sitting at a table at a show about ten years ago when a young collector brought me an album full of 1991 cards that he'd clearly taken a lot of time to collect and was very proud of, but that had no resale value at all. What do you say to a guy like that?

[silvor]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

When it comes to the Millennials and play money, I don't think us Gen X collectors or the Boomers can appreciate the financial ass-kicking most of them have absorbed. The jobs that are out there don't pay or benefit like they used to (anyone remember non-contributory health insurance, profit sharing and defined benefit plans?) and the cost of living in any major city has gone way up.

Good points, except a story came out recently that Millennials have more saved for retirement than Gen Xers.

So, they're doing something right.

[rats60]

Originally Posted by OlderTheBetter

Will there be future generations of collectors of anything in the numbers we see today? I seriously doubt it. The digital world is much different than the one we grew up in and the passion for ephemera of all kinds is on the wane by the under-40 crowd. There will always be enthusiasts but they will become scarcer. Interest in hard-copy anything is decreasing overall.

We're already seeing an obvious decline it in the antiquarian book market as well as in comic books that are not first appearances, key issues or low-print variants.

Set building in almost all collectibles is slowly dying in interest and that trend should accelerate.

Hall of famers, key rookies and players with high name recognition for pre-1970 cards will retain value due to lower supply and condition issues. Demand will decrease but be offset by low supply.

These are my predictions as a collector for over 50 years of cards, comics and books. I seriously hope most collectors aren't investing big money in their collections. Leave your money to your kids in another form.

I agree with everything above, except your last statement. Vintage sports cards are as good an investment that you can leave. That is what my son is getting. They are extremely easy to liquidate. I wish my dad had done the same instead of parking his investments with crooked financial institutions. If it wasn't for the few hard assets, precious metals, I would be screwed in taking care of my mother. Those people make those in the sportscard industry look like saints.

The death of set collecting is the high price of common no name players. Those who collected in the 50s and 60s chased sets because the fillers cost a penny, nickle, or dime. Dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars in no name fillers when you can put the same money into any of the top 10 or so names, easily recognized by any collector in the future, seems foolish to me. Invest smart by buying "waterfront property" and you will be ok.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by rats60

I agree with everything above, except your last statement. Vintage sports cards are as good an investment that you can leave. That is what my son is getting. They are extremely easy to liquidate. I wish my dad had done the same instead of parking his investments with crooked financial institutions. If it wasn't for the few hard assets, precious metals, I would be screwed in taking care of my mother. Those people make those in the sportscard industry look like saints.

The death of set collecting is the high price of common no name players. Those who collected in the 50s and 60s chased sets because the fillers cost a penny, nickle, or dime. Dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars in no name fillers when you can put the same money into any of the top 10 or so names, easily recognized by any collector in the future, seems foolish to me. Invest smart by buying "waterfront property" and you will be ok.

Absolutely +1. As long as there is baseball, there will be interest in baseball history, and how the outstanding players of today compare to the greats of yester-year. That history gives the present game a great sense of context.

Well stated,

Larry

[ValKehl]

Sports card collecting will endure as long as there are folks on this earth who love sports and who also were born with the "collector gene."

[rhettyeakley]

Originally Posted by ValKehl

Sports card collecting will endure as long as there are folks on this earth who love sports and who also were born with the "collector gene."

+1

I also echo what Adam stated above, very well said.

Unlike most hobbies sports cards have one thing going for them that many others don't... people still love sport! As long as that is the case there will be a small portion of those that like to collect as well and will do so. The desirable items will change and evolve over time but that has always been the case.

In our hobby true rarity used to be the most desirable thing along with set collecting, then came condition rarity, then came type collecting, then came a few "rookie" card crazes, currently there is a big push for rarer mega-stars like Ruth items. Tomorrow it will be something else that is the hot thing. We may not see the meteoric growth of high end like we had in the past but there is a lot that has stayed essentially unchanged in price for decades (mid & lower grade Goudey's are worth the same now as they were in the late 1980's to early 1990's when I was buying them while T206's have exploded and back then they were actually seen as less desirable). One needs to stay in front of the coming trends in any hobby.

[bn2cardz]

I have 4 children (3 born since being a member of this site). My oldest is 7. There are posts from back when she loved looking through my cards and reading auction catalogs with me. When one would come in the mail she would be ecstatic to go through it with me when I got home from work. She even, as a 3 year old, stole an Aaron card from me and I found it in her toy box. I went ahead and let her keep it and put it in her room on display.
As the years have gone on she has already started shifting, still a collector but with no specific focus (including but not limited to rocks, pokemon cards, shopkins, my little pony figures). She does enjoy the cards, but I can tell it is purely for the connection with me not the cards.

My 5 year old daughter has a very short attention span and only wants what her siblings want, but that could be anything at any given time so there is no special interest towards cards.

My 4 year old son desperately asks for cards all the time. His interest lies mainly with basketball, but likes the cards of any sport (so from me that is baseball). Packs of cards have been used by us to motivate him for a few years. He has been asking about storage for them recently and wants me to read the names of every card one by one to him.

My 3 year old son has just recently shown a true interest in cards. He has been delayed in potty training so they have been used as a motivator to get him to use the toilet. The other night when I went to check on them after they had gone to bed he had all his stuffed animals and blankets shoved to the end of the bed and was only cuddling his packs of cards (he insist they always be put back in the packs so he can "reopen" them at later times).

I am always aware that their interest is only there to feel closer to me, and I don't know where it will be in years as I try to transition out of the hobby. It has been interesting to watch the transition of each child and their interest in the cards.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by cesarcap

I'm 50 and my 11 and 13 yr old boys who play baseball (rec, travel andLL) essentially all 4 seasons do not collect baseball cards. They of course have sports games on their devices but have no interest in baseball cards, old or new. Hardly any interest in reading any of the classic baseball books or Baseball Digest either.

But one of my younger son's PSA 9 Pokemon card is worth way more than my 52B Mantle or Mays, 57T Mantle or any of my 86/7 F Jordans.

I actually want to build more sets so wouldn't mind more correcting to come but I still covet those HOF RC's.

I'd be like Rick on Pawnstars when he was recently presented a collection of Pokemon cards supposedly worth approximately $400K. If you can't flip 'em quick for a nice profit, best to walk away rather than be stuck with them down the road.

Just my 25 cents worth,

Larry