Investing or collecting

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Posted By: JohnnyH

Everyone always says all players care about these days is money, is that how many collectors are becoming ? Especially the newer ones ? How will this affect the hobby as many cards begin to either lose or not gain any value over the upcoming years if the collectors are only concerned with increased value instead of having a true love for the hobby. The continued talk of investment of cards is only asking for a big letdown, especially in high graded cards in my opinion ( unless they are very rare ). It only takes a couple of people to drive the price way beyond insanity, but who is going to take their place and be there to buy them when the time comes to sell in 5-10 years or longer ? My concern with investing in cards would be that the core big time buyers are older and who is going to replace them ? With baseball becoming not much more popular than hockey how is that going to affect vintage cards ? Many vintage collectors lived through the 1950's, 60's, and 70's when baseball was a part of the american fabric so they can probably justify spending large amounts of cash to touch the past they long for , but that is no longer the case and needs to be considered I would think. With all this talk of investing in cards, without increases in value ( which I do not see except in the rarest of cards ) won't the negative talk of over value and stale market take affect and cause the money only collectors to jump ship as quickly as they jumped on ? It will make it easier for true collectors to get some nice cards at good price, but might cause an investor collector to pull their hair out and jump off a bridge.