The Future
 

I'm betting that vintage baseball prices will moderate, but still increase over the next 24 months. Here's my thinking:

COVID. COVID kept middle and high income earners home and on the Internet. High income remote workers age 25-75 of the male persuasion (i.e. the "target demo for vintage baseball card collectors" ), stuck a home and flush with discretionary cash (including both long-time collectors and those who rediscovered their childhood passion), bid-up vintage baseball card prices. Some of these folks are speculators who will not be there in the future. However, there is a certain “tackiness” to baseball card collecting that will cause some of the new entrants to endure. Moreover, not all remote workers will go back to the office. Those who stay home will have an inducement to keep collecting.

Publicity. It will die down. There is no doubt that a media-driven mania surrounding cards, both on TV and print, has spiked prices to an extent. That will subside. How much is unknown.

Inflation. Today’s CPI was 0.9% month over month, which extrapolated over 12 months means 11% annual inflation may be on the way. I personally don’t believe what the Fed and certain economists say about this inflation spike being “transitory.” I’m just not buying it—especially with more “stimulus” on the table. These same economists predicted that today’s CPI number would be 0.2% instead of 0.9% (oops) and that the recent jobs report would show 1M jobs instead of just over 200K (double oops). Inflation is here to stay folks. This will act as a countervailing force to COVID opening that will bolster card prices, at least in nominal terms. TINA (there is no alternative) still applies, in the stock market as well as collectibles.

Overall, I see somewhat stable vintage card prices in the next 24 months, with a slight upward bias. As usual, high-demand sets (e.g., T206) and high-demand players (e.g., Hall of Famers) will outperform.

Of course, opinions are like you know what. Everyone has one. Thoughts welcome.

Card collecting is like real estate. The "good stuff" will weather the storm, high quality rare cards, popular pre-war sets, etc. will hold their value through a downturn. You might pay 8k for a Ruth that went for 15k at the top but it's still a Ruth. And the downturn is coming, anybody who lived through the 70's knows this. You can't overstimulate the economy without inflation. And once inflation sets in it's a painful beast to beat. Smart people know this, politicians ignore this to get re-elected.

I try to think 30 years ahead after I'm dead when my kids open 3 suitcases of cards with Al Crisafulli's kids and they all say "Jesus, he put together a nice collection".

Just before they auction it off to use that resource to live their dream.

I could not agree more Phil. Your kids are in for a treat!

One other thought: Price hikes by professional graders will raise the price floor on slabbed cards, especially in the sub-$200 category. This price hike will not translate to raw cards. Thus, the price disparity between graded and raw cards will increase, especially at lower grades. This is not advocacy, just opinion.

Just keep collecting what you like, don’t’ worry about it unless you are in this for money only joe

Hi Joe, I confess to mixed motives: I’m in it for both the joy of collecting and the money. I would not be involved at the level I am if either one were completely absent.

Not just about demand
 

Imo supply has a significant piece of the equation as well. High demand/low supply cards have the greatest opportunity to sustain and grow, followed by low demand/low supply cards, followed by high demand/high supply cards which are already seeing some price retreat and finally low demand /high supply cards.

You can't extrapolate it out like that (or even close). If that CPI number was thought to forecast even half that rate of upcoming annual inflation, stocks and bonds would've seen the likes of black monday yesterday

I think short term, prices will be somewhat stable. The guy who paid $15K for a Ruth will hold onto it (for a while at least) rather than sell for $8K. However, long term, over 20-30 years as the first big generation of collectors goes to the big BB Diamond in the sky, I could see a large influx of cards, being sold by our heirs, people with no emotional attachment to the cards and who will take what they can get. At that point I could see prices for many items go down significantly. Actually, I won't see, becasue I'll be dead, but you get the picture.

I don’t think you can talk about baseball cards in aggregate. We have seen a price spike over the last six months, but most of that is concentrated in certain big name stars. Major portions of the collecting market have showed minimal if any gains (read 19th century). I don’t think the spike was attributed to people working from home during the pandemic, or government stimulus checks. I think it was a result of a growing belief amongst some well healed parties that sports cards are an asset class that they need to add to their portfolios. These people obviously have deep pockets so even if the market turns down some there will be no reason for them to dump anything. On the contrary, as long as they believe that their initial premise was correct, they will be adding to their portfolios during any pullbacks effectively placing a floor under the market.
As for inflation, it’s been a long time since we have had any significant inflation. I think there is a lot of noise in month to month numbers and I wouldn’t jump to annualizing them. If we are in fact coming out of a pandemic (hard to believe that we are out of the woods yet with what is going on in India and Brazil and the potential for significant viral mutations there, and the non-trivial percentage of idiots in this country who refuse to be vaccinated) then I would expect a few months of higher CPI readings dropping off later in the year, basically what a lot of economists are now predicting.

I woke up this morning and had myself a beer.
The future is uncertain and the end is always near.


JM

So let it roll, baby, roll.

All night long.....

Well i did get into town about an hour ago

Took a look around to see which way the wind blow...

Many of our consignments come from family members (mostly children or widows) who have zero emotional attachments to the hobby. The most memorable consignment was a widow who sold her dead husband’s 100K collection to go on a honeymoon with her new husband - always thought that was cruel.

Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows

And that's for the people....

You guys are diggin’ the LA Woman while me and John and Ryan got the Roadhouse Blues. I can’t find my last D310s to finish the set. Not sure about John and Ryan’s blues.

Did a little chick about an hour ago.

Midnight dollies roaming.

Is the Mojo rising?

......this is the end.

I've seen The Future, brother, it is murder.

Card prices have been softening for a couple months now, and that will continue for a while. And the cards that have run up the most are the ones that are most vulnerable to correction. New collectors have run up the prices on the cards they know, but as the market contracts and there isn't new money anymore, they can only sell back to the people they bought their cards from, i.e. the old collector base.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

Would anyone view this as a time to accumulate 206's for example, over the next 6 months to a year? Keeping an eye open for about 5 years ahead and price increases?

In my mind inflation for luxury and relatively scarce goods is not only here it will escalate. There are more than a few that have benefited from this surge in cryptocurrency prices, equity prices, real estate boom, stimulus, etc. More dollars held by a decent sized populus of people chasing limited goods will no doubt cause those goods to rise in value. Which goods, classic autos, collectible art, luxury and second homes, wine, watches and yes even baseball cards. I expect in the near to mid-term even items that in the past have been seen as only a mild excessive spend/treat, let's say something like a lobster dinner will begin to be out of their reach as the growing number of more affluent reach for those items on a more regular basis and pushing up prices. We are already seeing true shortages of those type of things in a resource constrained world. Not only are more individuals reaching for these items they are hoarding them and/or seeking them with much more frequency thereby accelerating their scarcity.

My advice buy T206's in mass quantity.

I think the canary in the coal mine will be interest rates. When debt is no longer cheap, then the bubbles here, in real estate and elsewhere will pop. Also, I would not be surprised if part of the recent downturn in prices is due to people selling to cover tax bills. Tax day is Monday this year, and I think a lot of the people who got into cards/stocks/house flipping within the past year recently did their taxes were not expecting the bills they got.

"Stronger than dirt"

Hi-end collectibles are historically one of the best performers during times of inflation. I think inflation is here to stay for a while, and that these prices aren't going anywhere but up for the next 2 years.

[QUOTE=iwantitiwinit;210292

My advice buy T206's in mass quantity.[/QUOTE]

Oh, man...music to my ears. This advice was almost as welcome as Bluto's: "My advice to you is to start drinking heavily"

For the first time ever, I am seeing videos on YouTube that show guys in their early-twenties slapping down $75 - $100,000 US at card shows. Like where the f**k are they getting that kind of money from? Oh yeah, from flipping cards - where else? They think they can keep doing it until they have enough to buy a seaside mansion. :D One guy even commented how a Kobe Bryant rookie at $5,000 US was a good buy since he was getting inducted into the HOF. Folks, this was like a $700 US card before the pandemic started. How the f**k is that a good buy?

I think the future prices will largely depend on how many of these "investors" leave the hobby once society returns to normal. Another thing we have to look at is the length of time it takes for this to happen. For example, will half of these guys be gone by 2025? More than half? How many will stay in the hobby for the next ten or so years? Of course, nobody knows this.

Oh, and here is a card:

https://dw7591lwb84er.cloudfront.net...kwNjdiYWUifQ==

The meteoric rise in largely unsustainable prices has led to a high-stakes game of Modern Card Musical Chairs.

I'd hate to be one of the people left standing when the music stops.

I've wondered how many members are collectors that don't really care about values and collect just to collect. Me? I don't sell and am a collector of things I wish I had in my youth..

The 'problem' with trying to decipher what's going to happen in the future is that it really doesn't matter at all, does it? The collecting mindset of WANT continually drives us all (to varying degrees) to seek out and obtain hits to our need lists or want lists. I want to meet the person who thinks the market bubble is going to burst, so they're happy to wait a year or two to pick up the card they really want...instead of making it happen somehow, someway right now or in the very near future, even if it is above their means. I imagine that's a pretty rare individual to find in this card collecting world of ours.

I think that mindset has been around for a while; a few years ago, there was a member on here bragging about how his collection (the centerpiece was a pair of Sammy Sosa’s cleats) would sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction and he would use the proceeds to retire young to an estate in Greenwich, Conn. Nowadays the scale is certainly larger, but there’s always been dreamers in this hobby.

​

Adam! I do wonder what became of that guy.

I found relatively recent article on his collection here. He's still planning to auction his collection and retire off the proceeds, though at least he had the sense to not mention Greenwich.

Growth. There are 1.8 billion more people in the world today compared to the year 2000. That is a lot of new customers for the world's commodities. It will only grow from there.

Sports cards are more of a niche area compared to the overall economy, but vintage sports cards have a very set supply, so even a small increase in collectors can have a huge impact. However, new cards do come out every year, so the taste of the collectors play a big part.

There are 1,500 PSA graded Willie Mays rookies, and one can guess that there are probably another 2,500 in other holders or raw. That is not a lot of supply.

1. How many of the billions of new people in the world will add to the buyers of sports cards? Will they replace the dying collectors at a higher or lower rate?

2. Society preferences. How many of the recent covid collectors will stay? Can it go "viral" with so many people promoting their cards and $$$ via social media and internet?

3. Civil War or WW3. There is always that...then all bets are off.

4,000 Willie Mays rookies to buy. If only 15,000 new serious collectors emerge from those above possibilities...man, think about that.

Looking at the overall picture, I personally think the market will only go up overall, but not without some hills and valleys.

The battle will be within the market, not the market itself. Shiny vs vintage. Stars vs sets. High grade vs collector grade. Etc..

I would not underestimate the current group of kids. This is anecdotal, but in the mid 80's in middle school, there weren't many card collectors in school...just a few in each grade. By college, I was one of two people in my sphere who had collected cards and I was an athlete. Collecting by kids wasn't as dense as it is made out to be. It was certainly wide spread, but it wasn't like everyone was doing it.

You would be surprised right now with the kids. They know their sports. It isn't just modern either. We had some informal trivia the other day at school and they know the players. They are always wearing pro jerseys and stuff.

They are into cards too. In just the last month alone I've been involved in three baseball card conversations with kids, brought up by them.

One kid brought his moms cards to school. I commented on his Frank Thomas card.

Another teacher and a group of kids were talking cards, and the teacher mentioned the "game" that was on the back of the cards. He couldn't remember which year it was. I told him it was 1978 Topps. He was talking with a few kids about cards and he was telling them to keep them in good condition.

Another 3rd grade kid brought an autographed ball and asked me if I knew the signature. I looked at it, and I said "Fergie Jenkins." He looked at another kid with a look of "I told you so."

Kids haven't changed, contrary to popular belief. We change. I remember my first year teaching how a couple of teachers were talking about "today's kids," having changed, and that was in 1994. Then 25 years later a couple of younger teachers are saying the same about "today's kids." I laughed inside my head because 25 years ago THEY were the generation being talked about.

They are just as kind, silly, sneaky, and brutally honest as we all were when we were kids. As much of a disconnect that older generations look at them now, they are the same, and they will mostly connect to their childhood as a time of fondness and look back at the time when 'life was good'. There will be a sentiment for them as there is for us now. I even see it with my own oldest kids how they look back at some of the shows on Disney Channel and how "there aren't shows like that anymore on TV".

The future is good. Now if social media would just stick to cards instead of the constant strife we always see...

The only thing we know for sure is that anyone who says they know the future is full of shit and just trying to sell something.

"We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future."

--Criswell, Plan 9 From Outer Space

On The Doors theme, I feel this set of lyrics is particularly appropriate given our recent fire seasons.

I see your hair is burnin'
Hills are filled with fire

If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar

Drivin' down your freeways
Midnight alleys roam

Cops in cars, the topless bars
Never saw a woman
So alone

And a card:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...Wagner%201.jpg

Nice post with some interesting stuff to think about.
And a random Count Dracula card.

https://luckeycards.com/e222sh.jpg

Kids are not buying cards. What kid has $250 plus to spend on a box of 2021 Bowman? The current card industry isn't designed for children. It's the same bums you see at every show who have more money now because they haven't been spending as much.

This is me. Been collecting on and off since 1972. Haven't sold a card. The market has had ups and downs but I could care less. I love baseball and baseball cards for the pure enjoyment. Same with my other hobbies of vintage toys from my childhood and hot rods from my younger days.

Not to be argumentative but to a certain degree they are. I took my 10 year old to a local card show (his first) two weeks ago. He spent less the $50 and won a 2019 Donruss Football hanger box as a door prize and he could not have had more fun. He's normally pretty shy but actually wanted me to leave him alone so he could go make offers on a few of the lower end cards he wanted. Something I learned on here...there's a rear-end for every seat.

I do agree that most young kids aren't buying $250 boxes of Bowman but a lot of dad's are buying those boxes for their kids. And, depending on what age we are considering "kids" there are plenty of 16-22 year old kids carrying around tons of cash at these shows. Crazy, but true.

[QUOTE=maj78;2104374I took my 10 year old to a local card show (his first) two weeks ago. He's normally pretty shy but actually wanted me to leave him alone so he could go make offers on a few of the lower end cards he wanted. Something I learned on here...there's a rear-end for every seat.[/QUOTE]

That’s super duper cool. Thanks for sharing.

I remember being awkward as a 10-13 yr old kid, but feeling in my groove at card shows with my paper route money, trying to find deals and barter with the dealers. Great early life lessons.

A+ to you, sir. Your story made me smile.

It's really is great to hear about kids being instilled with a love for collecting. Those kids, are no doubt out there. But for years, out on the street so to speak, the only cards I've seen kids interested in collecting and getting into them with their friends, are things like Pokémon cards. I haven't seen kids in the mainstream collect baseball cards in years.

Given what they cost, card collecting isn't really geared toward kids anymore. With the Pokémon packs, while not large boxes of "product" (I really hate that word), you're talking about dealing in dollars, not coins to buy them.

There is a quote by some famous rock musician, "We used to make records for girls. Now we make them for nerds". Lol. In much the same way, you can say that cards used to be made for kids, now they're made for immature adults pulling guns on each other in parking lots.

But of course, that isn't all of us...

Today's kids are of course, more interested in gaming. It's a different world.

One of my neighbors used to work for a large toy company. He was telling me how 7-8 year olds used to be the low end of the age range they would market towards, but by the time he left they had become the upper end. Once they started turning 9-10 years old, they were so busy with after school activities that they didn’t have a whole lot of free time, and when they did have free time they were gravitating towards screens instead. I think cards are in the same boat. Topps has priced out kids, and I can’t bring myself to spend money on NFTs or spin the roulette wheel on this years once in a generation prospect who might make it big, or might be out of the league in two years. I think the last time I bought current year Topps cards was in 2007. I think they were trying to channel the 1971 set with the black borders, and fell well short of the mark.

Yes, Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! These kids have no interest in collecting sports cards.

There are cards to be had cheaply if you don't expect to open packs. The rippers sell box loads of the cards they don't want cheap on Ebay and at flea markets/toy shows. I was at a toy show this weekend and a guy had new cards cheap, cheap, cheap. Of course they weren't the prism, double rainbow, stamped 1/1, die-cut autographed acuna card or such. Just new run of the mill players that they can't flip for a few hundred bucks. The kids were all over it like liquid gold. LOL.