Today's Economist magazine (or 'newspaper' as they call it) has an article on baseball card investing as a classic financial speculation example. What caught my attention was the photo of the T206 Wagner on the cover of the magazine.
http://www.economist.com/news/christ...ll-card-bubble
I would disagree with the overall premise of the article. It is nothing new to discuss the bubble of the 80s/90s. We all know that investors who bought cases of 1988 Donruss thinking they would become rich failed in that pursuit. But the examples provided by the author are the T206 Wagner, 1952 Mantle, 1963 Pete Rose, and 1973 Mike Schmidt. By any measure those cards would have been fantastic speculative investments in the 80s, 90s, and now. All have held their value or sky-rocketed.
There was another similar article only days ago. What is often forgotten in the discussion is the role of TPGs in deflating speculation of that era. Before TPGs, most collectors and speculators defaulted to the highest values in the guides because they had no way of knowing better and assumed (or wanted to believe) their card was Mint or Near Mint. The advent of TPGs proved that most cards are not that high grade and are not deserving of top dollar.
Too many of these articles and the general public believe the 80s/90s bubble affected the hobby as a whole. Vintage cards were a great investment then and still are. Thus I would assert the premise of the article is slightly wrong.