Posted By:
T206CollectorThe last year I bought shiny stuff with any regularity was 1998. I pulled a Travis Lee parallel insert rookie card that was limited to 100 copies, before Lee ever played a single game. Almost immediately, I sold it on an internet baseball card swap board (I wasn't an ebayer yet) for $100.
Shiny stuff is no fun since it never holds its value. Topps may only issue 2007 Jeter cards this year with gold borders? So what, Topps has already issued millions of Jeter cards. There will never be any true scarcity -- and, with modern players, what's to say that they won't suffer dramatic declines in performance or injury? Jeter's cards are already priced as if he is going to be a member of the 3,000 hit club and a first ballot HOFer. There will not be a meaningful bump in the value of his cards that can be attributed to anything other than inflation.
And, if you are savvy enough to get in on the ground floor of a rookie nobody's ever heard of, chances are you won't have the right issue to go to the bank. I purchased 50 Frank Thomas rookies for $.25 each when he was in college. 3 MVP awards later, they were worth $4.00 each, and I could sell them for $2.00 each to a dealer. "You should've bought 50 of the 1990 Leaf issue, kid." Ditto with Jeter. "You should've bought 50 of the 1993 SP Foil, kid."
Of course, if you're just collecting the new stuff to collect and you don't care about relative scarcity and inability to hold value -- well, then hey, enjoy!