In December of 18 this was a hot topic and then the market went on a 41% run and it was never mentioned again.
There may be some correlation at the ultra high end but I don't believe it exists as much as many think for most cards. In my view employment trends are much more important as cash flow is king.
One of the reasons the card market is so hot is that many smaller time investors can enter the market with very limited funds and actually participate. Whether one likes Gary Vee or doesn't he signaled last year that the sneaker heads were going to take their fast cash and bring it to cards and they did and basketball cards have exploded. Not just doubling but moving higher by four fold and six fold and even more. Whether this is a sustainable trend is debatable but it has happened and the market is simply scorching hot. Every segment has gotten hot as of late and I think that many people use trading cards for investment purposes and since the barriers to entry are so low and there is action at every price point it attracts all kinds.
I have routinely said I have never gotten even close to investing in anything that on a percentage basis has kept pace with my wrestling cards and this is just a tiny niche part of the market and had one taken the same dollars and put them in Lebron, or Jordan, or some other mega star they too would have seen exponential returns. This appeal isn't going away.
If the market decline accurately predicts a longer term economic decline where jobs are lost and there is true distress in the economy than disposable income will decline and this will naturally affect cards. That said a selling stampede in a wildly overbought market would generally be viewed as just a sharp correction and the probabilities still suggest the economy is sound and therefore cards will be fine.
There has been tremendous headline risk in the card market in the past year and yet it has done nothing to slow it down and it has actually accelerated during these events and as I said when this first surfaced it wouldn't affect the market and it hasn't and won't.
There is tremendous enthusiasm for cards and with modern stars like Trout and Zion and established legends like Lebron, Brady, and Jeter seeing eye popping auction results the game is far from over.
There are many that despise the word investment when it comes to their beloved hobby where they opened nickel packs and put them in their bike spokes but for the overwhelming percentage of participants they won't simply keep throwing their hard earned money into a hobby where they lose money. There are countless collectors that have seen continued appreciation in their invested or allocated dollars and it makes it much easier to keep doing this. If a nice vacation is 5k for most you probably aren't excited to spend 5k on cards and watch them turn into 1k when you could have had a ton of fun using those resources. Instead they turned into 10k and you get to admire and cherish them and have pride of ownership.
I am bullish. I remain bullish as I have the entire time and baring a victory by someone who wants to fundamentally change our entire system we will all be fine I believe.
Good luck with your collecting or collecting/investing. I don't view either as bad.
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