[jchcollins]

Supply and demand with vintage cards can be a funny animal. There are far fewer presentable T206 cards on the open market today than 1950’s cards in much better shape - but yet the demand for postwar stars still means that Mantle, Aaron, Williams, Clemente, et al in nice shape are hundreds of dollars per card if not more, depending on the issue. Some of these cards, indeed likely most of them are not what you would consider rare or scarce by any definition of the words. Similarly, the demand side of the equation for modern cards like the ‘86 Jordan, the ‘89 UD Griffey, the SP Jeter, etc. is still just huge. It’s interesting to compare to junk era rookies...why is Chipper Jones worth a comparative pittance to some later 90’s rookies? Was the overproduction ramp-up that dramatic?

All told, I would still be very surprised if anything short of a huge world event (this pandemic so far would not seem to qualify...) significantly damages the vintage market long term - even for postwar HOF’ers. It would take quite a lot for everyone everywhere not to be able to afford stuff to the point where ‘52 Mantles and Rose and Ryan rookies just started falling off the map and wind up with bargain bin price tags.

I digress. Demand is not necessarily less of a factor than supply - witness junk era cards...but I’m just more interested in the demand side of it, at least for the moment.


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