Fad Collectibles

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Posted By: identify7

I certainly do not know which areas of baseball card specialization are likely to be of general emphasis to card collectors over the long haul. But in other fields of collecting, different types of items become popular for brief periods, while others have staying power.

Some examples of specialization which may or may not have long term interest to card collectors are shown below. Your comments on these and other collecting groups are of interest.

rookie cards
HOFs
ghost images
overprints
autographed cards
error cards, misprints, miscuts, etc.
color variations
grade rarity cards
rare cards
scarce cards

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Posted By: Daniel Bretta

Jewish players
Cards with catcher's equipment

Those are just a couple of ones I've noticed people here collect.

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Posted By: jay behrens

I've known a few people that collected cards of players wearing glasses.

Jay

My place is full of valuable, worthless junk.

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Posted By: Anonymous

But which has the best liklihood of holding its popularity?

My vote in the order of most likely to succeed first is:



1) autographed cards
2) HOFs
3) rare cards
4) rookie cards
5) ghost images
6) grade rarity
7) overprints
8) Jewish players
9) color variations
10) catcher's equipment
11) error cards
12) scarce cards
13) wearing glasses

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Posted By: warshawlaw

are always going to hold their popularity with people of the subject ethnicity.

I'd also vote for printing variations/ghosts in the major prewar sets, simply because these are interesting (and never-ending) ways to vary major set collections.

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Posted By: jay behrens

I wouldn't rate autographed cards anywhere near the top for the obvious reasons that have been stated on this board many times about autographs.

Jay

My place is full of valuable, worthless junk.

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Posted By: tbob

How about cards of players who died tragically early in their careers like Addie Joss, Eddie Grant, etc?

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Posted By: Bryan

Probobly not really a fad but along the same lines as Jewish ballplayers, I know someone who collects cards of the first African-American on each major league team.

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Posted By: Bill Kasel

Portraits & horizontals?

Both are readily collected as type/fad.

Bill

"The beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more for dessert"

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Posted By: Alan

You are probably right in that collecting cards of Jewish players is a fad, at least for me. I might be collecting something else at some point. Who knows.

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Posted By: identify7

Jay: the reason that I rated autographed baseball cards highest is because autograph collecting is among the oldest hobbies in this country. It has already proven that it has "staying power". And baseball players is a small subset of autograph collecting.

In no way is this, and some other collecting focuses cited above, considered a fad by me.

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Posted By: Judge Dred

fad, (noun) - A fashion that is taken up with great enthusiasm for a brief period of time; a craze.

Early 20th century baseball card collectors probably looked at Colgans Chips, Domino Discs and a few other "round" cards as "fads" because they were produced for a brief period of time and the mainstay of cards seemed to be square or rectangular.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

Most of the stuff we are discussing is established and will always have a niche as long as cards are being collected. To me a fad is like a dot-com stock: zero to 60 to zero again. At worst, the stuff we are discussing will have surges in popularity.

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Posted By: jay behrens

When I saw the subject, I thought he was gonna be talking about beanie babies. Those crappy inserts, those could probably be called a fad. At least lets hope chopping up the history of the game is won't last.

Jay

My place is full of valuable, worthless junk.

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Posted By: identify7

To me, baseball cards which may be a fad collectible are cards which have a price chiefly supported by their popularity. Examples of this include '52 T Mantle which is not a rookie card, ghost image cards which most until recently commanded little if any premium, low population cards which were undocumented as such until grading (and may be grossly inaccurately represented), and recent vintage error cards - I have to wonder how long specific printing errors will demand a premium.

Cards which have the potential to cost extra due to sporadic collector demand for them would include, for example, color variations in sets such as e94, Jewish player cards, and numerous other examples.

The initial point of of this thread was an attempt to identify the areas of collecting specialization which are likely to support long term interest and escalating prices. That is, are cards which show catchers gear of sufficient interest to justify extra cost just because a catchers mask is shown?

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Posted By: warshawlaw

I disagree on the issue of errors and print variations with those who would label them fads. There is a long history of collecting these kinds of cards; many of the acknowledged rarities of the hobby are nothing more than error cards (T206 Magie, Doyle). The key to the emergence of the market on these cards is information flow. I think that as we become more aware of the existence of these cards via the internet and ebay, interest in them grows. I don't see people just dropping these the way they dropped pogs.

On the flip side, I think that a "grab at any price" mentality we are seeing in E cards is inevitably faddish; there will always be collectors of specific cards and sets but I don't see the basic e card as so rare that it justifies the grab whatever you can get at whatever price you can pay for it behavior that we are sometimes seeing. Before the E-warriors out there jump all over me, I am not talking about the really tough cards and sets, nor am I saying that the prices today are entirely reflective of a fad. A good portion of the price escalation recognizes that these cards are much tougher to find than T206s, but it is beginning to feel a lot like an irrational market for the common E sets (e.g., E90-1, E121, etc.) in lower grades.

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Posted By: Anson

Portraits and short-prints are also popular. It's only a fad if it doesn't stick around for a while

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Posted By: Julie

of guys who died young (Gehrig, Clemente--hey--they'd be treasured anyway!)--you should see the hockey guys. Vezina, Morenz, Joe Hall, Sawchuk--sort of (young, but at the end of his career). Such a wailing and gnashing of teeth!

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Posted By: Judge Dred

So, does anyone want to start a thread called NICHE collecting?

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Posted By: DJ

I collect Tough Backs and crazy Old Judge poses. I like the T206's with uncommon backs and photos of mascots, "little people" and athletes holding their pets. I don't collect Zeenuts but I would like Fatty eating the ball and a scan of David's Grover Alexander has me looking.

Fads I miss: Flag pole sitting, pockets on my shoes (with velcro), glass eating, Mexican jumping beans, the video game arcades holding my beloved Dig Dug, Bouffant Hairdo's, Slogan buttons, Balsa wood airplanes, ant farms, letter sweaters and of course the extinct Flapper. Is Zima a fad? (drinking one now).

DJ

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Posted By: Julie

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Posted By: warshawlaw

my 1st foreign card.

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Posted By: Bryan

Can anyone think of a bigger fad than the error card craze from 1989 to 1990? It all started with the Upper Deck Dale Murphy reverse negative and the Fleer Billy Ripken and then exploded. I remember the 1990 Nolan Ryan errors going for $100 a piece and card shops selling packs from early shipments for 4x times amount of a regular pack. Now the 1990 Nolan Ryans are worth nothing.

Although the Billy Ripken and the Dale Murphy card still are in demand it commands no where near the amount it did when the error craze was at it peak.