1933 Goudey Ruth #144 or 1921 Exhibit Ruth?

[HistoricNewspapers]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Absent an unusual find or someone letting go of a hoard, the relative quantities of these cards is going to remain the same in the future. So why is it that in the future, rarity is going to dictate value more than it already does?

It reminds me of those endless posts about how Musial and Eddie Collins and Spahn are undervalued, and SOMEDAY, the market is going to value them correctly. Why?

For almost every card throughout time, the older the card for a player the more valuable/desirable it tends to be with a few notable exceptions. In time as more modern collectors venture into the pre war era, or new collectors enter, the early Ruth card automatically has that advantage of being an early playing days card.

The fact that it is more rare, if ten new serious buyers venture into the market searching for the 1921 Ruth and 10 new buyers enter searching for the 1933 Goudey...it has greater potential for bidding wars on the scarcer card since there are much less opportunities to buy one.

The same can be said of Ruth's 1920's caramel cards. More rare and early playing days.

As for Spahn, Collins, Musial etc...preferences change. Soon there will be nobody left on earth who actually saw any of them play or formed any personal connection to them to make them want to buy their cards(popularity). So the 'trend' of owning Mickey Mantle above everyone else will lose its luster as some point, especially with the trend toward baseball statistical evaluations that paint a more accurate picture of how good everyone in history actually was(not that Mantle was not elite, just that his card prices above Mays/Aaron don't reflect that Mays and Aaron actually had better careers, not just peak years).

In the year 2050, collectors wanting the best players of a generation may very well look a stat like WAR( which will be mainstream by then), and see that Eddie Collins is the tenth best of all time, and that may hold a lot of weight as to who they should buy.

Or in short, preferences simply change over time, so if you are holding the rarer item and there is any type of increase in demand, then you are holding the lottery ticket.