Card Prices During Recessions

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by paleocards

I track sold prices on eBay and AHs for all of my "blue chips" (see the other active thread for "blue chip" def'n - haha). Here's some of the average annual sale data I've collected:

The take-away from these data for me are that blue chip baseball cards are a good (long-term) investment. There seems to be a consistent dip in sale prices in the year or two post-recession (2009, 2010) but they all re-gained those losses and continued to appreciate. And of course, the last two years' gains have been unprecedented.

Great compilation of data and I think it illustrates what many here have stated which is that over the long haul, cards have done well. Sure the data presented is limited but my guess is that the average price even for a 1965 Topps Harmon Killebrew PSA 7 is higher today than it was in 2005 and well above the rate of inflation.

Even with prices on many vintage cards being softer since April 2022, I think most are still well above their pre pandemic highs.