Auction dollars spent vis a vis ebay dollars spent

[Archive]

Posted By: warshawlaw

The same could be observed for T207 and E cards. I remember scoffing at a grouping of Tinker-Evers-Chance portraits because they were E cards not T206. Now, I would have to reverse my thinking on the two lots.

Card collectors are not like normal "investors"; they don't shift from cards to oil futures based on the perceived returns on inveetment in the two. Collectors are going after regionals, PC's, minor league cards, etc. because there has been such a run-up on MLB prewar cards. You will see some of the same shifting into other sports cards and even non-sports too. Once they are into those issues, they develop enthusiasm that does not wane over time. If anything, it increases. I think the prewar obscure stuff and especially 19th century boxing card market has run up dramatically over the last two years in part because it is so much cheaper to collect them and the set designs are identical in many cases to the baseball cards from the era.

Brings up another point about why we are not likely to see a bubble and burst bubble: card prices are driven by factors mostly unrelated to investment returns. The areas of investment action get the press and the hype because their promoters can make the most money with it, but they are not relevant to most collectors. My prediction is that people who run with the trendy stuff that every dealer can turn out (new cards in the 1980s; high-grade postwar stuff in the 1990s) will be burned when the fever ends but collectors of rarer vintage materials will end up doing just fine financially.