Money in the Hobby

[clydepepper]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

I'm getting tired of this Chicken Little crap.

I've been collecting since I was a kid and odds are that my family will be opening eBay packages the day after my funeral. Last week I bought a 100+ year old card and a 2017 card. As long as there are cards to collect and I have the ability to do so, I'm in it, and I suspect that many other collectors are the same way. We don't really care whether the 'market' is stratospheric on PSA whatevers because we are passionate about collecting, not 'investing'.

This is supposed to be fun, a hobby, a pastime. If you really worry that the hobby is going to the grave with the boomers, sell your stuff and get out. If you can't handle the idea of your cards losing value, sell your stuff and get out. Then you can stop bothering the rest of us with the money anxiety that many of us really don't care about.

Based on this post, I have one question:


Adam - while I do realize it's a little late in the game, but, would your family be willing to adopt me? I'm 62 and fat, but I am house-broken.

[Touch'EmAll]

Gee, this thread is amazing how it blew up. People have various opinions and reasons for their opinions, thats ok. But take it easy you guys. Look, if you think the market will go up, buy more. If you think the market will go down, sell.

[leaflover]

With Dibrell Williams you can have both. Norman Rockwell couldn't have done better.

[Big Six]

Originally Posted by clydepepper

Based on this post, I have one question:





Adam - while I do realize it's a little late in the game, but, would your family be willing to adopt me? I'm 62 and fat, but I am house-broken.

Get in line...I’m 45 and “stocky”!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[btcarfagno]

What perplexes me a bit are the numbers of vintage collectors that were thrown around earlier in the thread. I mean...250,000 to 1,000,000 vintage baseball card collectors? There's no way on God's green earth that the number is anywhere close to those levels. I mean, you get literally two or three new collectors working on certain vintage issues and prices can skyrocket.

If you include even the most casual of collectors of vintage, the number likely doesn't approach 10,000.

As such, it wouldn't take much "new blood" into the hobby to keep things going. There will be ebbs and flows for individual issues or players as there always has been. But to think that the hobby would need to replace 250,000 or more collectors in order for prices not to bottom out is absurd.

[ALR-bishop]

I wonder if Mr Slim still collects baseball cards

http://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrJ6...IAjiML6m5pQIU-

[mechanicalman]

Originally Posted by btcarfagno

What perplexes me a bit are the numbers of vintage collectors that were thrown around earlier in the thread. I mean...250,000 to 1,000,000 vintage baseball card collectors? There's no way on God's green earth that the number is anywhere close to those levels. I mean, you get literally two or three new collectors working on certain vintage issues and prices can skyrocket.

If you include even the most casual of collectors of vintage, the number likely doesn't approach 10,000.

As such, it wouldn't take much "new blood" into the hobby to keep things going. There will be ebbs and flows for individual issues or players as there always has been. But to think that the hobby would need to replace 250,000 or more collectors in order for prices not to bottom out is absurd.

My estimate of 250K was on TOTAL collectors, not vintage. I base that on the fact that there are about 20,000,000 total graded cards. If you make a very general assumption that each collector has 50 graded cards (some have more, some have less, some have none), you'd get about 400K card collectors. Just some rough numbers based on assumptions, but at least they're grounded in some actual data vs. some of the other arguments made in this thread.

That said, I agree with you sentiment that, when it comes to the vintage blue chip cards on which the "market index" is likely based, I'd bet the number of collectors is far smaller. Probably far less than 5k. But that's just gut. I don't think it will take many people to keep prices of blue chips healthy. As for the raw VGEX '65 Orlando Cepeda's...I have no idea what the market will do for those.

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by clydepepper

Based on this post, I have one question:


Adam - while I do realize it's a little late in the game, but, would your family be willing to adopt me? I'm 62 and fat, but I am house-broken.

Sorry I maxed out my adopting tolerance when we got Giselle (dog) and Heimao (cat).