someone explain the new card market?

[Dpeck100]

When I was a kid in 1985 Dwight Gooden rookies jumped up to $15 or so. There were millions of copies from the three card manufactures and they still brought 30 times what a pack cost.

Fast forward to today and the production totals are a fraction and while the demand is not as high for the product you get similar explosive results that are just wildly exaggerated per card because of scarcity.

If you look at this from a purely financial perspective let's say you have 1 million copies of the 1985 Topps Dwight Gooden mentioned above. It has a market cap of $15 million. From a quick EBAY search it looks like there are roughly 1,000 Mike Trout Bowman Refractor's from the various copies in total. Lets assume a $15,000 average price. You once again have a $15 million dollar market cap.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Dpeck100

When I was a kid in 1985 Dwight Gooden rookies jumped up to $15 or so. There were millions of copies from the three card manufactures and they still brought 30 times what a pack cost.

Fast forward to today and the production totals are a fraction and while the demand is not as high for the product you get similar explosive results that are just wildly exaggerated per card because of scarcity.

If you look at this from a purely financial perspective let's say you have 1 million copies of the 1985 Topps Dwight Gooden mentioned above. It has a market cap of $15 million. From a quick EBAY search it looks like there are roughly 1,000 Mike Trout Bowman Refractor's from the various copies in total. Lets assume a $15,000 average price. You once again have a $15 million dollar market cap.

Yes, but there were maybe one or two other Gooden rookies. There are probably 500 other varieties of Trout rookies that were massively produced.

[Neal]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Yes, but there were maybe one or two other Gooden rookies. There are probably 500 other varieties of Trout rookies that were massively produced.

The Update has a huge print run, but not the variations of the card. Some of those are extremely limited. Then you have the "boutique" issues like Sterling and Finest (to a lesser extent) where the run is limited on base and refractors are numbered. Comparing Trout RCs to some 80s RCs is a stretch imo ….

The Update could easily go the way of the 89 UD Griffey, but I think this could very well be a $500 card in PSA 10 and perhaps even settle at that level. For the record, if it hits 500 I'm a seller lol!

[packs]

There are really only a few products that carry any value though: Bowman, Topps Heritage, Topps Pro Debut and Topps regular series cards. The Finest and Sterling, Panini, Donruss, etc. don't hold a ton of value. But Trout's Elite Extra cards do sell for a pretty decent price too.

[Dpeck100]

In 1986 the Donruss Jose Canseco hit $100. Unheard of at the time for a pack pulled rookie. Donruss may have had a lower print run than Topps but there was plenty to go around. The card market has evolved during this time frame and with higher values paid for cards so some of it is simply buyers willing to part with larger sums to own cards. That said if you reduce the overall supply by 99.999999% like they have today for the best copies you get exponential increases in price. It isn't really that hard to understand. I agree personally that the speculation element can be a challenge to understand but once again with the supply being reduced so dramatically it doesn't really take that much interest to push prices up. If you follow the stock market you will see a small amount of volume move thinly traded stocks quite easily. This is why you get parabolic moves in modern cards all of the time. People like to speculate and they always have and with the internet making commerce so easy it just adds fuel to the fire. I have no interest but can understand why some do. The example earlier of buying a $3 card and selling it for $275 is like crack. Very easy to get addicted too. I went to high school with a guy that plays the modern game and it does produce winning results for many so I say if you have a high risk tolerance go for it.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Baseball players are so hit or miss (literally) even among the elite prospects that I would be very surprised if people can successfully speculate over a long period of time. Sure, you can hit it real big if you pick the right guy early enough, or get lucky on timing (buy a guy before he goes on a tear and his cards double). But over time, I am skeptical. This is by far the most difficult sport to predict success, just look at how many top Baseball America prospects never pan out.

My own thought is that the best recipe for success would be to wait a couple of years to form a reasoned judgment that someone who has been solid but not spectacular has the tools to become a superstar. Although the cards of these players surely have moved up, there is probably still a fair amount of upside, and perhaps less downside given that they have demonstrated they can play at the major league level. For example, a guy like Jose Ramirez. But that said, I am not about to invest a lot of money in Jose any more than I am going to buy up Vlad Jr. or Juan Soto.

[Dpeck100]

It is impossible for every person who speculates on cards from any era to all win. I think your point is well taken and this guy is a baseball fanatic so his chances are immensely better than the person just playing momentum. He does research and really attempts to understand the players fundamentals on the field and lets that drive his speculative activity. Just like stocks you have to sell. So this means you will miss out on some monster gains and you must get comfortable with that. This is a major headwind for the participants chances of success as outliers can make it appear that ones ability to consistently be right is much better than it really is so if you get an outlier on the way down you can be toast. For the most part every hot card is better to be sold into the hype and fast thin markets push a few sales much further than can be sustained in a short window of time and in many cases permanently so most of the time you should take the money. Some of the moves have been simply incredible. Jeremy Lin was an obvious sell! Probably a ton of others could be named.

[Neal]

Originally Posted by packs

There are really only a few products that carry any value though: Bowman, Topps Heritage, Topps Pro Debut and Topps regular series cards. The Finest and Sterling, Panini, Donruss, etc. don't hold a ton of value. But Trout's Elite Extra cards do sell for a pretty decent price too.

The Finest and Bowman Sterling are sought after cards ….. the Finest Auto is a 1500-2k card

[packs]

For Trout they're valuable but any rookie auto is going to sell for him. Harper's Sterling and Platinum cards sell for less than his Draft auto. His Heritage auto outsells them all I think.