Need help with the super modern cards...

[Hxcmilkshake]

Its not profitable, they are all chasing the big 1/1 cards, right now I believe its a Juan Soto in Chrome Update. I've been able to get the "rejects" for dirt cheap for my pc.

As far as submitting for psa 10s, yeah they go for big $ but unless you get it right most every time its a losing proposition. One or 2 PSA 9s or 8s in the batch makes it a loss.

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[Tennis13]

Originally Posted by Hxcmilkshake

Its not profitable, they are all chasing the big 1/1 cards, right now I believe its a Juan Soto in Chrome Update. I've been able to get the "rejects" for dirt cheap for my pc.

As far as submitting for psa 10s, yeah they go for big $ but unless you get it right most every time its a losing proposition. One or 2 PSA 9s or 8s in the batch makes it a loss.

Sent from my SM-G935P using Tapatalk

As long as we are on this topic......I collect primarily one set of vintage and one type of modern team set. From what I can gather, buying is a whole lot easier than selling: these hits don’t sell, but have a high book value. It’s like a house that sits on the market for $1.2 mln: you may value it there, but it doesn’t get any interest there. That’s been my feeling—I have the power with the cash and buying, but not in a remotely equal way. It feels like guys flipping houses in a bull market, but long term liquidity is suspect at best and someone is definitely holding the bag with an expensive museum piece.

Some players/cards seem to sell: LeBron, Judge, Trout, Curry, Jordan, Brady. Like the ultra high end of the great players. However, I am not so sure that an Adrian Beltre or Nolan Arenado sells to many people, or even a Kris Bryant, as crazy as that seems. It’s literally less than 10 guys that have any sort of inventory turnover, it seems like.

So I went to The National last year with some of my cards. You know, maybe I would try to sell them or see if there was interest, but not really, because I collect. I have never sold a card as crazy as that sounds. Also, I am a trader by profession, so I have a unique interest in markets. I just wanted to understand the bid/ask spreads and market liquidity.

What I could gather is that if you can magically pay to set up a glass case and a table, suddenly the amount you will pay to a seller is 70% of last sale on Ebay. If you have one that hasn’t sold, well, good luck. They can’t benchmark it. The magic of that plastic case and table is worth a 30% haircut. In addition, if you have one of those magic cases, you have this insane desire to switch your PSA holders to the new hologram holders version. You always ask 100% of offer side, and justify it in any number of qualitative reasons, which may or may not hold water to a buyer. Also, there’s a bunch of middle aged men on their cell phones checking last sale and trying to move their cards, and it’s like an old trading floor. It’s really weird, and what I concluded is that I love my modern collection, which is good, because I am probably stuck owning it at 25 cents on the dollar. It was like an epiphany watching these people run around and do business.

I have some great modern cards. I mean, top of the line, sniped on ebay by people who mispriced them. One I bought for $1,700 has had a seller reject Buy it Now offers for $12,000 according to Flippertools. I showed it to a few people at The National and they “had no idea” and “you would need to find someone who collects that team or player” were the respones. These guys had $20,000 stickers on their cards and could not have cared less about even paying me $5,000 for the card, which I threw out as a question to see if they would nibble. Zero interest. So I concluded as a seller you likely need to pay the 20% auction fee to move “good” cards because unless you find the 1 guy that wants it, you need to open the market up. This applies to modern and vintage, of course, but it was worth noting.

It definitely feels like a shell game if you are “investing” here in modern. Maybe the high end real estate holds its value, but ultimately the next financial crisis will see a massive liquidation of this stuff. That’s my hunch. I buy what I buy for the emotional attachment, and hope to never have to sell. If I were buying for the hits or the $400,000 Trout card, I would worry. A lot.

I think this stuff is getting saturated and is tough to move, as a whole. There is a ton of short term, emotional demand that moves the product every year. However, at some point the garbage disposal will back up and then there will be no place to dump the new stuff.

That’s just my 2 cents. I could be completely wrong.

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

Is it profitable? I mean, I'm sure it's just like every other release in the history of baseball cards. I don't think it's ever been consistently profitable to open boxes and sell what's inside. If it were, the market would push the price of the boxes up.

The lottery aspect has been mentioned but there's also the adrenaline aspect. We definitely didn't have the opportunity to pull a $2,000 card out of a $20 box when we were kids.

Setting aside the hobby for a moment, the sport of baseball has seen an unprecedented amount of young players enter MLB in the last decade and immediately succeed. It's been written about and pondered and I'm not sure there's been an explanation for it. Kids are debuting at 19 & 20 years old and becoming All-Stars. It's unheard of. Just look at 2018: Ohtani, Juan Soto, Ronald Acuna, Ozzie Albies, Gleyber Torres, and Miles Mikolas. Studs. All with their rookie cards in 2018 product.

This makes your safety net pretty wide; more chances to hit a card that covers your expenses.

As far as the PSA 10s -- the quality control is extremely high with the modern products. I'd say at least 50% of the cards come out of the pack in PSA 10 condition. The manufacturers have vastly improved their methods, which makes sense considering the amount of money they're charging for their product.

It's funny this got brought up as I find myself getting pulled deeper and deeper into the 2018 baseball line of products. There's a handful that I really like and who doesn't enjoy opening a box of packs every now and then?

Arthur

[G1911]

Not a fan of the speculating or this collecting style myself, but I don't think anything funky is up with the 10's. I build base sets for almost nothing as people almost throw away the base cards these days, and it is pretty difficult to find a Topps/Bowman Chrome card that isn't perfect. Quality control is high, doesn't surprise me they are getting so many 10's

[yanksfan09]

Originally Posted by G1911

Not a fan of the speculating or this collecting style myself, but I don't think anything funky is up with the 10's. I build base sets for almost nothing as people almost throw away the base cards these days, and it is pretty difficult to find a Topps/Bowman Chrome card that isn't perfect. Quality control is high, doesn't surprise me they are getting so many 10's

Yea, probably at half or so cards grade a 10 out of the pack these days, just a guess. I don't know if any modern guys have real stats on that.

That's one thing I really hate about new cards, Mint condition "9" cards are almost seen as low grade these days. Just stupid in my opinion. Big premiums for 10's when 9's look the same and many times are/were the same card and were resubmitted. Too much silliness.

[AGuinness]

Originally Posted by HasselhoffsCheeseburger

I don't think it's ever been consistently profitable to open boxes and sell what's inside. If it were, the market would push the price of the boxes up.

This is spot on. The market sets a price on modern boxes where it's more likely than not that the cards in the box won't rise to that amount.

Anecdotally, I do some flipping on COMC and in the past two years have used some proceeds to buy boxes of Topps Heritage through Blowout Cards. I got very lucky and had some good hits, because otherwise, I would have come nowhere near recouping the cost of the boxes from the card proceeds. Of course, my costs for the boxes also include submission fees for putting the cards for sale through COMC, too.

On the positive side, part of why I have done this is because I think there is some emotional value in ripping open a box of cards. It's fun to get a chance to be a kid again - although I'm not ripping open cases and cases like the guys who chase the big modern parallels, etc. I think opening that much product would become a chore.

[ls7plus]

It's best to remember the new and old card markets are not independent of one another, IMHO. Instead, they are and will be inevitably linked, as today's stars and super stars become yesterday's heroes. Their cards will then be subject to the same criteria that those of the HOF'ers of the '50's and '60's on back are, and adjustments based on supply and demand will be made. What was big money in the new card market in the early '90's took a nasty fall by the mid to late '90's. Either the astronomically priced newer cards will take a huge dip in value, or the vintage market will be blessed with a big surge, or a combination of both. A lot of the new card big bucks is based on speculation and transient demand, the latter moving on to the newest and latest big thing.

Buy what brings you joy,

Larry

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

Originally Posted by ls7plus

It's best to remember the new and old card markets are not independent of one another, IMHO. Instead, they are and will be inevitably linked, as today's stars and super stars become yesterday's heroes. Their cards will then be subject to the same criteria that those of the HOF'ers of the '50's and '60's on back are, and adjustments based on supply and demand will be made. What was big money in the new card market in the early '90's took a nasty fall by the mid to late '90's. Either the astronomically priced newer cards will take a huge dip in value, or the vintage market will be blessed with a big surge, or a combination of both. A lot of the new card big bucks is based on speculation and transient demand, the latter moving on to the newest and latest big thing.

Buy what brings you joy,

Larry

The '90s market is doing pretty damn good for itself these days. Third party grading has shot a lot of that stuff higher than it's ever been.

Arthur