Need help with the super modern cards...

[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.

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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.