What's more important, Supply or Demand?

[seanofjapan]

I think supply is only a relevant consideration if demand is greater than it.

Consider this comparison.

There are only 100 copies of card A. But only 20 collectors want card A in their collections. Since demand is much lower than the supply, the card's price remains low because all 20 collectors can easily find a copy of it without needing to competetively bid against each other.

On the other hand, there are 1,000 copies of card B. But 2,000 collectors want card B. Since demand far outstrips supply, the price will go through the roof since the people looking for it will bid it up whenever one comes to auction.

There are 10 times more copies of B than A, but A is worth less than B.

This is an oversimplified example since there are a lot of real life things that prevent these two examples from ever playing out like this (even when there are 100 cards but only 20 collectors after it, if one guy has 95 copies of it leaving only 5 to freely circulate the price can still go way up for example). But it demonstrates why demand is the main driver of price rather than supply. Jordan rookies look more like Card Bs right now while vintage stuff is more like Card As.