1952T Mantle price drops

[Snowman]

A huge portion of our market is made up of dealers/flippers. Much more so than most people probably realize. It's actually the lifeblood of why the auction formats generally work well in this hobby. They provide a baseline value for cards that would otherwise slip through the cracks. Many despise "flippers", but the truth is, they're a sign of a healthy market. You want them around. They're the worms in our soil. Most cards will never sell below ~70% of comps or so because an army of dealers/flippers peruse the auction sites competing for cards to flip. When a card sells for full comps or higher, it's going to an end collector (or at least an "investor").

But what happens when the market has a correction is that the end collectors stop buying for whatever reason (e.g., fear, money supply, something shinier, etc.), and the dealers begin to experience a slowdown in their cash flow. They will sustain this for some amount of time, acting as a buffer to the cardboard economy as they hold out on pricing and attempt to weather the storm, but if the disruption in demand sustains for long enough, they will be forced to cut their losses and they will also stop competing for cards to flip from the auction sites. The worms leave the soil, so-to-speak. When this happens, the backbone of the hobby (a stable buying & selling economy and "commodity cards") inevitably breaks, and collapse ensues.