Is the Supply of Vintage Baseball Cards Drying Up?

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Posted By: Scot Reader

It seems highly unlikely that the supply of prewar cards will ever dry-up. If current supply is inadequate to meet current demand then prices will rise which will result in increased supply. I would think that the only way supply would not rise to meet demand in the face of sufficiently high prices is if prewar collectors who came to control a large percentage of prewar cards stopped acting as rational economic beings and refused to sell at any price. This seems highly unlikely. While noneconomic decisions might lead to unavailability at any price of a few rare cards e.g. T206 Wagner, T210 Jackson, Just So Young etc. for a time, such decisions are unlikely to ever influence the broader prewar market. For myself I can say that I love my prewar cards but there is not one of them that is not available for sale at the right price.

Affordability is another matter. Prewar cards in high grade are becoming increasingly unaffordable to most collectors. But saying that lack of affordability to most collectors means the that the supply of prewar cards has dried-up is like saying that the supply of Park Avenue apartments has dried-up; it seems to me an incorrect characterization of the situation.