Will 90s cards ever be considered vintage?

[fkw]

The years I describe as "Vintage Cards" will never change IMO

to me vintage means early/oldest ie PreWar. .....anything before Topps is vintage.

1990s mass produced shinny garbage will never be Vintage and in reality are not even true cards in the original definition of a "collector insert card".
ie "a true collector insert card is ALWAYS issued FREE with a product or service of some kind."

Most all cards post 1981 or so... will suffer value wise because of this fact, they are not a FREE insert card, they are THE PRODUCT...... and 99% have been hoarded in NRMT+/MINT and unopened condition.... these last 30 years are far different from the 100+ years before it, when insert cards didnt have "value" and were collected for the enjoyment of collecting, with a high % used and abused and eventually trashed....thus creating true scarcity (not pseudo rare intentionally limited edition hyped 1/1).

Have you ever seen a pinhole in a card less than 30 years old?

Kids are no longer the first collectors and many cant even afford a single pack of cards....Modern new stuff is dominated by adults trying to make a $$

some examples of Era's
1990s-2010s might someday be called the Shinny "hype" Card Era
1950s-1990s Topps Era
PreWar
19th Century

[steve B]

Most of the 80's was just bizarre as far as what was the product. The place I hung out used to let me read the promo letters early on, like 82-83.
Once Topps monopoly was broken we got two "new" companies in 81.
For 82 that was in a small bit of doubt since topps claimed to have exclusivity for cards sold with gum. And there was supposedly some legal thing that there had to be something of intrinsic value sold, with the cards being a free giveaway to get people to buy the product.
Donruss did those puzzle pieces - Jigsaw puzzles were valuable for the play value or something like that.
Fleer added stickers, claiming "educational value"

Both lasted into the late 80's, maybe very early 90's. Donruss puzzles through 92, I forget when the fleer stickers ended.

About 92 the rules changed, or the govt decided that cards were valuable by themselves.

Steve B

[teetwoohsix]

This is funny....the other day while out hunting around I saw an uncut sheet of '87 Topps for sale ...I actually almost wanted to find out the price on it, toyed with the idea of buying it and storing it away as a novelty. But I didn't,,,,,but something keeps nagging at me to go back and buy it !!!

Anyhow, I like to pull out the binders and leaf through the pages of the '90's & 2000's every now and then. I've given a lot of them away, but still have thousands of them.

Here's one I found can't remember where I got it, but it's a pretty cool card from the '90s.

[dstraate]

Ahh, good ol' base stealing skinny barry. His head actually matched his body. I miss those days.

[ls7plus]

Although my focus is primarily on Pre-WWII stars and hall-of-famers, I actually like some of the more limited sets from this era, especially the Topps Tiffany sets produced in far more limited quantities than its regular cards. Many of the Tiffany sets were also truly high-end in quantity well before Upper Deck in 1989 (the '89 Upper Deck Griffey Jr. will always be an iconic card; it just won't have any significant value for a very, very long time, if ever, because of the 1 million + produced). While many of the big stars from these sets were juicers, generations earlier than mine (think Bob Costas) don't and won't care as much about that--after all, we've become a drug-enhanced world in so many respects!

For the same reasons, I kind of like the stars of the '93 Topps Finest Refractors, with only 241 of each player produced. Refractors have been around for 18 years now, and have certainly demonstrated staying power.

The above being said, I wouldn't bet the farm on any of the above. For investment purposes, they are purely speculative in nature. However, its not beyond reasonable contemplation that just as we have our own historic idols of the game in Wagner, Cobb, Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Williams, DiMaggio, J. Robinson, Mantle, Mays, Aaron and Banks and the like, maturing generations may well look at players like McGwire and Bonds in a much more sympathetic light. McGwire was truly awesome to watch--I was at a Tigers/Cardinals interleague game at old Tiger Stadium in 1999 in time to watch Big Mac take batting practice. Four over the roof in left, including one in left center, and from where we were sitting in the leftfield upper deck, his balls were still reaching us with the speed of cannon shots, compared to his teammates, whose balls, when they reached the upper deck, didn't have a lot left on them by that time. And Bonds, although he was probably as much pure A-hole as any player who ever set foot on the diamond, is the only guy I personally saw who made major league pitching look like it was slow-pitch softball! He was fascinating to watch, even though you knew it wasn't legit. Kind of gave you an idea of what Ruth and Williams in their prime must have been like! Younger generations may well view these guys as Bunyonesque legends, and give a lot less scrutiny to their integrity and the damage they did to the statistical traditions of the game.

I find this topic especially interesting, as I loved McGwire while he was playing, and have really conflicting feelings now. Comments are really welcomed. Thanks guys,

Larry

[HRBAKER]

I doubt it, they may always largely be considered another seven letter word ending in "age."

As an earlier poster pointed out it is not the age of most vintage cards that equates to their value but the supply and the demand. Sadly I don't ever see a supply problem with most all of the 90's stuff and really never anticipate any great demand.

[Rich Klein]

Will be 1994 and before and then 1995 on forward in terms of future value.

The pre-strike cards were produced in large quantities and yes, everyone and their uncle were buying cards in those days. IIRC, Beckett Baseball had a print run of over 1 million copies each issue circa summer 1993. Needless to say, print is a bit less now.

1995 to 1999 though, many of the tougher sets and inserts just do not appear in the secondary market. This was as collectors were beginning to leave and thus many of these cards are now with collectors who are keeping those cards. The other problem we as a hobby are going to have is that before the strike many collectors remember actively trading,,,, going to the store,,,,, having fun ---- since the strike it's been primarily based on the hobby and not on any "fun" factors like the 50's-80's were.

Thus, I don't know if the 87-94 cards will ever be absorbed, but I would wager that the 1995-99 cards get absorbed and you might actually see some significant gains in many of these cards during this decade

Rich