Are Baseball Cards going to disappear

[teetwoohsix]

Originally Posted by tbob

George Orwell 1984

Good one.....

Here's an interesting article about "the cloud" and "The Patriot Act"........

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneratio...e_skin;content

Sorry to stray OT in this thread. Baseball cards won't disappear- your cloud files, on the other hand, may.

Happy 4th of July !!!
God Bless the U.S.A., keep our troops safe and BRING THEM HOME !!!!
The Declaration of Independance, The Constitution, Liberty, and Freedom !!!
A great day to reflect on what this Country is all about......

Sincerely, Clayton

[joeadcock]

My industry is attempting to go paperless.

Hard to imagine baseball cards going away. It is something to hold and value. As said before, maybe future new baseball cards will disappear. Not the old stuff.

[ls7plus]

The new market seems dominated by speculative and transient demand (with the latter meaning that as long as a young player is hot, his card will stay that way, but when he's in his '30's and on the downside, its days as a hot commodity are done, as some new exciting phenoms will have come to rule the roost). But that's not so different from what we had in the '80's to early
'90's, and I can't be the only one who managed to gravitate from new cards then to older cards, with a little help along the way. The same can happen with these "collectors" now--given a genuine interest in baseball, all that's required is a change in focus, especially if there's no aversion to reading about the days of old, or watching some of MLB or Fox's old baseball classic programs.

I'm probably in the minority on this, but I also think that there may eventually be a strong market for something like a Joe Mauer Bowman Chrome Gold Refractor (one of 50), assuming he recovers physically and is able to resume a Cooperstown-bound career for a long enough period of time. The time to buy that card of course is not now, at $1500-$2000 or so, but when Mauer is in his downslide '30's, or shortly after his retirement, when he's out of the everday spotlight. I'm guessing a '68 Topps Bench rookie is about $900 in PSA 9, and that the pop count numbers should be similar to the Mauer. My conclusion would be that the Mauer Gold Refractor would be a reasonably good buy at $100-$200, when all of that speculative hype and transient interest has run its course, and the card has a chance to grow into its real value, apart from the hype. As a HOF collector, if Mauer does indeed persevere and stay on that path, I know I would want what I would consider his best, or one of his best cards--its just that right now, his course is cloudy, and there are a lot better vintage cards to spend that kind of money on than a gold refractor!

Thoughts, anyone?

Larry

[teetwoohsix]

I think modern cards will eventually climb in value (in general), but how far down the road is the million dollar question.

I had a hard time following what was what in modern cards, to the point where it was so confusing for me trying to look cards up in the Beckett big book that I just gave up. Still have tons of modern cards in binders w/ Ultra-Pro sleeves, and occaisionally will look through them, but I really don't know what is worth $$ and what is a dime a dozen. I also think if this is slightly complicated for an adult, it must be for a kid.

It would be nice if Topps "kept it simple" and quit mass producing cards, and quit selling "complete sets".......I think the modern "set" would be way more valuable if you had to put it together yourself.

I'm just rambling, sorry.......

Sincerely, Clayton

[ls7plus]

No, you're not rambling, Clayton--you've made some very good points. If I'm interested in a good young player, and want one of his better cards, I find its far too unwieldy to try to use Beckett's endless listings. It's far better simply to go to e-bay and search for his rookie cards by name, which gives you a pretty quick and dirty education of what's what out there. I did that with Brennan Boesch last year to acquire an orange refractor (one of 25) and recently checked on what comparable Alex Avila rookies were going for using exactly the same method. As you can see, I'm a Tigers fan, and enjoy watching the development of some of their better youngsters. A good card of them simply allows me to share to some extent in their successes and failures vicariously, all the while realizing it is highly unlikely any of them will be HOF'ers, and that the purchase is only for entertainment. I don't think this process is much different than what I did as a kid with Topps cards in the '60's, when I wanted to have my favorite players. Baseball cards, even new ones, can still be fun!

Good thread,

Larry

[teetwoohsix]

Thanks Larry.

Every now and then I search around on ebay to see what modern cards are doing and it seems like a lot of cards do not even get 1 bid. This is where the mass production is killing it. I have a lot of those refractor cards, also quite a few cards with #'s (1 of 99, etc.) but probably nothing too special.

Look at the Strasburg phenomena.....that was pretty wild !!!! I can't think of another modern card that went for that kind of $$ !!

Pre-war cards are by far way more fascinating to me, but I won't toss out my modern cards just yet either

Sincerely, Clayton

[slidekellyslide]

There will always be a market for non-virtual new cards...there may be fewer collectors for these items, but there will always be collectors. Cards are not like music which evolved from wax to vinyl to tapes to CD to MP3s. The evolution of music delivery makes sense..there are still collectors of all of those forms of delivery though. Cards are cards..have always been cards aside from making them shiny, I don't see virtual cards as the future of card collecting.