Baseball card bubble?

[mferronibc]

Guys - I think the recent explosion of prices has only a little to do with "Joe Blow" collector (like me) with some more time on his hands and maybe some additional funds because we're not going out to dinner, buying clothes, paying for gas etc.

What's more concerning (I mean this in terms of pricing out us average collectors for good) is the massive amount of $$$ coming into the hobby from investment-type firms who are literally buying up cards as part of diversified portfolios for their clients. Yes this started with really high end cards, ultra-modern basketball, parallels, auto's, etc. but is now filtering down and affecting all aspects of the market as people are looking for the next "undervalued" place to invest. There is even a new focus on junk-wax era cards which have also seen a big boost. I read somewhere that an investment banker was literally trying to buy up every 260 PSA 10 '82 Topps Rickey Henderson card to "corner the market" and boasted he was already half way there. The price on that card has absolutely skyrocketed as a result.

I'm not trying to be all conspiracy theory about it but if you follow the dollars I think this bubble is here to stay and likely get much bigger in the next 5 years even well after average collectors have gone back to work.