Originally Posted by G1911
I'd pick Brady, if these are the only two choices. As others have mentioned, Football doesn't make a big deal of its history like Baseball does. Every Baseball fan knows Cobb and Wagner and Ruth and Ted Williams and a dozen others, even if they don't much about them. Namath's fanbase will be leaving the hobby in the coming years, Brady's won't.
As for the Mantle and Namath comparison, I think they are quite different. NY stars of the same period, elevated above the peers, similar off-field behavior, even ran a business together. None the less, Mickey Mantle is one of the all time greatest baseball players by any measurement. Namath might be the worst quarterback in the Hall, by the numbers compared to their peers. 173 TD's and 220 Interceptions is not impressive, even for his era. Millenials are much more driven by statistics when they didn't see and don't have an emotional connection to the players of yore.
If I was to invest in cards, which I would not do, I would pick vintage Baseball or modern-era Basketball. I suspect I'm much younger than the average on this forum, in my late 20's. I don't know anyone who collects cards still in real life. My generation grew up collecting Pokemon mostly, and that's where their nostalgia (which, I think, is a big part of adult card collecting) goes. Some very high end items will always have value, as a display of wealth if not love of old cardboard, but who are the generations that had most boys collecting cards to some degree going to sell their collections to in 30 years?
When I go to a card show, there are maybe a handful of people under 40 there. The hobby friends I've made over the years through email and message boards are almost all twice as old as I am. Now I get that many people take their 20's and 30's off from collecting before coming back to the hobby once financially comfortable, but previously this has been driven by nostalgia, I think. Once one has disposable income, some return to the hobby of their youth. I am fortunate that I've been able to participate in the hobby for all but my four college years, but without that nostalgia factor, are we really going to see a spurt of millennials entering the hobby in the 2030's and 2040's? I doubt it.
Of course, there are some younger people collecting, but the primary interest is not collecting. It's making money and gambling. Most of the modern hobby revolves around buying $100 boxes that usually have $20 of cards in them, trying to hit that lottery ticket of [insert hottest prospect in current year]. Most of these lottery tickets are worthless in five years. I've joined a couple groups of primarily modern collectors, and the first question is always "what is it worth?" when I show something older than 2011 that they don't recognize. The gambling driven element of the hobby here doesn't seem to lead to long term value outside of a very small handful of cards like the Update Trout (we'll see if even that one holds, the supply is enormous for an expensive card), as the focus is on pulling a big hit and immediately cashing it out. You need actual collectors to sustain value long term, or the bottom will eventually fall out when you just have speculators selling to other speculators.
All my friends like sports, Football and Basketball are the most popular, but there is little interest in their history. I love vintage football, but nobody I actually know could give a hoot about seeing old cards of Starr and Unitas and they certainly have no clue who Baugh even is. My baseball fan friends don't collect either, but they do have an interest in the big names of the past, and will even take a binder or box down, unprompted, and flip them through when we watch a game at my house. Baseball has always mythologized its past, and has become tied to card collecting in general. Most baseball fans know about cards at least. MLB video games feature baseball cards in them, ballparks show Topps cards on the scoreboards and screens (at least they have in the Bay Area), and the Wagner and 52 Mantle are very well-known. I don't think most football fans today recognize Panini. There may be more Football fans, but a baseball fan is much, much more likely to be a card collector, or to be a person who might one day become a card collector. Basketball is quickly becoming the #1 sport, and some parts of Asia are taking to card collecting, with a preference for modern basketball.
I think another factor here is that, honestly, the hobby is difficult to get into and quite a hostile one. If buying new, a collector dipping their feet in is likely to lose 80% of their money when buying a new box. Or if vintage, they are flooded with a series of mis-represented reprints, altered cards, and outright fraud, even from cards graded by "reputable" companies, who seem mostly to be reputable because many people stand to lose a ton of money on investments if the entire hobby acknowledges the scandals that are, by now, too numerous to even list. It's tough to get started, and many of the early experiences are sure to leave a bad taste. I can't say I think my friends really make a worse choice by just buying PlayStations, taking 5 minutes to learn the controls of a new game, and then just relaxing and enjoying the experience.
I don't think card collecting is a strong long-term investment because most of its user base A) won't be around forever and B) has not passed the hobby down to my generation. If I had to invest in cards, I'd pick shiny modern basketball and hope the Asian market continues to grow as the NBA becomes the biggest and most popular sport, or vintage baseball. The biggest names in baseball history and very, very scarce material (I think we vastly underestimate the quantity of most vintage cards out there, as a general rule) seem the safest bets to me. Baseball fans will continue to know Mays and Mantle and Ruth and Young, and for very rare sets, you only need a handful of collectors to sustain high values.
Just my two cents , or maybe 3 after this essay
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12-29-2019, 02:00 AM
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