Quote:
Originally Posted by rj.cataldo
As someone who has an extensive card and memorabilia collection, I think his point is valid, but perhaps not always supported appropriately. The market for cards has exploded over the past few years - prior to that it was comparatively stagnant. Some of the bigger names may have seen modest increases, but nothing near the level we’ve seen recently. You can look at any of Card Ladder indexes across any sport to see just how drastic the spike is and how they generally all align with the last two years.
That only makes sense if there was a fundamental shift in the dynamics of the market, and at some level you can argue that has happened. But the reality is, we’ve seen this in sports cards before. Hype that cards are a great future investment - a flood of money that comes into the hobby to either sell new product or sell complimentary products, and new people buying cards driven by FOMO.
Ultimately though, it only matters how “sticky” that new money is. If new money is more motivated by the financial gains rather than the utility of collecting, the “losers” are likely to exit to other avenues, taking a large chunk of capital with them. It’s always easy to say - “it’s different now”, but we’ve already seen evidence of a pullback in several spaces. I think eventually people will get bored and move on to new things, and the floor will settle somewhere higher than where it was before, but lower than today, and perhaps not high enough to support some of the infrastructure that has been built around the hobby.
Does that mean you can’t make money in sports cards in the short or near term - no. Does that mean you shouldn’t buy cards if you like them - no. But treating cards like other investments or retirement assets isn’t likely a sound strategy, unless you can afford to ride through market cycles which could take up to 20 years.
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I agree with this 100%. We saw all this play out in the 90's yet it seems most can't make that connection even if they lived through that time period. Lots of guys back then thought they'd retire on their 89 Griffy Jr RC's and cases of 92 Stadium Club.
I think actual collectors will help keep the hobby alive well past this current post covid pump phase. "High end" pump phase? Idk what to call it now..lol. However, I think it's also fair to assume that even good number of collectors will come out in the negative, despite probably knowing what they are doing a bit more than the average person. The hobby as a whole will be fine but I do worry about the non-millionaires pumping thousands or tens of thousands into unproven talent, false scarcity "low" print runs, and "low pop" graded.
Back in 92 $200 for a Griffy Jr RC or whatever it was may have seemed like a lot, but now you've got guys spending 10k + on stuff that you know is likely way overprinted but has some serial # slapped on to make it seem like it's not. Lots of stuff that won't be worth a tenth of the value in 5-10 years.