The Price Index, 2024 Final Edition

[rwperu34]

What I do is I take a group of players 1st Bowman Chrome Auto and follow their price throughout the year. I'll give you three numbers here. First is the headline number. I take the total dollars of all the players at the end of the year and divde them by the dollars at the start of the year. The second will be average player. For this one I weight each player equally adding up their gains/losses as a % instead of $. The last one will be the median.

Headline Number

The final tally was down 11%. This isn't too bad considering we hit that number in May. The market leveled off for a long while. I suspect the bottom was at the end of October and it's already climbed back up a little. I'm not sure though because I went from Oct 2 to Dec 3 between updates.

Nov 2017: 100
Nov 2018: 130
Nov 2019: 155
Nov 2020: 235
Nov 2021: 295
Nov 2022: 160
Nov 2023: 130
Nov 2024: 115

Average Player

The average player of the 25 in The Price Index was down 18%. This is a reversal from the last couple of years. That means the top of the Index did better than the bottom. This is largly be explained by Juan Soto going from the Padres to the Yankees.

Median Player

Before I tell you, yikes. The median player in the Index was down about 1/3. It is typical for the median to be down more than the headline number, but not quite to this degree. I have a much larger sample of prices in various notes and the story there is similar.

Gainers, Losers, and Peaks

If I count +/- 10% as a wash, it was 5 gains, 18 losses, and with 2 washes. That is pretty bad people. Especially considering the losses were bigger than the gains on average.

The biggest gainer of these 25 was Bobby Witt Jr at a little over 2x. His peak was in September when he was on fire at about 2.2x. That is very disappointing given the season he had. It's not as bad as Acuna last year, but a disappiontment nonetheless.

The biggest peak belonged to Gunnar Henderson. He topped out at up 2.6x before settling back to a 1.5x gain for the year.

The biggest non-Wander loser was Evan Carter at down 62%. Who could have seen this coming? </sarcasm> Jackson Holliday lost over half of his value as well, down 56%. Both are at their lowpoint right now. Both did peak in spring though. Holliday in February and Carter right around Opening Day, so people late to buy got crushed even more.

Only three players did not peak above their number from last December...Marcelo Mayer, Junior Caminero, and Rafael Devers. Two of those three were on my list for the year. I sure do know how to pick them.

[StateEx]

Always love these. Thanks for sharing.

My casual observations align with yours, up to August. For some reason, since then it seems like the cards I'm interested in have gone straight to the moon.

[BoSoxFan1999]

Moral of the story: buy Ohtani. Lol

[seanrs1]

Thanks for the update! I really appreciate the hard work and reporting that you add to the BO community. From your insights, seems like it is hard to make this hobby a full time job with modern baseball cards.

I am a collector with a full time job, and rarely sell my cards. I enjoy the hobby by collecting players I like.

Seems like my main take away is that it is best to buy low in the off season and sell high during spring training or when a player is hot if you want to sell and make a profit. The rest seems like a guessing game especially when prospecting at todays prices.

[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by BoSoxFan1999

Moral of the story: buy Ohtani. Lol

I'm old enough to remember when the moral was buy Trout. Or before that buy Pujols.

[Brazenways]

Am wondering how much volume has shifted out of eBay (whatnot, irl-card shows ig, etc.)

Do you ever keep track of >$100 sales? I’ve noticed a huge decline in that category but not sure if it’s because of platform sales or total market.

[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by Brazenways

Am wondering how much volume has shifted out of eBay (whatnot, irl-card shows ig, etc.)

Do you ever keep track of >$100 sales? I’ve noticed a huge decline in that category but not sure if it’s because of platform sales or total market.

I don't keep track of $100+ sales, but my guess is it's just the market plop causing the decrease.

I loosly keep track of $100 players, and that has declined significantly since April, 2021. A quick example from The Price Index; players under 30 that are $500+ are down from 18 to 3. The 18th highest in the 2025 Index is $150. Since $500 players produce a lot more $100 cards than $150 players, it stands to reason that $100 cards would be way down.

[rwperu34]

Updated on Dec. 19, up 13% since Dec. 3. Average player (+15%) and median player (+13%) in the same ballpark. I felt this in very strong sales from my store and a lower win % on my bids. Last year these were the type of numbers seen at peak...in mid February.

There has been a slowdown over the last few days, most likely the holiday dip. It probably started even sooner than that but was overshadowed by the Kyle Tucker trade, which had an oversized impact on my sales. Either way, so far so good for (fiscal) 2025.

[towerymt]

Originally Posted by rwperu34

Updated on Dec. 19, up 13% since Dec. 3. Average player (+15%) and median player (+13%) in the same ballpark. I felt this in very strong sales from my store and a lower win % on my bids. Last year these were the type of numbers seen at peak...in mid February.

Are you observing an increase in volume as well, or mainly just an increase in sale price?

Thanks for sharing your experience in this thread and the many others.

[imbluestreak23]

December 2024 is indeed better than 2023 (not just my sales, but trading card category in aggregate on ebay).

[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by towerymt

Are you observing an increase in volume as well, or mainly just an increase in sale price?

Thanks for sharing your experience in this thread and the many others.

I don't specifically track volume, but it seems to be up.

I am definitely selling more items this year vs last, despite having fewer listed. The four weeks ending 12/17/24 vs 12/19/23 items are up over 50%, dollars are up 120%.

[Poorboy]

Is there a keep an eye on secret sauce candidate to share fr 2025 ?
Lol

[Galileo77]

Originally Posted by Poorboy

Is there a keep an eye on secret sauce candidate to share fr 2025 ?
Lol

So many variables that are unpredictable can confound a prediction or the secret sauce you are referring to-. Injuries are so common now days especially oblique injuries which are very hard to treat. Add to that all the other injuries. The high percentage of players that get the call up and then struggle which is so common is often as well unpredictable and frequently results in a dip in price.. Finally the team one is on or gets traded to has an effect on price -take Maikel Garcia who is having a good year by most standards he is super cheap and will most likely stay at that price because he is on a team that i love but few others have that passion and if they do spend it on Bobby Witt Jr like most collectors. -its a lot of fun to to try to figure out who will have a breakout year but in the end a spoon full of luck helps