and those days noted with black marker ain't never coming back!
at least for most over 45.
P.S. Does not mean there wont be hot cards or players or good investments it only means the days of nearly all Card or Comic slabs being Hot or Warm concurrently will not occur again.
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
@West22 said:
Also worth considering that first inflation (through increasing SS checks determined by cost of living increase giving many people a "raise") and then higher rates have been somewhat stimulative. Those with spare cash can deploy it into treasuries and money markets to earn 5% risk free. Positive real rates with "official" inflation at 3-4% or so.
Exactly; In order for a Card or any Collectible at the moment to have decent ROI it must out perform the % from safe havens.
Investing 10K now assuming 5%, in 5 years you will have:
Compounded Annually $12,763
Compounded Monthly $12,834
Buying $10K of say 1993SP wax will you do better or worse? Well if in 5 years you cant liquidate it for ~$12,760USD then you've done worse.
Not to say you can't easily beat 5% a year with many cards or card product, but you could just as easily lose varying amounts of the investment.
Those who have 7 figures or more can do better than 5% with safe stuff which is why during times of higher interest rates they are less likley to dump it into collectibles. So there goes all the new money entering the hobby that Mr Goldin alleged was going to increase and increase. He was 100% WRONG! Then again it could simply have been pure hyperbole to reel in more rubes
With at least some "big" money leaving the hobby and near all the bandwagon jumpers gone, card prices dropping on the whole may be just beginning?
>
Very good points above. I think solid cards with strong eye appeal will keep appreciating, but the rates of those increases and returns overall will slow down for items that are less attractive as people need cash for other areas in life - food, cars, education, vacation… When that happens people will sell for less.
I think as far as singles go almost everything has more room to fall. IMO the low end of unopened ($20-$400 range) has been on sale since June. Now I am starting to see the middle/high end stuff start to get discounted. The aforementioned 1993 SP but also 1980 Topps which there is a lot of, 1989 UD etc. I just bought a raw box of 1987 OPC for $140 shipped this week.
It’s sort of like seeing first a bunch of used cars come on the market this spring and then this summer Craigslist was flooded with boats for sale (in the northeast where I am). Pandemic buyers remorse and also cash is king again, and you can earn 5% on it.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I am not a doomer. Tough times ahead IMO but not need to panic, and if you aren’t over leveraged you skip through with mostly no issues. In my investment accounts, I am moving to a higher cash allocation.
Cards? Just a hobby, I don’t really change how I collect. But would love a Gretz #250 9 under 2k CAD!
@80sOPC said:
Stuff I am following is still dropping. Looking to grab a Gretz #250 PSA 9, seems like multiples listed per week and legit sales still dropping. Suspect we are getting close to bottom, but who knows what the economy is going to do. These drops are happening in good times which is important to remember, we don't know what prices would look like with a recession and 8% unemployment.
As is always the case (in a bull market) there will be plenty that will suffer. The average hobbyist should be fine….
I mean we are almost at full employment, financial and RE markets are up significantly the past few years, same store sales have slowed but were ripping.
There were two quarters of flatish growth last year but this is no recession….yet. You will know we are there when the Gov’t turns the QE taps back on, which they surely will.
@RonSportscards said:
If you're collecting hockey, card ladder says its down 30%+ for the year. Baseball was down 15%, I think.
And I always think it's funny when someone mentions 'upcoming recession' like we haven't been in one since you know who stole you know what.
I am not seeing how we are at the beginning of price drops. we are well into them. I am a Brady collector and follow his pricing trends fairly closely on a few key rookies. Take the contenders for instance. during the peak of pandemic, Authentic graded examples went for as high as 30K. Those have come all the way down to 10-12k. I have noticed they have pretty much stopped going down at that point. I grabbed a BGS 8.5/10 over the summer for $20K. Those were selling for 50-60k frequently during the pandemic. That grade has also seemed to bottom out.
I dont know if the bottom has come to Brady cards, but the ones that i follow seem to have stabilized.
Nice pickup. Why do so many sellers only grade the auto and not the card? Most of the PSA ones sold recently have “authentic” grade on the card and then auto/9 or auto/10. I would definitely want a grade on the card if I were to buy one.
If you want a good investment that has low downside risk, an iconic Brady RC is a pretty safe bet. Hard to beat the GOAT.
Most are considered short or minimum size right out of the pack. I wouldn’t hesitate buying authentic in this issue.
@West22 said:
Nice pickup. Why do so many sellers only grade the auto and not the card? Most of the PSA ones sold recently have “authentic” grade on the card and then auto/9 or auto/10. I would definitely want a grade on the card if I were to buy one.
If you want a good investment that has low downside risk, an iconic Brady RC is a pretty safe bet. Hard to beat the GOAT.
@dan89 said:
Most are considered short or minimum size right out of the pack. I wouldn’t hesitate buying authentic in this issue.
Ah good to know. That makes a lot more sense. Never been a football/basketball/hockey guy but definitely see the investment appeal of high grade iconic players like Brady. Sadly baseball has a somewhat diminished fanbase among youths so the demographic will continue to skew older IMO. NFL and NBA has way larger reach across age groups and that should support the hobby in those areas better than baseball, leading to better performance over time for post 2000 products. Again, just my opinion.
One advantage unopened has over investing in single players cards is diminishing supply over time. I feel that unopened as a whole has held up a little better than singles due to this. Of course, rising price will bring more unopened product to market as investors cash out, so currently available supply can fluctuate dramatically at times.
@Copyboy1 said: This one will be interesting for football. It just sold on Heritage for $9600 (including buyer's premium) and was immediately flipped to eBay. I'll be curious to see if they turn a profit.
Huh... with several days left to go, and multiple bids up to about $4000 (last I saw), the auction has suddenly disappeared from Ebay.
And I always think it's funny when someone mentions 'upcoming recession' like we haven't been in one
It’s quite easy to paper over a recession with cooked inflation numbers. The average Joe tends to think in nominal terms and isn’t good at math. So maybe they got a 10% raise since 2020 while inflation in key areas like lumber, used cars and skilled labor (car mechanics, carpenters plumbers electricians etc) up something like 30% over three years. Then you have people like Paul Krugman, Larry Summers and Lael Brainard making policy recommendations and they are completely removed from reality, talking about how we beat inflation because CPI ex food, energy, housing, service and used cars is down. Good thing no one needs food, energy, housing, a reliable car or to eat at a restaurant again! When a measure becomes a goal it ceases to become an accurate measure and so forth. Not trying to blame any particular party as I think all politicians play this game. I just think economists and career academics in general are completely removed from reality.
Long story short they want stable growth and I hope they get it but history shows they are better at breaking things and then overreacting.
Well said. It's always going to be hard to sustain stable growth when everything gets flipped upside down every 4 years.
Successful coin BST transactions with Gerard and segoja.
Successful card BST transactions with cbcnow, brogurt, gstarling, Bravesfan 007, and rajah 424.
Prices have rebounded on some cards - back to 2019 levels that is! Actually accounting for inflation it's lower than 2019 levels.
Hey @blurryface Where oh were is your Instagram friend now? The one with 200 PSA10 1990 Leaf Thomas'. When the card was $600 that was apparently something to boast loudly about, now that the card has a tenuous grip at $115-120 at auction, there is no mo' braggin'
$120000 in FMV evaporated down to $24k and sinking.
As I predicted during the bubble the 1990 Leaf Thomas in PSA10 population would way outstrip demand and totally has.
I also stated I would pick up another one of the Thomas' when it dropped to 2019 levels - have a local seller who will take $110 cash - picking it up tomorrow.
BTW folks @blurryface was banned from here but he usually made good sense and although he scoffed at the bubble actually being a bubble, which now has proven empirically to have been the case, I do very much miss his postings and pics from his amazing collection
1 last good nature ribbin' comment for my buddy @blurryface , not "funniest bubble ever" it was simply a "text book bubble" as time has shown!
Not everything has or will come down to pre-bubble levels but it's most certainly plausible that everything Junk Wax and Junk Wax adjacent might...
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
You're picking the lowest hanging fruit here by bringing this up for the umpteenth time. 1990 Leaf was overproduced and is not condition sensitive - the Thomas had no business being up in that range. I'll say that 1990 Leaf in unopened form is "adjacent" to what I collect so I follow the prices somewhat and despite its high population the Series II boxes still sell for decent coin, in the $150 range while believe it or not during the covid heights it only reached $250 or so. So despite that one random argument with a banned member that you won 3 years ago, and despite me personally not being a fan of it particularly as an investment, it is still a decent market.
If you really want to challenge the thesis of 1990's product being a poor investment maybe ditch the 90 Leaf or whatever straw man argument you like, and try to go on ebay and buy yourself a box of 1993 Finest in this crap market. Or 1996 Select Certified. I'll stack those up against '82 Football any day.
1982 Topps Football IMHO is Junk wax adjacent. I own zero graded cards from the set, and a single graded wax pack for the memories.
Note that i said everything Junk Wax and Junk Wax adjacent might come down to pre-bubble prices and that is plausible even if unlikely for the issues you mentioned.
P.S. 1996 Select I do not consider Junk wax adjacent and NEVER said it was. Junk wax adjacent in my mind is post 1980 product prior to 1987 and it will not apply to every issue so don't get caught up in absolutes.
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
Just a prediction but cards will probably continue to drop till next summer 24’ then you will see a huge run up till early 25’ after a stabilize light decline. The past few election cycles have returned huge gains.
1982 Topps Football IMHO is Junk wax adjacent. I own zero graded cards from the set, and a single graded wax pack for the memories.
Note that i said everything Junk Wax and Junk Wax adjacent might come down to pre-bubble prices and that is plausible even if unlikely for the issues you mentioned.
P.S. 1996 Select I do not consider Junk wax adjacent and NEVER said it was. Junk wax adjacent in my mind is post 1980 product prior to 1987 and it will not apply to every issue so don't get caught up in absolutes.
All good points and I agree. You'll have to forgive my jumping to conclusions. It's good to analyze each issue separately and on its own merits. I think if you would stop belaboring the point on the worst performing assets of the pandemic bubble, which we agree on, we could discuss something more interesting or niche.
@addicted2ebay said:
Just a prediction but cards will probably continue to drop till next summer 24’ then you will see a huge run up till early 25’ after a stabilize light decline. The past few election cycles have returned huge gains.
Fully agree and am buying aggressively as prices continue to drop.
Not to interrupt all of these different cards, but back to my original question. Where do you think the 63 Rose card will end up? Mid-grade, maybe PSA 5-7?
@West22 said:
Wanted to comment on something I noticed the other day about 1993 SP Baseball. There are about 50 boxes and a full 18 box case currently listed on eBay. That struck me as a high population of boxes available considering the price and popularity of the product. The lowest priced box is currently $2200. Yet, searching eBay sold since this July, only 2 boxes have been documented sold for over $2200. There were two auctions this summer that ended around $2100+ and the two boxes that were bid for this fall were in the $1940 range.
This box touched the $5,000-$7,000 range at the height of the pandemic frenzy. If these dropped to the $1500-$1750 range that would be roughly late 2018 prices, which would be surprising, but not impossible given the supply currently out there.
Haven't noticed much else lately other than general softness in the unopened market. Anyone else have thoughts?
I consider 1993 SP Baseball a bellwether for early steroid era unopened (1987-1994) as it is a pretty liquid part of the high end market with lots of activity. Last two auctions ending at $1825 and $1849 mark another 6% leg down and shows continued softness in that portion of the market. 1992 Bowman Baseball and 1989 Upper Deck also suffering from an oversupplied market and are bleeding lower. This time of year typically marks local bottoms in the card market but I don't see prices improving until eBay stocks dwindle, which ironically would require some of the BIN asks to come down to within reason. Buyers and sellers rather far apart right now but the trend is definitely with the buyers.
Junk wax adjacent (1981-1986) is also showing weakness as of late. Pre-1981 vintage and late steroid era (1995-2003) showing relative strength due to more favorable supply/demand dynamics.
Just my opinion/observations on the current state of the unopened market.
Comments
Here’s the TL/DR for this thread
Any questions?
and those days noted with black marker ain't never coming back!
at least for most over 45.
P.S. Does not mean there wont be hot cards or players or good investments it only means the days of nearly all Card or Comic slabs being Hot or Warm concurrently will not occur again.
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
>
Very good points above. I think solid cards with strong eye appeal will keep appreciating, but the rates of those increases and returns overall will slow down for items that are less attractive as people need cash for other areas in life - food, cars, education, vacation… When that happens people will sell for less.
I think as far as singles go almost everything has more room to fall. IMO the low end of unopened ($20-$400 range) has been on sale since June. Now I am starting to see the middle/high end stuff start to get discounted. The aforementioned 1993 SP but also 1980 Topps which there is a lot of, 1989 UD etc. I just bought a raw box of 1987 OPC for $140 shipped this week.
It’s sort of like seeing first a bunch of used cars come on the market this spring and then this summer Craigslist was flooded with boats for sale (in the northeast where I am). Pandemic buyers remorse and also cash is king again, and you can earn 5% on it.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I am not a doomer. Tough times ahead IMO but not need to panic, and if you aren’t over leveraged you skip through with mostly no issues. In my investment accounts, I am moving to a higher cash allocation.
Cards? Just a hobby, I don’t really change how I collect. But would love a Gretz #250 9 under 2k CAD!
I mean we are almost at full employment, financial and RE markets are up significantly the past few years, same store sales have slowed but were ripping.
There were two quarters of flatish growth last year but this is no recession….yet. You will know we are there when the Gov’t turns the QE taps back on, which they surely will.
I am not seeing how we are at the beginning of price drops. we are well into them. I am a Brady collector and follow his pricing trends fairly closely on a few key rookies. Take the contenders for instance. during the peak of pandemic, Authentic graded examples went for as high as 30K. Those have come all the way down to 10-12k. I have noticed they have pretty much stopped going down at that point. I grabbed a BGS 8.5/10 over the summer for $20K. Those were selling for 50-60k frequently during the pandemic. That grade has also seemed to bottom out.
I dont know if the bottom has come to Brady cards, but the ones that i follow seem to have stabilized.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
Nice pickup. Why do so many sellers only grade the auto and not the card? Most of the PSA ones sold recently have “authentic” grade on the card and then auto/9 or auto/10. I would definitely want a grade on the card if I were to buy one.
If you want a good investment that has low downside risk, an iconic Brady RC is a pretty safe bet. Hard to beat the GOAT.
Ditto for Steve Carlton
Most are considered short or minimum size right out of the pack. I wouldn’t hesitate buying authentic in this issue.
Ah good to know. That makes a lot more sense. Never been a football/basketball/hockey guy but definitely see the investment appeal of high grade iconic players like Brady. Sadly baseball has a somewhat diminished fanbase among youths so the demographic will continue to skew older IMO. NFL and NBA has way larger reach across age groups and that should support the hobby in those areas better than baseball, leading to better performance over time for post 2000 products. Again, just my opinion.
One advantage unopened has over investing in single players cards is diminishing supply over time. I feel that unopened as a whole has held up a little better than singles due to this. Of course, rising price will bring more unopened product to market as investors cash out, so currently available supply can fluctuate dramatically at times.
Huh... with several days left to go, and multiple bids up to about $4000 (last I saw), the auction has suddenly disappeared from Ebay.
Well said. It's always going to be hard to sustain stable growth when everything gets flipped upside down every 4 years.
Successful card BST transactions with cbcnow, brogurt, gstarling, Bravesfan 007, and rajah 424.
I can't believe that Joe Morgan rookie is a PSA 5 is under $75.
I collect hall of fame rookie cards, https://www.instagram.com/stwainfan/
Prices have rebounded on some cards - back to 2019 levels that is! Actually accounting for inflation it's lower than 2019 levels.
Hey @blurryface Where oh were is your Instagram friend now? The one with 200 PSA10 1990 Leaf Thomas'. When the card was $600 that was apparently something to boast loudly about, now that the card has a tenuous grip at $115-120 at auction, there is no mo' braggin'
$120000 in FMV evaporated down to $24k and sinking.
As I predicted during the bubble the 1990 Leaf Thomas in PSA10 population would way outstrip demand and totally has.
I also stated I would pick up another one of the Thomas' when it dropped to 2019 levels - have a local seller who will take $110 cash - picking it up tomorrow.
BTW folks @blurryface was banned from here but he usually made good sense and although he scoffed at the bubble actually being a bubble, which now has proven empirically to have been the case, I do very much miss his postings and pics from his amazing collection
1 last good nature ribbin' comment for my buddy @blurryface
, not "funniest bubble ever" it was simply a "text book bubble" as time has shown!
Not everything has or will come down to pre-bubble levels but it's most certainly plausible that everything Junk Wax and Junk Wax adjacent might...
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
You're picking the lowest hanging fruit here by bringing this up for the umpteenth time. 1990 Leaf was overproduced and is not condition sensitive - the Thomas had no business being up in that range. I'll say that 1990 Leaf in unopened form is "adjacent" to what I collect so I follow the prices somewhat and despite its high population the Series II boxes still sell for decent coin, in the $150 range while believe it or not during the covid heights it only reached $250 or so. So despite that one random argument with a banned member that you won 3 years ago, and despite me personally not being a fan of it particularly as an investment, it is still a decent market.
If you really want to challenge the thesis of 1990's product being a poor investment maybe ditch the 90 Leaf or whatever straw man argument you like, and try to go on ebay and buy yourself a box of 1993 Finest in this crap market. Or 1996 Select Certified. I'll stack those up against '82 Football any day.
1982 Topps Football IMHO is Junk wax adjacent. I own zero graded cards from the set, and a single graded wax pack for the memories.
Note that i said everything Junk Wax and Junk Wax adjacent might come down to pre-bubble prices and that is plausible even if unlikely for the issues you mentioned.
P.S. 1996 Select I do not consider Junk wax adjacent and NEVER said it was. Junk wax adjacent in my mind is post 1980 product prior to 1987 and it will not apply to every issue so don't get caught up in absolutes.
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
Just a prediction but cards will probably continue to drop till next summer 24’ then you will see a huge run up till early 25’ after a stabilize light decline. The past few election cycles have returned huge gains.
All good points and I agree. You'll have to forgive my jumping to conclusions. It's good to analyze each issue separately and on its own merits. I think if you would stop belaboring the point on the worst performing assets of the pandemic bubble, which we agree on, we could discuss something more interesting or niche.
Fully agree and am buying aggressively as prices continue to drop.
Not to interrupt all of these different cards, but back to my original question. Where do you think the 63 Rose card will end up? Mid-grade, maybe PSA 5-7?
I consider 1993 SP Baseball a bellwether for early steroid era unopened (1987-1994) as it is a pretty liquid part of the high end market with lots of activity. Last two auctions ending at $1825 and $1849 mark another 6% leg down and shows continued softness in that portion of the market. 1992 Bowman Baseball and 1989 Upper Deck also suffering from an oversupplied market and are bleeding lower. This time of year typically marks local bottoms in the card market but I don't see prices improving until eBay stocks dwindle, which ironically would require some of the BIN asks to come down to within reason. Buyers and sellers rather far apart right now but the trend is definitely with the buyers.
Junk wax adjacent (1981-1986) is also showing weakness as of late. Pre-1981 vintage and late steroid era (1995-2003) showing relative strength due to more favorable supply/demand dynamics.
Just my opinion/observations on the current state of the unopened market.