Modern vs. Vintage as an investment

goodriddance189

pick one, and state your reasoning behind your choice.

go.

WinPitcher

short term modern
long term vintage

fsjeter

Vintage is the best for investment. Vintage cards hold their value much better than modern cards. The market is extremely volitile for modern cards. Unless you get lucky with a 1of1 or extremely popular rookie, their isn't much value in anything else. Also, the values drop considerably in a very short time on modern cards. Take last years NBA Rookie of the year, Amare Stoudemire. His UD Ultimate rookie was trading between $300 and $600, a year later you can get that card in a PSA 10 holder for next to nothing.. The same can't be said for a MJ, Dr. J, Bird/Magic, or Lew Alcindor. The value for those in a PSA 9 holder is considerably higher. I've all but given up on modern cards. Now that the print runs on the star rookies are getting shorter and shorter, you have to pull it from the pack to make any money. Just look at some of the UD Exquisite horror stories already posted here. What little modern I have, I collect for enjoyment. The vintage I collect for the investment.

A761506

Hi-grade vintage will always be more valuable than modern because of the scarcity of higher grade vintage cards versus the relative ease of acquiring a modern card, even one with limited production, in top grade. All the new cards are mint, collectors know they have value, so they protect them properly immediately after pulling it from a pack, and very few are likely to disappear like older cards did.

I honestly don't understand the demand for new cards. You would think people would learn from recent history not to throw money at rookies. I can remember when people thought a '86 Donruss Canseco was a great investment card, and they were selling for well over $100, and that was in 1987. Then came can't-miss Rookie of the Year Chris Sabo, as well as Gregg Jeffries. Shortly after them, we had Phil Plantier. The 90's produced even more flops, but people still throw money at these players. This year, it seems like there are 50 rookies that are desirable, and reality is only one or two of them will ever pan out into anything special. And in a few years, people will be looking at that rookie autograph card they wasted $100 on, right along side their Mike Greenwell's, Kevin Mitchell's and Eric Davis' 85 Topps card that used to sell for $10-20. Don't forget those Jim Abbott '89 Upper Deck rookies either, which used to go for like $40-50 when they first came out in the extended series.

NickM

Investing in modern cards is about predicting the herd (which requires predicting player performance to some degree).

Investing in vintage cards is about knowing supply, demand, and how demand might change.

If you're talking about "buy and hold" investments, vintage is far better. If you're talking about short-term profits, modern is far better for making large profits, but is also far riskier.

Nick

fsjeter

All I can say for sure is that I don't see too many big auction houses taking consignments on modern cards (with the exception of a case of 2001 SP Authentic Football I saw come up for auction recently). 1986 Fleer basketball is about as modern as they get. For me, vintage is the way to go. Unless, like NickM said, you are good at "predicting the herd," you may very well be on the losing side of that investment. Yeah, if you would have gotten some key Vick, Pujols, or maybe Ichiro rookies back in 2001, you would be in good shape. As A761506 said, their aren't alot of high grade vintage cards left, so demand will definately exceed supply. Wait a minute. What am I saying. Everyone should invest in modern and leave the rest to me.

BigKidAtHeart

cards are not investments.

for an investment, buy real estate.

ctsoxfan

Cards are definitely not investments, and if you think they are, you will more often than not be disappointed. I do speculate on modern cards, but I hope to make money there only to then buy more vintage cards. The vintage cards I buy are not for investment, I buy them to complete Registry sets, and just because I like them. Investments are things like real estate, stocks, bonds, futures, etc.

A761506

I do think cards have an inherent value as an investment. Like most investments, their values can fluctuate, and over time, tend to increase. A card can be liquidated in relatively short time, not as quickly as a stock, but quicker than real estate. I purchase cards because I enjoy having them, however, I only purchase top quality stuff that I know will retain it's value and hopefully increase at a similar rate as inflation over time. Mantle, Ruth, Gerhig, Koufax and players along those lines will never lose their value barring an economic depression.

Stone193

<< <i>cards are not investments. >>


In the main, I am in agreement with BKAH and CT.
Mike

purelyPSA

Why can't cards be an investment? It requires a longer time horizon and a different approach than stocks, but you can buy with the intention to sell for a profit at a later date.

Spigrimace

Both have a degree of risk. I personally stopped collecting modern in 1991.

I hate to say buy lo, sell hi but it's the truth. Grading has helped create a market of rarity. Take 1990 Score Marty Brodeur. There's a ton of them out there but the trick is to try and find/get a PSA 10. PSA created value.

Who's to say that Vintage hasn't topped out? I generally see in vintage cards that are PSA 7 or 8 that they cost about the same as they did as NM raw cards 13 years ago. Again only high grade stuff in PSA 9 or 10 seemed to have increased in price. Also remember these things cost pennies when new. Also, I've noticed Mantle cards getting a (-) sign lately. Topped out?

I think you have to look for bargains. The minor league & oddball card market is quite untapped price-wise. I never understood why as it has all the potential for increased prices: low production, rarity, HOF's before the nationally produced issues. I have personaly been investing there. Why wouldn't I want a 1981 Pawtucket Boggs PSA 8 at $40? The McGwire Anchorage card was supposedly only 3,000 made. maybe you'll get 50 PSA 10 out of the run? Same production quantity for 1986 West Pam Beach Randy Johnson. Wouldn't you rather have that than 10 different overproduced 1989 sets? For oddball: Did you know there's a 1989 Woolworth Glossy Randy Johnson? How many sets of those were produced? I'd have to think under 20,000. I'll keep hoarding these up taking my chances. I like the 1976 Walter Payton Crane disc. You can get it for a song yet you have to pay $150 for his Topps card. Same with the 1975 Hostess Yount.

I hate to say it, but a little marketing could spark interest in this stuff.

helionaut

Here we go again. To say that investing in modern is a losing proposition is to not understand the game. I'm writing this from my house, the down payment for which came largely from the profits I reaped during a hectic year of buying and selling modern cards. The people who lose money by "investing" in modern rookies do so mostly because they don't buy with the right motivation, or they simply overpay. If you buy a Lebron James card today, you had better do so because you are going to be the "end user" of the card, and aren't planning on selling it at some point in the future. If you think the card is going to appreciate, you are just wrong. If for one reason or another you end up selling the card a year or two from now you will lose money unless it's a really special card, and God knows there are tons of "special" Lebrons out there now. Other ways to lose money: buy lots of cards of every rookie out there, or go heavy into someone who has a great season in A-ball but is already 25 years old, or is only hot because he's a high draft pick but if you 'd bother to read the scouting report you'd know he is destined for middle-relief in the bigs.

I believe you've got to buy with an eye for the short-term (less than one year) to be most successful. Almost all the cards I used as my "investment" I held less than a month, all but a few less than a year. Some I was unintentionally lucky on, like an SP Legendary Cut card I bought for $325 originally to keep for myself but sold for almost $1200 because there were 3 rich people going hard after the set and it got bid up nicely (though one that sold a week before mine went for about $2200). Others I made out on because I know the market, like a Jose Canseco card #/100 I bought for 50 cents and sold for $20 because rare Jose Canseco cards are popular. Most of it was RCs I got in on early enough, or stumbled over crazy deals, but it is simply a matter of research, knowing the sport and the market to recognize good RCs and crazy deals.

With modern, I try to pick out promising but already fairly proven rookies with a card in the right set or undervalued singles and I'm almost always going to make money off it because I choose judiciously. I can watch the player grow in performance and popularity, then pick a time when I want to sell. I've found this a pretty concrete plan with fairly low risk if you pick the right guy. With vintage, since the the player has little impact on the value of the card because he's not playing any more, you are dealing with predicting what the faceless masses of other collectors will want to buy and then sell at the right moment. That can change at any time, and be the result of the actions of only one or two people driving up then driving down the market for certain cards or sets, or other unforeseeable events. You could buy only blue-chip vintage cards, Mantle, Koufax, Clemente, etc., but the cost of entry is higher than modern, and the upside will almost always take longer to materialize, all things being equal.

Other types of vintage, like mid-grade pre-war or 50s-60s stuff you could maybe make money by buying raw and getting slabbed, but that is largely a problem of finding the material and not really any kind of market astuteness. If I had come across a raw PSA 8-worthy 1953 Bowman Whitey Lockman card at a show, it most likely would be me with the article in Beckett his month. As it is, I have a hard time finding the latest Frank Thomas cards in this town, let alone NM-MT 50-year-old commons. Then the problem of perceived scarcity owing to the Registry come into the equation. I bought a 1967 PSA 8 Tigers team with a pop of 18, figuring I'd keep it for a while, then when there was one of those periodic kicks in the 67 set prices, I'd flip it. Fairly low pop for a popular card in a heavily-collected set. By the time the card reached my mailbox, the population jumped to 21. I knew it would go up, but I didn't figure on such a large jump so quickly. A year later, I sold the card for a $4 loss even though, AFAIK, only one other PSA 8 Tigers team card had appeared on ebay. Oh well. Eventually, I'll accumulate enough cards to make getting a PSA membership and a new profit avenue can open up.

One last thing to note is that you have to sell in order to actually make the profit on your investment. Many times you see the same cards for years in dealer cases or in collectors' for-sale boxes. They figure the card will keep going up, or want more than it will ever be worth, and so just don't turn the card around, and so end up losing profit, or losing money entirely. I've done this several times, too, but I learned my lesson eventually.