Vintage = low risk investment?
digicat
Posts: 8,551 ✭✭
Has anyone sat down and crunched some numbers to see how vintage cards have done over the past 20 years or so? Would $500 spent on graded (7 and higher) post war, pre-1969 HoF rookies today still be $500 (or better) down the line? What do you all think?
I'm sure that there are better forms of investing, but hey, we're sports fans and OCD collectaddicts. Seeing that 1962 Mickey Mantle card on your desk is far more pleasing than seeing some numbers on an investment schedule.
I'm sure that there are better forms of investing, but hey, we're sports fans and OCD collectaddicts. Seeing that 1962 Mickey Mantle card on your desk is far more pleasing than seeing some numbers on an investment schedule.
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Mark Mulder rookies
Chipper Jones rookies
Orlando Cabrera rookies
Lawrence Taylor
Sam Huff
Lavar Arrington
NY Giants
NY Yankees
NJ Nets
NJ Devils
1950s-1960s Topps NY Giants Team cards
Looking for Topps rookies as well.
References:
GregM13
VintageJeff
But I'd rather have a psa 8 ernie davis than a psa 10 reggie bush in terms of investment.
Forget blocking him; find out where he lives and go punch him in the nuts. --WalterSobchak 9/12/12
Looking for Al Hrabosky and any OPC Dave Campbells (the ESPN guy)
<< <i>You can't go wrong with vg to vg/x tobacco cards, caramel cards or anything nineteenth century. Why purchase anything else? >>
BECAUSE THEY'RE BORING AND MOST OF US CAN'T RELATE TO THEM. chaz
<< <i>You can't go wrong with vg to vg/x tobacco cards, caramel cards or anything nineteenth century. Why purchase anything else? >>
Because those cards have been experiencing there own "irrational exuberance" the past couple of years. I think they are due to take a down turn at the current sell prices.
Dont invest for investing sake...the people that make a decent return on cards are the ones that take an enormous amount of time researching a set ..knowing what cards are truly rare and what cards have the best eye appeal.
and it takes a long time to make serious money...collect for the fun of it.
Groucho Marx
I can't think of any vintage football cards (and i consider vintage pre-'60) from when I started collecting in '99 which you could get for the same price today, let alone take a loss....as a matter of fact, almost all of that stuff has easily outpaced the stock market in the past 7 years.
lsuconnman@yahoo.com
<< <i>I keep hearing about Fritsch's stash. Does someone have a link that'll fill me in, is it a rumor, or is Fritsch blowing out his arse. >>
They made an agreement for mastro auction to sell off his unopened wax, people who have been to his place seem to think there is a "lot" but nobody knows how much. Here's the results from the first auction, ended last month.
Fritsch wax
He's too smart to flood the market all at once but it'll take a long time till he runs out.
The good news is it's possible that some cards made of unobtanium might surface, the bad news is some 1/1 cards might not be 1/1 any more.
On the short term, I'd watch out for things that young adults who are finally starting to make money are interested in .... late 70s baseball and football. These are the types of folks who all of the sudden stop buying Ramon noodles and start buying PSA 10 Walter Payton Rookies. Not many of this crowd will be buying PSA Walter Johnson cards.
1977 Topps Star Wars - "Space Swashbucklers"
<< <i>
<< <i>I keep hearing about Fritsch's stash. Does someone have a link that'll fill me in, is it a rumor, or is Fritsch blowing out his arse. >>
They made an agreement for mastro auction to sell off his unopened wax, people who have been to his place seem to think there is a "lot" but nobody knows how much. Here's the results from the first auction, ended last month.
Fritsch wax
He's too smart to flood the market all at once but it'll take a long time till he runs out.
The good news is it's possible that some cards made of unobtanium might surface, the bad news is some 1/1 cards might not be 1/1 any more. >>
I especially like the idiot who payed 7K for the '71 vending box.
Are sportscards the only collectible market out there where the participants almost gleefully-- nay, DEFIANTLY--operate at an intentional loss? Is there any other market where 'half the fun', as it were, is just getting your sack crushed in a deal gone horribly wrong?
We like to discuss how sleazy card dealers are, an I agree with much (but not all) of what's said in those discussions. But consider the obstacles a card dealer faces. A large part of his competition-- i.e., collectors-- behave as if they're looking to LOSE as much money as they can in the course of their transactions. Can you even imagine having to go up against this, and be forced to compete in the marketplace against a legion of total f#*knuts who toss all pretenses of fiscal responsibility out the window when it comes time to 'make a deal'? Say, for example, you're a deal who's pretty well connected, and you have some unique outlets for high end '71's. That is to say, you know some well heeled collectors who are putting that set together and you're sure that you can get more $ for high end '71's then just about anyone else out there. Maybe not a ton more-- ebay is a great equalizer-- but you figure you can gross about 10% more on mint '71's then the average schmuck.
So you see this box in the Mastro auction. You crunch a few numbers, run some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and figure you can probably make $400 or so, on average, if you can get that box for about $4500. You also figure that you'll be in the front running for that box, since nobody else who's taken the time to research the market for '71's, and learn more about the average condition of these cards when they emerge from vending, will touch your 4.5K bid. You further assume that nobody who hasn't done the research you've done is going to bid that high on something like this, since only a stone moron would plunk down that kind of money on something they know little or nothing about. In other words, you assume that other's assume that on a high priced item like this informed and intelligent bidders will be participating, which means that any idiot should know that if they 'win' this thing then they almost certainly paid too much.
Now imagine your disgust when you see that some joker plopped down a bid of 7K; probably because he thought this box would be 'fun to open'.
This may not have been how this deal went down, but it's probably fairly descriptive of how many other deals go down in the sportscard marketplace. I don't know enough about other markets to make any educated generalizations, but I would think that in most other markets the buying prices are largely determined by people who know what the hell they're doing; or at least by people who know more than the average clown. In real estate, for example, the buy prices are not determined by ignoramuses' who've just bought some 99$ real estate guide on an infomercial.
But thein lies one of the fundamental perversities of the sports card market. The 'market price', as it were, is frequently set by people who have no idea what the hell they're doing. Or, if not this, by people who have no concern for ROI. Now I'm not going to get into a normative debate on whether or not this is 'right' or 'wrong', since that gets us nowhere. But it is a peculiar facet of the sports card market, and illustrates why dealers have such a tough time succeeding.
Now I used that 1971 vending box in my example, and I freely admit that I know nothing about 1971 vending boxes. Hell, for all I know the guy who won that basically stole it. But I do know that this kind of general lunacy runs absolutely rampant in the market for modern cards, which at least partially explains why there are so few long standing and reputable card dealers who broker primarily in high end modern singles. You stand NO CHANCE of making a profit if you're forced to hold inventory that trends downward in value, yet this is precisely the situation that a modern card dealer would find himself in. To deal in modern cards you would first have to know how long, on average, you're going to have to hold on to the card before you sell it (this can probably be quantified with a surprising degree of accuracy once you have some experience in the market), then have an idea of how much the card will depreciate, on average, in that time span, and then set your buy price accordingly. The problem, however, lies in the fact that the people competing with you for the right to buy that card have little if any respect for these same factors. Virtually NO modern card speculators account for the element of risk in their buying decisions, or at least make no attempt to weight it properly. Just look at the prices right now for Pujols rookies. Anyone with a few grams of grey matter between their ears should be able to understand that the worst time to buy a guy's cards is when he's tearing up the league, yet the prices continue to skyrocket.
Anyway, sorry for the rambling post. It's just that all this came together for me a few days ago, and it hit me like an epiphany. I realized that virtually all of the guys who've acheived some measure of success and longetivity as card dealers have made a point of holding inventory that doesn't have a huge downside. Guys like Steve Hart, Levi, Greg Bussineau, Dave and Adams, etc., all have inventories that consist largely of singles (or packs/cases) which have either a) relatively little depreciation risk, or b) a fairly small window in which they'll be expected to hold the cards. In either case they are not burdened by the spectre of depreciation. Even at the card shows I attend the dealers who've had the most 'shelf life', as it were, are the guys who move 4000-5000 $.20 to $.50 singles over the course of a show (1995 Select Roger Clemens cards aren't going to bottom out anytime soon) or a wide array of cards (usually vintage) where the market prices have stabilized. What you DON'T see is guys with showcase after showcase of Exquisite Carmelo RC's, and there's a very good reason for that.
If you had done a bit to educate yourself before your diatribe, you would've learned that 1971 baseball is extremely difficult in high grades due to the black borders. So to think that you might get some high grade cards, the $7000 price tag doesn't become so idiotic, as you deemed it. That averages out to $14 per card. Seeing that commons from '71 sell for $18 in PSA 8 and $95 in PSA 9, with the possibility for many 9's and possibly even a few 10's, the breakup value of that box doesn't seem so "idiotic" any more, does it? Thurman Munson and Pete Rose, both in that series, each sell for around $5000 in PSA 9. With a vending box averaging 4 of each card, that sounds like a nice risk to me. Although I don't have the cash to make that sort of investment, I can tell you I wish I did, as there is a high ceiling on the potential profit there.
So if you're going to spend a long time writing a post, spend a minute researching what you're saying, so you aren't the one sounding like the idiot.
<< <i>You can't go wrong with vg to vg/x tobacco cards, caramel cards or anything nineteenth century. Why purchase anything else? >>
Sssssshhhh.
We need a steady stream of idiots buying modern junk.
Loves me some shiny!
<< <i>Boopotts, I don't have all day here to read your post, but I got the point and realized how wrong you may be about old vending.
If you had done a bit to educate yourself before your diatribe, you would've learned that 1971 baseball is extremely difficult in high grades due to the black borders. So to think that you might get some high grade cards, the $7000 price tag doesn't become so idiotic, as you deemed it. That averages out to $14 per card. Seeing that commons from '71 sell for $18 in PSA 8 and $95 in PSA 9, with the possibility for many 9's and possibly even a few 10's, the breakup value of that box doesn't seem so "idiotic" any more, does it? Thurman Munson and Pete Rose, both in that series, each sell for around $5000 in PSA 9. With a vending box averaging 4 of each card, that sounds like a nice risk to me. Although I don't have the cash to make that sort of investment, I can tell you I wish I did, as there is a high ceiling on the potential profit there.
So if you're going to spend a long time writing a post, spend a minute researching what you're saying, so you aren't the one sounding like the idiot. >>
I don't think Boopotts was being ignorant--I'm sure he is very familiar with '71 Baseball. I agree with him 100% on that vending box as a great example of lunacy. Yes, it averages to $14.00 a card. Yes, there is a chance that you'll get 4 Munsons, 4 Blylevens, 4 Roses, 4 Jacksons. But weigh in some other factors:
Regardless of what they say, unless those boxes came sealed, there is a chance they were searched. '71 is also notorious for off centered cards. That box may be perfect. But it may also have contained 500 95/5 centered cards that will give you a dreaded qualifier on grading. I'd rather have the PSA 9 graded card that I laid out 5 grand for than a box of 500 off centered cards that I will be kicking myself for. $7000 for a lottery ticket is only worth it when it's a guaranteed winner. Otherwise you just flushed a Hyundai down the toilet.
Forget blocking him; find out where he lives and go punch him in the nuts. --WalterSobchak 9/12/12
Looking for Al Hrabosky and any OPC Dave Campbells (the ESPN guy)
<< <i>
<< <i>You can't go wrong with vg to vg/x tobacco cards, caramel cards or anything nineteenth century. Why purchase anything else? >>
Sssssshhhh.
We need a steady stream of idiots buying modern junk. >>
Not everyone collects baseball cards for investment purposes. Did we not all collect what would be considered modern at some point in our lives??
<< <i>On the short term, I'd watch out for things that young adults who are finally starting to make money are interested in .... late 70s baseball and football. These are the types of folks who all of the sudden stop buying Ramon noodles and start buying PSA 10 Walter Payton Rookies. Not many of this crowd will be buying PSA Walter Johnson cards. >>
Not sure I agree with this. I'm 29 years old and have been collecting on and off since I was a kid. As I got older and my income grew, I traded in my PSA 10 Payton and Montana Rookie cards (childhood heroes) for pre-war stuff. I think the scarcity and mystique alone (compared to modern cards) of pre-war cards will always appeal to collectors of all ages. NONE of us here had the chance to watch Ty Cobb or Walter Johnson play, so why assume that only older collectors would be drawn to collect these types of players?
Just my 2 cents.
your heroes for ghosts?
Collectibles,.....ANY collectibles. Are only worth what someone is willing to pay for it at a specific time. Price guides are only guides, not bibles. Historical closing prices are only what someone was willing to pay at that time. Collectibles don't pay dividends (unless you count the pleasure they give the owner), or pay interest. In and of themselves, they don't produce income or revenue.
If you buy collectibles that you enjoy, at a price that you can afford, you will always come out ahead.
In my case, the money I use to me is no different than what I see relatives and friends spend on lottery tix or at casinos. I do neither of those, but recognize that my hobby _ given the expense and price fluctuations, is a form of gambling and of investing.
Unlike lottery tix, however, losers and winners aren't clearly defined or arbitrary. I get something more for my money and have a chance to make it grow, along with the pleasure of feeding a personal passion for sports.
To get back to the original question, I do think cards issued before the mid-1970s (I focus on basketball) in general can be considered reasonable investments _ if the money you are using would otherwise be disposed of with little chance of a return.
Opening a pack of cards for me beats scratching a lottery tix any day!
<< <i>
<< <i>
<< <i>I keep hearing about Fritsch's stash. Does someone have a link that'll fill me in, is it a rumor, or is Fritsch blowing out his arse. >>
They made an agreement for mastro auction to sell off his unopened wax, people who have been to his place seem to think there is a "lot" but nobody knows how much. Here's the results from the first auction, ended last month.
Fritsch wax
He's too smart to flood the market all at once but it'll take a long time till he runs out.
The good news is it's possible that some cards made of unobtanium might surface, the bad news is some 1/1 cards might not be 1/1 any more. >>
I especially like the idiot who payed 7K for the '71 vending box.
Are sportscards the only collectible market out there where the participants almost gleefully-- nay, DEFIANTLY--operate at an intentional loss? Is there any other market where 'half the fun', as it were, is just getting your sack crushed in a deal gone horribly wrong?
We like to discuss how sleazy card dealers are, an I agree with much (but not all) of what's said in those discussions. But consider the obstacles a card dealer faces. A large part of his competition-- i.e., collectors-- behave as if they're looking to LOSE as much money as they can in the course of their transactions. Can you even imagine having to go up against this, and be forced to compete in the marketplace against a legion of total f#*knuts who toss all pretenses of fiscal responsibility out the window when it comes time to 'make a deal'? Say, for example, you're a deal who's pretty well connected, and you have some unique outlets for high end '71's. That is to say, you know some well heeled collectors who are putting that set together and you're sure that you can get more $ for high end '71's then just about anyone else out there. Maybe not a ton more-- ebay is a great equalizer-- but you figure you can gross about 10% more on mint '71's then the average schmuck.
So you see this box in the Mastro auction. You crunch a few numbers, run some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and figure you can probably make $400 or so, on average, if you can get that box for about $4500. You also figure that you'll be in the front running for that box, since nobody else who's taken the time to research the market for '71's, and learn more about the average condition of these cards when they emerge from vending, will touch your 4.5K bid. You further assume that nobody who hasn't done the research you've done is going to bid that high on something like this, since only a stone moron would plunk down that kind of money on something they know little or nothing about. In other words, you assume that other's assume that on a high priced item like this informed and intelligent bidders will be participating, which means that any idiot should know that if they 'win' this thing then they almost certainly paid too much.
Now imagine your disgust when you see that some joker plopped down a bid of 7K; probably because he thought this box would be 'fun to open'.
This may not have been how this deal went down, but it's probably fairly descriptive of how many other deals go down in the sportscard marketplace. I don't know enough about other markets to make any educated generalizations, but I would think that in most other markets the buying prices are largely determined by people who know what the hell they're doing; or at least by people who know more than the average clown. In real estate, for example, the buy prices are not determined by ignoramuses' who've just bought some 99$ real estate guide on an infomercial.
But thein lies one of the fundamental perversities of the sports card market. The 'market price', as it were, is frequently set by people who have no idea what the hell they're doing. Or, if not this, by people who have no concern for ROI. Now I'm not going to get into a normative debate on whether or not this is 'right' or 'wrong', since that gets us nowhere. But it is a peculiar facet of the sports card market, and illustrates why dealers have such a tough time succeeding.
Now I used that 1971 vending box in my example, and I freely admit that I know nothing about 1971 vending boxes. Hell, for all I know the guy who won that basically stole it. But I do know that this kind of general lunacy runs absolutely rampant in the market for modern cards, which at least partially explains why there are so few long standing and reputable card dealers who broker primarily in high end modern singles. You stand NO CHANCE of making a profit if you're forced to hold inventory that trends downward in value, yet this is precisely the situation that a modern card dealer would find himself in. To deal in modern cards you would first have to know how long, on average, you're going to have to hold on to the card before you sell it (this can probably be quantified with a surprising degree of accuracy once you have some experience in the market), then have an idea of how much the card will depreciate, on average, in that time span, and then set your buy price accordingly. The problem, however, lies in the fact that the people competing with you for the right to buy that card have little if any respect for these same factors. Virtually NO modern card speculators account for the element of risk in their buying decisions, or at least make no attempt to weight it properly. Just look at the prices right now for Pujols rookies. Anyone with a few grams of grey matter between their ears should be able to understand that the worst time to buy a guy's cards is when he's tearing up the league, yet the prices continue to skyrocket.
Anyway, sorry for the rambling post. It's just that all this came together for me a few days ago, and it hit me like an epiphany. I realized that virtually all of the guys who've acheived some measure of success and longetivity as card dealers have made a point of holding inventory that doesn't have a huge downside. Guys like Steve Hart, Levi, Greg Bussineau, Dave and Adams, etc., all have inventories that consist largely of singles (or packs/cases) which have either a) relatively little depreciation risk, or b) a fairly small window in which they'll be expected to hold the cards. In either case they are not burdened by the spectre of depreciation. Even at the card shows I attend the dealers who've had the most 'shelf life', as it were, are the guys who move 4000-5000 $.20 to $.50 singles over the course of a show (1995 Select Roger Clemens cards aren't going to bottom out anytime soon) or a wide array of cards (usually vintage) where the market prices have stabilized. What you DON'T see is guys with showcase after showcase of Exquisite Carmelo RC's, and there's a very good reason for that. >>
Fritsch is sitting on a ton of vending from the 60's and 70's. I talked with someone in the know. A dealer I spoke with actually went through his warehouse and he said you wouldn't believe it. I stayed away from buying anything at Mastronet auction. It's way overpriced and there is a ton of it (Fritch's stuff) with more coming out in August....you'll see. chaz
<< <i>BECAUSE THEY'RE BORING AND MOST OF US CAN'T RELATE TO THEM. chaz >>
<< <i>Chaz is right... Keep away from anything pre 60's, it's such a bore. Invest in contemporary collectibles, if you can handle the excitement that is
A single T206 of either a famous HOFer or a rare variation in PSA 1 (fair/poor) condition can easily pull in $100. I'd like to see any postwar/contemporary card (sans Mantle) in the SAME PSA 1 graded condition command the SAME price.
<< <i>...however your collectibles should never reach more than 5% of your wealth. >>
Heh...my collection IS my wealth!
Groucho Marx
I was just thinking the same thing. On August 21, 2004 (1 year and about 9 months ago) a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA 6 sold on Hunt Auctions for $11,000.00. Here is the link and scan.
1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA 6 for $11,000.00
Currently, on ebay, there is another 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA 6. Here is the link:
Ebay Auction for 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA 6
It's currently at $14,995.00 with 2 day and 20 hours to go. I have no idea what it is going to end at. But at PSA 5 on Mastro Auctions sold for $19,263.00 here:
1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA 5
Let's say it sells for $18,000.00; Not out of the realm of possibility. In which case, ignoring a bazillion other factors, the Mantle appreciated a bit over 60% in less than two years. Now's thats an investment!
If I could afford, I'd drop the $35K to $50K and pick up a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA 8. Not quite as pricey, I would start looking into Willie Mays cards. Not only is he recognized as one of the all-time greatest, he's getting up there in years; Just celebrated number 75.
/s/ JackWESQ
<< <i>emotions should have no place when it comes to invesnting. >>
Agreed. Once the idea of 'investing' comes into play you should quit thinking about what card from the era you 'like' could appreciate, and start looking at the whole spectrum of cards for possible investments.
For instance, I think the Exquisite Lebron RC could be a good investment, since that card probably doesn't have a ceiling if he continues to excel. Ditto for the Bowman Chrome Pujols. A guy may or may not agree with me on this, but anyone who's buying with the idea of investing in mind would be doing himself a disservice if he didn't at least look at these two cards.
I'm glad I was smart enough to hang on to 2 of the 3 I got that day.
My registry sets