When speculators enter collectible markets
DrK
Posts: 58 ✭
DrK
Posts: 58 ✭
DrK
Posts: 58 ✭
Comments
It's only a matter of time before the PSA10 bubble bursts as well...in my opinion.
Are you suggesting card prices in general will fall or that the spread between other grades and PSA 10's will narrow?
comparison
young artist - 80s card
famous - vintage card
van gogh doesn't seem to have 80% discount off from auctions.
http://www.vggallery.com/misc/auctions.htm
comparison
young artist - 80s card
famous - vintage card
van gogh doesn't seem to have 80% discount off from auctions.
http://www.vggallery.com/misc/auctions.htm
My thoughts exactly with modern cards.. Like when a fool drops 10k on a strasburg that turns into $400. Happens every year.
comparison
young artist - 80s card
famous - vintage card
van gogh doesn't seem to have 80% discount off from auctions.
http://www.vggallery.com/misc/auctions.htm
One is a bio pharma stock waiting on a Phase 3 trial that fails.
The other is Berkshire Hathaway.
I remember someone paid $100K for a PSA 10 1996 SI Tiger Woods in 2000. The market didn't crash because of it.
http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/faq.html
Ok, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
I'm not an art connoisseur, I would be more of a vintage postwar baseball card and sports card connoisseur. When someone such as I glimpses the pair of abstract paintings rendered by emerging artists, I just want to tell them to please submerge back into their studio, permanently. I won't, though really now I have, suggest a six-month hunger strike to clear their minds, or turning out the lights in their studio and lighting a candle set on a full gallon of high-octane gasoline.
Where is the problem? With the tastes of the emerging artists, or the idiot speculators who threw small gargantuan fortunes at the abysmal, cacophony thrown on a canvas?
A key issue is that the speculators were not collectors. They only purchased to flip them, not sip their favorite beverage and admire the works. Perhaps somebody reputable in the "art world" bought one of them for a couple hundred thousand, as a subterfuge to get the pot boiling in the minds of the speculators. Nice plan where "nice" is devious, conniving, greedy, pool-sharky, and simply setting up greedy people who have no taste but oodles of discretionary funds.
"COME TO PAPA!"
If you've read this far, thank you. Now I want you to re-read this and replace the emerging art speculators with sport card collectors, whether PSA 10s ONLY, rookie cards ONLY, or trends that you yourselves have noticed over the past 20 years. That's a lot of time, but are there striking similarities?
dioworld made a sage comment, "van gogh doesn't seem to have 80% off from auctions." Now van Gogh is tried and true, but not until the very last days of Vincent's life did that poor artist receive glowing praise and recognition from a major art critic. Seems the work of Mr. van Gogh was not only different and unusual from his contemporaries, everyone repudiated his work and assured themselves they were right in thinking and saying so since "the whole gang" seemed to be against them. If anyone had an ounce of appreciation for Mr. van Gogh's work, they wouldn't dare divulge it for fear of being shunned and castigated in the art world community.
I try to be an honest man. My bald-faced honesty is telling me, deep down, I am hurting because my own work of art, a book on a CD about the post-war regional / food issues from 1947 - 1971, is being virtually ignored by the card-collecting community. I wrote of what it was like for a child to have fallen in love with those kinds of cards, and the many challenges and problems he would encounter trying to build a set, or somehow, some way, get the one card he wanted. Usually that card would be a real star of those years. What would you do if you were a vulnerable kid, and you wanted Mickey Mantle, Sandy Koufax, or Willie Mays so bad that was all you could think about?
Such were a few of the things I covered.
But no, everyone, it seems, is besotted with thoughts of rookie cards and Topps, Topps, Topps, those penny ante Topps. Much as I loved my Topps, I loved the regional / food so much more. Their own true beauty, and their challenge---sometimes a daunting, daring hunt for beautiful, exotic rare game, such as a Bengal Tiger. Do not get me wrong; I love Bengal Tigers, and would rather observe them in the wild and let them roam free. Yeah, I certainly don't want to be their lunch.
Too many guys want to make suckers their lunch, to give them something to brag about all the rest of their lives---whether they be poor, in bad health, widows, ignorant of what they have, et al. The most pleasant aspect in my mind of the LUCKY 7 FIND of the rare T206 Ty Cobbs was the fact the dealer auctioned them for the family, who got the far majority of the proceeds, as is only right. He didn't talk the family down about the seven, to do them a favor in taking them off their hands for a couple grand, or two hundred bucks.
The nearest thing I see to a "bubble" is the Gem Mint 10 double-digit idiot (pronounce id-get, like Yosemite Sam). There are PSA Gem Mint 10s that mean something, such as any Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Gretzky, Jim Brown, Michael Jordan, and other game faces that rose to the top, and survived acquiring reputation and name-damaging excess baggage---crime, PEDS, etc
I'm sure you're long fatigued staying with me.
In case you are curious about that book I wrote, Google the title, NEVER CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN. I can sure relate to Mr. van Gogh. I'm not planning to cut off my ear, and have not been ingesting any lead, as did Vincent from repeatedly forming a point with his brush to achieve what he was trying to portray on canvas.
---Indiana Jones (Brian Powell)
young artist = Jeremy Lin and Stephen Strasburg
famous - high grade cards of HOFers...including 1980s
The Lin and Strasburg rise and fall is more like what that article was about in the art world comparison
It's only a matter of time before the PSA10 bubble bursts as well...in my opinion.
Are you suggesting card prices in general will fall or that the spread between other grades and PSA 10's will narrow?
I think the spread between will get more narrow. Now don't get me wrong...A PSA10 card will always demand much more than say PSA8 but right now as it is....The market for PSA10 cards is ridiculously overinflated.
Example: Bird/Magic Rookie
PSA10 $25,000 19 total
PSA9 $4250 529 total
PSA8 $750 2324 total
That PSA8 will continue to increase at a slow pace over time as it's more stable and less prone to manipulation. That PSA 10 on the other hand is definitely unstable as that price can be easily manipulated. Technically if you wanted to make that card worth $50k you could do so in a month or 2 by simply having a few people buy/sell them maybe 5 to 6 times for $50k. That would then establish a new price. The market is way to easy to manipulate and historically speaking when markets can be manipulated in such manner they end up collapsing.
The Jordan market is proof enough to me just how unstable the market actually is. It's went from $16k to $40k back down to $30k and most likely will head back to 20k soon enough. Now this is an iconic card that like Mickey Mantle's rookie card will hold a high value irregardless of the marketplace. Other cards however will not be so lucky.
Additionally, as the fake PSA10 cards start to saturate the market place buyer confidence will become lowered which should lead to less buyers for high end cards. In a market full of sellers the prices will start dropping like mad. At that point a new market value would be established.
Manipulation of the market is one of the key problems I see. With groups of people out there collaborating to corner the market in an attempt to first inflate the value of the card which at the same time creates a false demand by making a card seem red hot, and then selling that card to unsuspecting people who don't realize they are buying the card right before the bubble bursts. It's not much different than watching say the 2008 real estate market. Those with money can no doubt wait it out but it's the ones that get caught up in trying to make a profit right now that are going to be the ones that bought the $800k house with a mortgage of say $600k that now is worth $200k as was the lesson of 2008.
Of course this is all a matter of opinion but if you have spend any time studying the marketplace and it's fluctuations you see a constant up and down process throughout history and you prepare for it as inevitable.
comparison
young artist - 80s card
famous - vintage card
van gogh doesn't seem to have 80% discount off from auctions.
http://www.vggallery.com/misc/auctions.htm
My thoughts exactly with modern cards.. Like when a fool drops 10k on a strasburg that turns into $400. Happens every year.
I'm assuming you're talking about the strasburg 1/1 superfractor. What ever happened to that card? I remember it sold for as high as like 22k (I think).
Also, the point about buying Jordan at $40k and those that did has to make some sick on here. As you said card went from $16k to $20k to $40k and now back to $30k. Just wow.
comparison
young artist - 80s card
famous - vintage card
van gogh doesn't seem to have 80% discount off from auctions.
http://www.vggallery.com/misc/auctions.htm
My thoughts exactly with modern cards.. Like when a fool drops 10k on a strasburg that turns into $400. Happens every year.
I'm assuming you're talking about the strasburg 1/1 superfractor. What ever happened to that card? I remember it sold for as high as like 22k (I think).
That one sold for $22k in 2010 then was auctioned off for charity last year. Still no where near the 100k si Woods debacle.
Ouch :
Strasburg