Lots of vintage woefully under priced
olb31
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Here are a couple of examples but I know y'all will have tons more. The player from the Reds "De la Cruz" has pages of cards on EBAY that people are asking over a thousand dollars for. Up to $250,000. While this dude may be a good player. Paying these prices sounds ridiculous to me.
Here are two of my favorite cards and to me seem to be way under priced. A 1964 Pete Rose psa 8 can be had for $5,000 or so. and a 1969 Nolan Ryan PSA 8 can be had for around $3,000. These two cards are iconic to me. and moving forward, I think they are as good as gold. You could have 5 nolan ryan's for the price of hundreds of de la cruz's.
if cruz is priced near correctly, then these two cards should be way over $10,000 apiece.
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How have cards of Tatis Jr and Wander Franco worked out? How about Trout and some of those 6 fig sales?
Still peeps mostly be wanting new young playas. Even if they become the next Trout - so what. The only exception may be Ohtani and for him only time and market will tell...
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
Plus, you add the mass production factor of today and it doesn't bode well for value retention, especially if people leave the market.
It will be interesting to see how the prevalence of modern “of 1s”. Numbered cards in general. If and how they impact the opinion of numbered cards from the past which are more meaningfully limited.
De la Cruz super fast. Lots of green lights too.
It seems to me that teams just don't like to steal much these days. A lot has to go right to catch a guy like De la Cruz.
Not even close to Henderson though.
You are spot on with your thinking. Most of the modern cards worth big money will not be worth half of what they are going for now in 5-10 years. This is one of the many reasons why I advised the WNBA guy to sell his cards. The blue version of this special card only has 45 copies made and so on are for quick flips and to make a small group of people money. Most people that buy this stuff will lose a lot of money and get burned.
As far as cards being iconic goes. I don't think the new stuff is ever really going to be iconic. There are too many pictures.
Yeah, way too many. The superrefractor 1/1 maybe's. Bu there won't be just one version.
Another future generation of hustlers will identify stuff that's available to them when they feel it's possible to profit from it. What's being sold now will have potential, but only for limited amounts of time. Then again, I can recall the phase of inserts in packs back in the 90's being frowned upon, and of course many of them which feature guys like Griffey Jr and Jordan sell for the big bucks. Don't count out the artificial low pop crap just yet, but it won't be our money paying for them.
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ELmago -- I'm not. i collect orange refractors and /25 of stars I like -- Miggy, Freeman, soto, etc.
I'm secretly collecting stuff "here and there". But don't tell anyone. It's a secret.
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Clearly there is a market for both. With modern, what the vintage cards don't have are players highlights showing up on IG, TikTok or Youtube. It makes a difference. There are also different economic factors you are leaving out. I'll go out on a limb and say there is a smaller percentage that can afford dropping $3k+ on a card. With that, an even smaller percentage that will spend it on vintage. With the latest $1.1 million dollar sale of the Paul Skenes MLB card, people will be ripping modern for the foreseeable future.
I think the Debut Patch cards from Topps have a chance to get there. They're unique, even among a sea of 1/1s.
1.1 for skenes is really dicey. pitchers cards just aren't big sellers.
Of course some stuff is going to have value. Iconic and valuable aren't the same thing. I don't know what any of the Debut Patch cards from Topps look like.
If you say 69 Topps Ryan, I know exactly what you're talking about. I don't have to look for a picture. It's iconic. That card was pictured in Beckett all the time. So when I was a kid looking at pictures of baseball cards I'd see that picture like every day.
I would think collectors, not so much investors, of vintage would enjoy seeing price dips. Thus allowing to fill those gaps in their collections at a more reduced, affordable price.
I think cards of active players go through a cycle that has been going on for a while, even in the 80s. 1984 Donruss Mattingly being the card everybody has to have in the second half of the 80s. It hit $100, of course raw, and as a kid that was tough to buy. But at $100 in 1986 or so its priced as if he will have a Lou Gehrig career. Or priced so the only way it increases in value is if he is the next Lou or better. Canseco goes 40/40 and his cards get to a similar level as Don. Today 35 plus years later you can get the same version of the Don and Jose raw cards that you could back then at that peak value for less money.
I remember in the early 2000s Manny Ramirez was about as good a player as there was in baseball (before any PED news) but there was guy in the minors named Hanley Ramirez who had potential and his cards were maybe the same or more when it came to price. Because hey, he might be great. He was a solid player but buying during that hype before he was in the majors you would have lost if you bought and held til today.
There is a weird dynamic with cards where when a player is believed to have potential or is performing on the field or is a rookie doing well its like a first day IPO stock in 2020 or a tech bubble stock in 1999. You just have such a challenge buying and holding those cards and seeing a nice return in terms of increase in value.
Elly De La Cruz, he may become a phenomenal player but cards are priced as if he will be another Griffey. If he is it may not have much more room to go up. Nice modest increases but probably cant shoot up when he does well cause its already priced in. Maybe it does have room to go up but that uptick is probably unsustainable too. Jackson Holliday, he could be great too. Elly and Jackson could have careers like Manny Machado who should be a HOFer. But Manny on his HOF path in his 30s may be half the price. Jackson and Elly could be like him maybe but 2x as expensive if not more. Its like young guys the value goes to the moon and then when a player is still productive but a little less exciting and older sideways or pullback. HOF post career can move up again.
Mike Trout 5 years ago was there any room up even if he was healthy. Last 3 years of Aaron Judge yeah he has been an incredible player but its already factored in and the upside I think gets limited unless in his mid to late 30s he is hitting 58 HRs and batting .300 year after year and racking up MVPs. If you got him in his rookie year during the hype you should have still made money but its the outlier. His rookie card when he was a lower half of the top 100 prospects with scouting reports saying he did not have a hit tool, there was your opportunity but how easy is that. With guys like Jackson Holliday and Elly De La Cruz and Dylan Crews its like there is close to never a moment when they are a secret and their cards are cheap.
I want to buy everyone I see that's centered.
The current dudes I like
Verlander
Kershaw
Freeman
Altuve (somewhat)
Soto
Ohtani
Snell
Judge (but lower down the list)
Betts
There is way too much junk wax (1981 and forward) to justify high prices. There is a low percentage for most stars …but that is because there is so much out there and graded. The absolute number is what is important to look at. For example…a 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan PSA-10 is, my gosh, only 1.3%…but there are 326 PSA-10s!
Just curious about your opinion on the junk wax vs. current/modern.
Even though there were millions printed in the mid/late 80s there typically was only one or two in each company. Now there are boatloads from each company since they gave different runs (base, Heritage, Archives, etc). Seems to me the modern are making the same mistakes as 40 years ago.
It just feels like a bubble is happening all over again…
Today...modern cards are so well preserved by collectors/investors...and there are grading companies to encapsulate those cards. Back in the day...these factors were not present leading to low POP HOFs in high grade. I like collecting/investing in cards prior to 1981.
I cannot comment on modern today since I do not collect it. I learned back in the 1980s that it is difficult to predict future HOFs. Fortunately back then...modern cards were not expensive like today, so I did not lose much.
are we in the ultra-modern era now?
I remember in 1981 when I was collecting and besides Topps , Fleer and Donruss came out. I was thinking this can't be good. I know competition is good but it just felt like too much. It also appeared to me like the Fleer and Donrus were flooding the cards,it seemed like they were everywhere that I did not see cards before. If since then I had a feeling that the cards would not hold their value like they did before 1981. I pretty much only collected Kobe as being a life long Laker fan and Tom Brady. Lately I have gotten myself drifting back into non-sports cards .
I like some of the WWE cards from the 80's. I haven't bought any Star Trek cards from the Original show but I do like them. Cards are nostalgia -- brings back memories and are nice to review them every so often.
Just picked up a really nice OPC Ozzie psa 8 from ebay. best centered one I have seen for a while.
Lots of stuff from the 80s that is very tough. Centred 87 OPC Bonds for instance. Find me a perfect 86 OPC Lemieux and I’d pay a bundle. To name just 2.
I’ve told this story before….I ripped 50+ boxes of 85 OPC BB and didn’t hit any key cards that is an obvious 10. Have like 50 Puckets and best I hit was an 8.5.
i actually got a psa 10 on the opc bonds that I pulled from a box I paid $10 for. Sold it for $1250 about 12 years ago. I have several 9's that look like 10's too. The puckett and most of the 1985's are very tough.
I mean this nicely, I swear - you not knowing what they look like is a result of you choosing to not know. They've gotten a ton of hype and the Skenes card got a boatload of mainstream media attention. It's basically the same thing as an 11-year old modern collector not knowing what a 1934 Goudey Ruth looks like despite it being iconic.
There's a lot out there to look at.
I heard a Skeans card sold for a lot of money. I didn't know what set it was from.
Why do you think that card sold for so much?
I think there are many on here that feel there are rare cards from the junk wax era and even prior to that, that are babies that were thrown out with the bath water of junk wax, but for a small number of exceptions, weren't issued by the big-name companies, and were not distributed nationally, and many of these locally issued cards have total pops under 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 200 or 500 compared to 5 figure populations of many nationally distributed cards. It would take such a small increase in demand to push the values up of these local issues as collectors stumble onto them. I have friends in my area who are very casual collectors and not well informed and you always see their mouths open up in awe when I show them something from the 70s to early 90s they've never seen or heard of and the low population.
Using the Jordan absolute number theory, one would think that the '80 Henderson & '93 SP Jeter would be "better buys" if someone is tossing out a quarter mill on cardboard. Still, Jordan probably higher demand.
The problem I see with modern cards being over produced is that when a card is said to have a low graded population people think that card is maybe rare. As soon as someone thinks the card is rare they tend to look for it thing they can hit it big. During Covid cards came out of the woodwork people that never collected or that people who only collected as kids started collecting again. I have a 1986 Topps NBA @ 50 #138 Kobe Bryant PSA 10 and before Covid there was not many fairly rare and the price was through the roof. Now I believe there is 89. I have seen this with many cards .
I have never collected the insert cards much, but lately I have been looking for some football inserts. Some of them are 'shinier" than the regular set.
But the vintage psa 8's and up from 1975 and back just seem really low priced to me. Heck I picked a really centered 1969 nolan ryan sgc 6 for $475. I thought that was a steal, being so centered.
I love Jeter and Henderson. HOWEVER Jordan is bigger to Basketball than those 2 are to Baseball not to mention Jordon is a significantly larger pop-culture icon. One might go as far as saying his icon dwarfs theirs.
All that said the Jeter and Henderson cards in PSA 10 are a tiny fraction of the 1986 Jordan population. At least in SP Jeter case there is a legit reason due to type of card it is.
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
1996?
It's the singer not the song - Peter Townshend (1972)
Yes, 1996 . Thank you
Demand. How many new collectors are going to care about a 3rd year Nolan Ryan or Johnny Bench in 25 years? All this is really time fodder.
My collecting blog: http://ctcard.wordpress.com
those cards will always be in demand. I have heard folks wonder about what will happen with vintage for years after the fans who actually saw the great play get into their elderly years or pass on. The amount of current collectors who watched Mantle play is probably fairly small now. Same for Williams, Musial, Jackie Robinson, Dimaggio etc. there is no one left alive who saw Ruth, Cobb, Young, Johnson play. Yet these vintage names are some of the most valuable cards in existance.
The same will be true of Ryan, Jackson, Bench, Schmidt etc. their legends will live on.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
The great ones…will be remembered and collected.
$$$$ helps people remember. When you are browsing and you see people are asking or selling for much bigger than you would expect .
I sure am!
I was always going to collect Blyleven, but never got around to it, the same with Hrbek. I set their raw cards aside to send in for grading.
I've been picking up PSA 10's on some of their cards for as low as $15.00. Getting 10's for less than the cost of grading is SWEET!
Spot on. Vintage cards from the 50's to 70's in high grade pretty much sell immediately if priced close to current market value. Plus they are extremely hard to find at most big card conventions. The last two big card shows I attended in Southern California had less than 10 tables that had ample high grade (PSA 8 and above) cards for sale. The one's that did were mostly asking double current market value. There were a decent amount that were offering vintage cards but the grades were usually PSA 3 to PSA 6. I asked many dealers how come they don't have higher graded cards and they told me they can't keep the cards in stock.
Same amount of People who care about Babe Ruth Lou Gehrig and Honus Wagner.
I think one angle of this is there was a time in the past 5 years where there was a feeling that its a shame that kids are not collecting cards anymore. Its older people collecting because what kid can afford these prices. But you know what? They can. Go to any big card show and you will see little dudes under 4 1/2 feet tall with their cases and not just timidly walking around buying stuff from the $2 box we may have expected. Hardcore negotiating and doing transactions with dealers. I talked to some of these kids at The National and saw some of their best stuff in their little cases and its like 😲. Valuable stuff.
Who knows where the money comes from but maybe we have a lot of dads bankrolling them knowing these kids can figure it out and end up on the profitable side like we could have when we were kids clearly understanding the market.
But at the end of the day, once it seemed a shame that kids weren't collecting. Now its crystal clear they are. A kid pulled the million dollar Skenes card. So I think the kids and their interests are driving some of what we see these days. Short printed cartoon cards and snakeskin variations and blah blah blah. So dont see the interest in these types of cards fading. Kids can afford them now and when they are 25 and making some money the kid from Cincy will want his /99 De La Cruz and auto Joe Burrow card. Just like in 2014 hard to find expensive Pokemon cards at a show. Then the kid who loved them a 7 8 9 years old in 1999 2000 2001 grows up and gets a job that pays well and wants to buy something that gives him pleasant memories of his youth.
I dont think any of its is going anywhere. I was born in 1972 and just bought a Carl Hubbell card from 1933. My son was into Pokemon as a fun thing to collect and play and compare with friends and it got my attention. So I started collecting them and appreciating them more than him. I like the cards from my youth and I like a nice modern card of a player I appreciate. Anybody can appreciate anything.
When I got back into collecting in 2013 it was really like collecting in 1987 with a few more inserts. I remember every time I would go to Walmart with my wife I would buy 1-2 packs for $3-$5 each. Packs were always available and it was fun. Then COVID happened and that was the end of buying packs for me. Not spending $30 to get nothing. Luckily for me in 2013 I started buying PSA 10 singles and still do to this day. For me the new sets and parallels are just out of control.
Ohtani sold for 1M, Skenes for $1M, Clemens rookie, $2,000, 1969 Nolan Ryan psa 8, $2,500.
No way these vintage cards aren't going to blow up. Especially centered ones.
I hope ohtani and skenes have enough money to buy the next headline. I like old cards bc they used to come without the modern drama. Please leave them out and let them fade away. Hoping for 30.00 plus grading so I can grade my anything common! Fun stuff. Bubble?