Card prices = not good

[sjm76]

I sell fairly often on eBay and I mainly buy and sell baseball, basketball and football cards. I've been checking the sold listing prices for those sports recently and can't say that I'm pleased as prices in general seem to be way down across the board with the exception of with the top players from those 3 sports. Has the bottom fallen out of the hobby or do you think this dramatic decrease in prices is temporary? Another way of looking at it is that it could be a good time to buy but not sure what the future holds.

 

[banjar]

Frankly I don't see it. I occupy a fairly obscure niche in this world, being a Robbie Alomar collector. But sold prices - and asking prices - are still through the roof. From my little perspective, I don't see that the mania has subsided.

 

[theplasticman]

Frankly I don't see it. I occupy a fairly obscure niche in this world, being a Robbie Alomar collector. But sold prices - and asking prices - are still through the roof. From my little perspective, I don't see that the mania has subsided.

I would concur with this.

 

[mrmopar]

Everything I seem to chase is still ridiculously high. Example, a single team issued 8x10 photo that most teams did for media purposes, with a simple 6 or 8 player head shot and a title "1984 San Diego Padres" Just sold for $50! It contained both Garvey and Gwynn. I have won complete team sets of these (different years) for around $10. WS team of 84 or a rabid Gwynn fan fighting a rabid Garvey fan could have something to do with it, but frankly, I think it is just stupid people paying whatever it takes to win things, blowing the normal market prices out of the water. it can't/won't sustain, but it's maddening to see.

 

[tramers]

sitting on over one million cards ==most junk years LOL

 

[Shaggy]

They have come down from the crazy march 2021 numbers but they are still much higher then they were pre-covid.

 

[zyceoa]

I dunno. Late 90s inserts are still selling at the insane prices from a year ago, if not more. I guess that Frank Thomas PMG that's ending tomorrow on EBAY is still outside of my budget. On the other hand, if you're talking about the endless ultra modern slabbed RCs that you see at every card show, then yes I can see prices falling hard.

 

[tramers]

what's a Mike Trout RC auto blue refractor going for ??? I've heard unreal prices and only seen THREE -----

 

[smapdi]

For a lot of people entering the hobby in the last couple years, it was a fad, a fun new thing, and/or a blast of nostalgia. Given how expensive other luxury hobbies can be (wine, art, travel), cards probably felt like stealing. For a low barrier of entry, the timing of Project 2020 could not have been better. Even though $20/card was ridiculous, they were cards you could not just pull out of a pack at any time, and the crossover into some popular lowbrow art names with the selling window I hope earned someone at Topps a bonus. For the well-funded, the rookie buyout became a game. They were asking,"You mean I can get the best RC of all these great players in the best condition for $200? I'll take as many as you got, they're easily worth $1000" So that became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And from there it quickly exploded into clearing off retail shelves and tripling your money with a bare minimum of effort. Then the card companies saw that the market could easily sustain $120 for a box that last year they sold for $60, or $800 for a formerly $200 box, so they decided to take that profit for themselves and just raised prices. They then compounded the problem by increasing production to the point that for many products they hits were fewer and farther between, and the ordinary process of valuation was also broken. That led to people wanting to charge the moon for cards that previously sold for a few bucks just to come close to recouping costs and they really aren't worth that much.

But longtime collectors seem to be just waiting all the new people and new money out. I think really nice cards will settle at higher prices than pre-2020, as the old equilibrium has been shattered. The more common cards will settle back down as people leave the hobby, or just get tired of trying to keep up with the superheated environment. At least, I hope so. I know I would have been a lot farther along for less money with my projects from the past couple years if they had been 'normal' years. I'm not really seeing any bargains yet on the stuff I focus on, but things are noticeably less crazy. The fact that '22 Heritage boxes are holding steady under $100, and '21 HHN boxes under $80 (and a case for much less), is a promising sign for a return to normalcy, I think, but it's become a bit of an odd product these days.

 

[gt2590]

I do not sell or buy much but it seems like it's mostly basketball, a little bit football and in general, baseball is down, maybe from the lockout.

With the exception of Wander-mania of course...

 

[nevermore]

All of a sudden everyone and everything has a rookie card. A Bitcoin rookie card!?

I remain in disbelief of such astronomical prices, especially outside the four main sports....racing, golf, tennis, UFC, soccer, Marvel, etc. I imagine it is mostly due to the hype to push new wax products and to justify new licensing deals.

With Fanatics pushing for vertical integration and then the consolidation of Goldin and Collectors Holdings under one umbrella, it is not a stretch to imagine there is some level of collusion behind this market to push wax sales and grading. It only takes a few million dollars to drive up prices on key cards across each of the sports to generate sustained interest in the overall hobby and automatically generate media buzz. Billionaires looking out for their investments.

I don't know how else to explain the latest phenomenon to evolve out of all of this....of ZeroCool and VeeFriends.
$2 million ($2,150 x 800 boxes) to a company like Fanatics spending $100s million on advertising is chump change. How many here would bid $2,000 a box for amateur drawings? Fanatics IPO on the horizon to be worth billions.

I would not be surprised for a WATA-type controversy to emerge within the trading card industry in the near future.

 

[jaderock]

Overall, it's been trending downwards since the pandemic is over and people are now out and about and spending on other things. As someone above mentioned, prices are still above pre-pandemic, but not as insanely.

 

[RogerMarisCollector61]

I know I've personally resisted the urge to spend big as of late, which I was not doing at all the last couple years.

 

[jmc855]

Glad to see any and all aspects of prices lowering as all ships seem to raise and lower together to a point. As a niche Clemens collector, I fell like most stuff is way higher than it was and should be, especially 90s inserts. I think those niche cards are driven by a recent fervor/frenzy overall/social media hype across IG, FB, Youtube etc , especially the big names like Jeter, Jr, Bonds, Nolan, Thomas being just over the moon and yanking everyone up with them but there are some SMALL signs of a few of those inching back down to reality in teh last couple weeks. Hoping it all returns to 2013 pricing where i can afford to keep adding cards as a collector. I'm never re-selling Clemens, so I simply want the cheapest price possible on every card. Also, I dont buy Panini unlicensed stuff, so those prices arent anything I include in my "seat of the pants" analysis.