General Forum

'There's never been a time like this': Wall Street is piling into trading cards as prices soar - CNN

Good read on how big this spike is. As someone who joined during the spike I still don't understand the insane investor hit. If what they are saying at the end is true, we may have to see these prices for awhile sadly.

The problem with "investors" is that they don't understand the card world.  They see these sensationalized news stories about card X or Y going for record prices and they don't understand that the market, like and market, has ups and downs based a lot of hype.  They are thinking of this as a fixed resource market (which it kind of is) that will do nothing but go up in price.  They don't know which cards are over produced and which aren't.  And unfortunitly for the low end "investors" who can't afford the $100K+ for some of these cards, they see the best way to make money as flipping cards they buy in the stores today.

Yup. I wasn't following this actively, but it seemed like upscale cards were more expensive. Then I looked up what my '53 Paige was going for and was floored. And the Nolan Ryan rookie I've been stalking suddenly became prohibitively costly even in very bad shape. 
I'll just wait it out for my most expensive wants and stick with my 1960s commons for now, which aren't as effected. 
If only I were interested in selling my collection, now would be the time. 
v3

I have a general question....I got a new cell phone and cannot locate the Trading Card Database app in the Play Store...what happened to it?

Thanks

There is no app for the site. It's compatible with mobile devices, and perhaps you used to have a shortcut on your homescreen.

Agreed.  I have not seen much of an increase for vintage common baseball and basketball singles in the sets I work on, but stars are higher.

I have not bought any vintage football lately to be able to experience the market in that category.

Mark

Most stories I've read about the current "hobby boom" involves investors getting in on graded vintage or graded high end RC's. Unfortunately for some of us who've been in the hobby for decades, some online sellers believe the boom also means they can price their late-80's and early-90's stuff at a small fortune.

And you have suckers actually paying those prices which makes it worse on collectors wanting that stuff (and not talking about the few "gems" but the lesser stars or commons that team collectors look for )

What I do wonder from an investing perspective is if people are ever going to twig that, say in baseketball, their Williamson gold Hoops premium #/10 card is little different to the Hoops #/10 and the Mosaic #/10 and the Prizm #/10 and the dozen other #/10 cards which are followed by 20 different #/10 cards the next year and the next and the next. So on and so forth for the next 20 years.

Yes that one card is rare in the sense that there are only 10 of it but there are hundreds of very similar varients.

I used to try and buy every Olajuwon autograph that came to NZ. Now, I don't worry about the Panini ones even if they are low serial numbered as there are just thousands of very similar cards out there.