Kinda OT? Death of the Sportscard Industry as Reported by Sports Illustrated

[the blob]

He had sold most of the Mantles by Sunday morning, but I still picked up a few Clemente,Maris,Mays,Koufax and Aarons late Sunday and I got him down to about 20% on the lot.

--------------------------------

 

makes you wonder if there are opportunities to be had in that market or if Becket is still wacked out and the prices are reflective of what a card shop with no competition and no internet may want to charge. grading cards is a lot cheaper for $100 and less FMV (and I think less in general), so there's probably even less of schism in terms of figuring out what raw prices should be vs. graded prices as there are probably a lot more graded cards as part of the market than CGC books are part of the comic market.

 

problem is, there's unlikely to be a second bite at the nostalgia apple for the greats of the 50s - even the 80s via baby boomers and gen xers as that already came and went with the card bubble of the late 80s/early 90s. i don't think these sports lovers are going to come back in their retirement (boomers) and middle age (genxers) to collect these cards again after feeling like they got burned once.

 

is the generation of fans who think that tod helton is a first ballot hall of famer going to collect these old stars' cards?

[14 of spades]

Another one.

 

Brutal.

Herbert Gin, who owns Cards and Comics Central in downtown San Francisco, sees it nearly every day. A guy comes into his store with a box of baseball cards he's been saving. He needs money and wants to cash in on his investment.

 

But in 9 out of 10 cases, Gin says, the cards are nearly worthless.

 

"They say, 'C'mon, offer me something,' " Gin says. "I tell them I can't offer anything. I hate to think how many marriages it has literally destroyed or how many bankruptcies it has caused."

 

[the blob]

Every once in awhile I will buy up some PSA 4,5 or 6 cards from the 50's & 60's, strictly Hall of Famers, just because I think they're neat, they present well in the slabs (although GAI's slabs are far better looking) and because they're so cheap. Sometimes you can get a nice 1960's Hall of Famer, graded an EX-MT 6 for under $7.00 shipped. To me, that seems cheap for a presentable, graded card that is 40-60 years old.

-----------------

 

me too, except i try to keep any single card's cost under $1

 

it means i don't get any slabs of 60's HOFers though

 

i'd like to get me some mays/aaron/koufax type cards for $7.00 or under shipped, just because it would be cool

[capt_comics]

He had sold most of the Mantles by Sunday morning, but I still picked up a few Clemente,Maris,Mays,Koufax and Aarons late Sunday and I got him down to about 20% on the lot.

--------------------------------

 

makes you wonder if there are opportunities to be had in that market or if Becket is still wacked out and the prices are reflective of what a card shop with no competition and no internet may want to charge. grading cards is a lot cheaper for $100 and less FMV (and I think less in general), so there's probably even less of schism in terms of figuring out what raw prices should be vs. graded prices as there are probably a lot more graded cards as part of the market than CGC books are part of the comic market.

 

problem is, there's unlikely to be a second bite at the nostalgia apple for the greats of the 50s - even the 80s via baby boomers and gen xers as that already came and went with the card bubble of the late 80s/early 90s. i don't think these sports lovers are going to come back in their retirement (boomers) and middle age (genxers) to collect these cards again after feeling like they got burned once.

 

is the generation of fans who think that tod helton is a first ballot hall of famer going to collect these old stars' cards?

 

 

Just like Overstreet is on a lot of things.

 

In their defense, they do list two prices and it clearly states it's a range for top grade cards, even though everybody always uses the higher price inevitably

 

[the blob]

it probably didn't help that in baseball, with expansion and steroids and the explosion of offense, the number of alleged "stars" exploded in the 90s and 2000s when "everyone" was seemingly hitting .300/30/100 (or at least many teams had 3-4 guys with those types of numbers). I believe that in one year during that period the average player was something like .270/20/100 over the course of 162 games (it might have been 90 rbis, i forget). Those were all star numbers in the 70s and early 80s. granted, the number of "star" pitchers didn't really go up, it was mostly on offense, though i guess more relievers started to be thought of as stars. admittedly, the bubble had already burst due to overproduction by this time, but i think it hurt stability, along with so many companies pumping out product even well after the market had declined.

 

with that said, my local shop seems to do a relatively active business in selling packs. a lot of people are buying a whole box. i don't know how well they do selling stuff out of their display case. they have a fair numer of vintage 50s - 70s cards in there. the owner is a pretty goo guy when it comes to buying junk that wanders in off the street and pretty honest with people.

[the blob]

Just like Overstreet is on a lot of things.

 

-----------------

 

yeah, but i don't know what you compare your psa 4 '67 aaron to --- is that a midgrade copy of spidey 67 or should it be compared to a more key book?

[14 of spades]

A pre-bubble mainstream article from 1988. Wow.

 

From the New York Times

 

Lots of good stuff - the bulletpoints are jaw-dropping. Gotta share it all here:

 

Investors Hope A Rich Future Is in the Cards

By ROBERT McG. THOMAS Jr.

Sunday, April 10, 1988

 

NEVER mind that the stock market crash and an uncertain economic outlook have plunged many investors into despair.

 

For those with an unswerving faith in the basic verities of American life - and a willingness to ignore certain ominous realities -there is one market where the bloom is still on the bull and the hope, if not the promise, of soaring profits continues to beckon.

 

This is the sizzling market for baseball cards, those cardboard tokens of childhood obsession that are stoking one of the most remarkable booms of recent years.

 

In what has amounted to an explosion of value, cards bought for mere pennies as part of bubblegum packs just a few years ago have skyrocketed in price, with the rookie cards of some superstars now selling for more than $100 and even those of common players commanding prices many times their original cost.

 

''Over the last two years it's been just awesome,'' said Frank Barning, the editor of the San Diego-based Baseball Hobby News, one of a number of periodicals that have sprung up to cater to the burgeoning interest in card collecting.

 

''I have 8-year-old kids coming in here and saying they're buying cards as investments,'' said Jeff Greenbaum, who also sells cards to a steady stream of adult investors at his shop on Second Avenue near 10th Street in Manhattan.

 

No wonder. Signs of the baseball-card boom abound:

 

* In 1987, a year when attendance at major league games surged to a record 52 million fans, Americans, according to one marketing study, by Scoreboard Inc.,a card company new to the industry, actually spent more than twice as much money on 1987 baseball cards ($750 million) as they did on major league tickets ($350 million). Adding in Scoreboard's estimate of $350 million spent on resales of pre-1987 issues, baseball cards are now a $1 billion-a-year industry.

 

* Producers of the four major lines, Topps, Donruss, Fleer and Sportflics, have been responding to the demand by doubling production almost annually. The four companies, which do not release sales figures, turned out as many as four billion cards last year, according to Jim Beckett, who publishes the Beckett Baseball Card Monthly. With the addition this year of a fifth line, Score, Beckett predicts that 1988 production will reach five billion cards, or about 100 cards for every fan who attends a major league game.

 

* Scoreboard Inc., in a bid to carve out a niche for itself as an industry middle man, raised $2.7 million in a stock offering last August, becoming the first public company devoted exclusively to baseball cards and related memorabilia. (Topps also went public last year, but, of course, it also makes bubblegum.)

 

* An established company, First Coinvestors, which has specialized in rare coins and stamps, was so struck by the investment potential for baseball cards that it created a sort of cards-of-the-month program in which, for multiples of $30 a month, subscribers receive cards selected by a panel of experts as having particular potential.

 

* Just a few years after the few adult hobbyists were regarded as amiable eccentrics who gathered at occasional conventions and card fairs, industry estimates indicate there are now about 1 million serious collectors, and more than 100 card shows and fairs every week.

 

* From a handful no more than five years ago, according to research by Scoreboard Inc., there are now more than 3,500 retail card stores and more than 10,000 dealers, many of them part-time, family operations merging the business acumen of the parent with the enthusiasm of the child.

 

As unabashed investors have joined hobbyists in fueling the boom, the market for baseball cards has begun to take on the trappings of Wall Street. Recent cards, for example, are now routinely traded in 100-card lots, and Paul Goldin, the chairman of the new Scoreboard company, sounds like a stockbroker when he advises card investors to spread out their risks by passing up individual cards in favor of boxed sets. ''Buy mutual funds,'' he says.

 

Although baseball cards have been around since the 1880's, initially packaged with cigarettes and more recently with bubblegum, stickers, puzzles and other merchandise, it has been only in the last decade or so that the resale, or aftermarket, for modern day cards has come to resemble the 17th-century Dutch tulip bulb mania.

 

And while prices of older cards, including the American Tobacco Company's notoriously scarce 1909 Honus Wagner and the famous 1933 Goudey set with its more than 40 Hall of Famers, have also been rising (the list price is$36,000 for the Wagner, $27,000 for the set), the primary interest of investors has been in cards issued since World War II, specifically the rookie cards of players who become - or who may become - superstars.

 

Since the first of the year, prices of such cards have jumped 40 percent, according to a survey conducted by Barning, who attributed the surge to former stock market investors who turned to baseball cards after the crash. ''A lot of new money has gone into cards since October 19,'' he said.

 

Prices cited in the industry, incidentally, are invariably retail prices, those an individual collector would expect to pay for a card in pristine condition, and frequently the highest of a range of retail prices, at that. As with other collectibles, the pricethe collector could expect to get for his cards, is rarely more than half the retail price, and often much less.

 

While no one seems to be predicting an imminent collapse, Barning and other experts agree that if prices do not level off soon the weight of the vastly increased supply of current cards could cause a real crash later. One sign that the market may be overheating came last December when a dealer advertised a 1988 Score exclusive, the rookie card of the Mets' hot first base prospect, Randy Milligan, for $7, before the card had been released. Since then, Milligan has been traded to the Pirates and his card has been selling for 50 cents.

 

At the same time, there is reason to believe that card collectors just may have succeeded in repealing the law of supply and demand, or at least half of it. The market for older cards, dealers say, is virtually all demand. Collectors, it seems, almost never sell, and when they do it is often only to buy more cards.

 

George Heidorn, an Ohio contractor, who formed a baseball card business with his son, Matt, when the youngster was in the third grade a dozen years ago, is typical.

 

''We've just about broken even,'' he said recently, noting that all the proceeds of the partnership's sales went into buying more cards. ''We have about half a million of them,'' he said.

 

Of course, what happened to the stock market in October could happen to baseball cards at any time. When it does, however, collectors like the Heidorns won't be wiped out. They'll still have their baseball cards, and that, after all, is what collecting baseball cards would seem to be all about.

[14 of spades]

Even Pokemon had a speculative bubble...

 

Again from the New York Times

 

Pokemon's House of Cards; Market Crash Holds Lessons for Young Traders

By JULIAN E. BARNES

Published: Saturday, January 20, 2001

 

Mike Loprete stood at the counter of a comic-book store, slowly shook his 11-year-old head and remembered when he was rich.

 

Back in 1999, when the Pokemon fad was the talk of every playground, Mike's collection of cards, neatly stored at his home in Roseland, N. J., was worth hundreds of dollars. But like investors in dot-com flameouts and other once-highflying technology stocks who thought the Nasdaq could rise forever, Mike sat on his assets and watched them dwindle away.

 

''I should have sold,'' Mike said. ''I could have had three times as much as I paid for them.''

 

Fads and fancies have sent the value of all kinds of assets soaring since the earliest days in finance. And from 17th-century Dutch tulips to present day Internet stocks, such bubbles have inevitably burst.

 

But for millions of young Americans, their first introduction to volatile markets has been Pokemon trading cards. A large number of them have been given a hard lesson about how scarcity can temporarily drive up prices, but that many assets -- be they Pokemon cards or technology companies -- are only valuable if sold at the right time.

 

A year ago, Pokemon cards were the most popular plaything on the planet. Elementary schools were forced to ban the cards as schoolyard speculators ignored their math homework and frenetically bought and sold rare holographic foil cards on the playground. Dealers marked up $3 packets of cards to $12 or more. The rarest cards sold for as much as $375.

 

Now the card market has virtually collapsed and Pokemon ''thousand-aires'' have watched their net worth be wiped out.

 

At New World Manga, a store in Livingston, N. J., specializing in comics and card games, children still gather every Friday for the weekly Pokemon league. But even many of these diehard players said the glory days of collecting had passed.

 

As others played the card game behind him, Alex Formato, a 12-year-old Pokemon collector from West Orange, N. J., sold three relatively rare cards to Tung Cheng, co-owner of New World Manga. Last year, Alex would have been paid in cash. These days he just gets store credit, a sign of how far the Pokemon market has fallen. Alex has some 10,000 cards, and there are days he wonders why he held on to them. Why didn't he sell last spring when Pokemon cards were still the hottest thing around?

 

''I have the original set completed,'' Alex said. ''Everyone used to want the whole set. It would have been worth $400; now it's $200 or less.''

 

On eBay, the highest bids for the first edition base-set Charizard, a rare Pokemon card once valued at $375, have been $100 lately. Booster packs that dealers were paying $4.75 for can now be had for $1, said Brian Wallos, a collectibles dealer. Boxes of Japanese cards that a year ago fetched $300, now sell for $80, he said.

 

Mr. Wallos dove into the Pokemon fad in 1999 but these days he is back to buying and selling Beanie Babies. And kid culture has moved on to the next thing.

 

''Now everyone likes Digimon,'' said Molly Berenhaus, 10, after winning a game during last week's Pokemon league at New World Manga.

 

Michael Krois, the chief executive of Affiliate Pros, which runs a Pokemon card trading site, said he had watched the number of cards sold on his site plummet just as the bull market began to lose steam.

 

''I found the amount of cards sold on my site was directly proportional to the stock market's value,'' said Mr. Krois. ''When it dipped I sold fewer cards. The number of daily visitors to my site, just like Nasdaq, peaked in April.''

 

The first casualties of the fall of Pokemon, created by Nintendo, were the toy companies. Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro division that publishes the cards and operates specialty stores that sell them, laid off 100 people last month after citing softening demand for Pokemon.

 

Inside a Wizards of the Coast store in Woodbridge, N. J., Mike Reilly smiled as he recalled the thrill he felt during the height of the Pokemon craze: March 21, 1999. That was the day when the Pokemon road tour came to Woodbridge Center, Mike's hometown mall.

 

Every store in the mall sold out of Pokemon cards, and Mike, 16, sat in a corner with his protective binders, selling from his collection of 2,000 cards. He made $180 that day, but decided to sell only a few cards and keep the best ones. ''I held on to most of the cards because I thought the prices would go up more,'' he said. ''But now the whole Pokemon fad is starting to die down.''

 

Other youngsters have been left wondering why anyone was paying over $300 for a single shiny trading card in the first place.

 

''It's kind of funny that regular cards with foil-ly stuff on them were ever worth so much,'' said Molly, the 10-year-old who does not care about card prices but is disappointed that it is getting harder and harder to find people with whom to play the actual Pokemon game.

 

But more than a few Pokemon players, like technology stock bulls who saw Gateway's disappointing holiday computer sales figures as a buying opportunity, think the game will be back.

 

Zach Jacobs, 11, of Florham Park, N. J., bought a price guide last year and calculated the value of his hundreds of Pokemon cards: they were supposedly worth more than $2,000. He sold a few cards to friends, getting $18 for a couple of them. But he only made about $80 total on his sales, just a fraction of the money he spent to buy his cards.

 

He has not gone back to the price guides to see how far the value of his collection has fallen. And that would not be reliable anyway. Some guides, their livelihood dependent on interest in Pokemon remaining strong, have kept the list prices for Pokemon cards high despite falling prices on eBay, among wholesale dealers and in schoolyard transactions.

 

Meanwhile, some price guide editors, along with collectors like Zach, predict that prices will rebound.

 

''Probably when the new sets come out the prices will go up again,'' Zach said.

 

Jimmy O'Brien, a longhaired 14-year-old with a wispy moustache as well as a Pokemon baseball cap and jacket, said part of the problem was that people were selling Pokemon at outrageous, unjustifiable prices. But he does not think the Pokemon cards are down for good.

 

''Everything old is new again,'' said Jimmy, who has traveled to Los Angeles and Minnesota to compete in Pokemon tournaments. ''Lava lamps went out and came back, so this might, too.''

 

But there are other former Pokemon players who say the game is over. The cards, part of an elaborate marketing campaign, were created for two players to face off with their own carefully constructed decks of Pokemon characters. Players randomly draw several Pokemon from their deck, then flip coins to see how much damage their characters can inflict on their opponents. But the game is based too much on luck and not enough on strategy, argue some disillusioned players like Sam Messina, 12, of Livingston, N. J.

 

Last October, Sam got out. He swapped his best Pokemon cards for another trading card game called Magic: The Gathering.

 

''Pokemon was getting old and boring and all my friends were playing Magic,'' he said. ''I feel, sort of, that I got a good deal for my cards, although I still have boxes and boxes of Pokemon cards.''

 

Colin Oettle, 13, of Livingston, N. J., bought his first Pokemon cards in 1998 before the fad really took off. When other kids caught on, he watched the list price of his cards surge past the value of his carefully compiled collection of glass collected from beaches and wondered what he should do.

 

''I've thought about selling from time to time and get the extra money,'' Colin said, ''but I've never done it.''

 

Colin's mother, Robin Oettle, 48, a graphic artist, plays with her son in New World Manga's Pokemon league. She is happy the card prices have fallen and does not have any regrets that her son did not cash out.

 

''For me it's a turnoff to have to spend a lot of money on cards,'' she said. ''Neither of us would ever sell. Both of us are too nostalgic. I know what it will feel like for him to be 30 and find his Pokemon collection. That is something more valuable than making a few bucks.''

 

Now that the market has collapsed, Colin said he could not obsess over the missed opportunity, advice investors in, say, Priceline.com or Pets.com may find hard to be so grown-up about. Colin is moving on to playing Magic now, but said his Pokemon days had honed his skills at addition, improved his organization and taught him about the value of collecting, not to mention the fickleness of markets.

 

''It's a little disappointing,'' Colin said. ''But life is life.''

[homerwannabee]

I personally think that Baseball cards from the 80's will be virtually dead for a very, very, very, very long time. Personally I am collecting Garbage Pail Kids cards. I believe that one day that people will be nostalgic for these cards again. The first series set is still pretty expensive at about $200.

[Mephisto]

Arex helped me sell a few of my Dad's baseball cards and I was pretty happy with the prices. I think I wound up with about 4K for less than 10 cards, and I also sold one on SportscardLink. They were mostly mid 50's SGC graded HOF. The Clemente RC alone brought in over 2k. It was shame someone took a pen to the back of the Aaron RC, but my dad got most of the cards for free from someone who went away to college in the 60's and any he would've bought would've only cost 5 or 10 cents for the pack. I wasn't going to sell them originally since he passed away, but I just don't love baseball like I used to.

[kidcolt]

The sports card industry is far from dead. However it has changed just like comic collecting has changed.

[TheShadowKnows]

Thanks for the link. I wonder what the equivalent last "iconic" comic book is/was? The last mainstream, mass-produced, non-limited edition, non-gimmicky comic book to retain substantial value? That would exclude short print run indie books like the first issues/appearances of Walking Dead, Goon, Hellboy, Mouse Guard, 30 Days of Night, etc...Vertigo books like Sandman, Fables, Y, etc. might be too niche to qualify as "iconic" as well.

 

I think you might have to go back to an ASM 300 or X-Men 266 to find something that qualifies in the same way as the Griffey rookie card is to the card hobby...thoughts?

The Griffey rookie was big.Not anymore.

It has moved to the 2001 bowman chrome Pujols,cut autos from history,politics and entertainment.

[TheShadowKnows]

Is there trimming or color touch (on the black borders) in card collecting?

 

Trimming, patch faking, autograph faking, cardstock rebuilding, soaking, etc...color touch is something the grading companies can actually spot. The other stuff is not something they can usually get.

I remember back in the early 1990`s people would buy the baseball packs off of dealer at card show,open up the packs,take out all the good cards and replace them with commons,then glue pack back up and then go re-sell to same dealer and the dealer would just smile and wink. I wonder if that still goes on at the card shows?

Youre kidding right?

[TheShadowKnows]

I used to buy hockey cards occasionally. There was a shop 10 minutes from my office and maybe 3 or 4 years ago I would pop in here and there and buy a $100 box of cards, hoping to get a swatch or something limited to 10 copies or less. Usually you could sell those for 4x what you paid for the box. Of course out of the 8 or 9 times I did that I only sold 1 card worth anything, the rest was sort of fodder.

 

Seriously, they were making jersey swatches and autographed cards of even 3rd tier players. Before you knew it the excitement over chase cards was over. Literally, you'd walk into the shop and in a box on the counter would be 500 autographed cards and another 200 jersey swatch cards. Whoop-de-doo. I came to the realization really quick that these things were not rare at all and weren't likely to be worth anything.

 

Top that off with the best packs costing $7 to $20 a pack and you'd get like 10 cards at the most. Upper Deck even went as far as having $300 per pack basketball cards (with 3 cards in the entire pack! ). Of course somebody scored, finding the 1/1 Lebron/Jordan swatch that sold at auction for around 100k.

 

Cards got a slight bump when the auto/swatch/chase phenomenon struck. But it was never going to last.

 

I think I first realized that cards were dying when Barry Bonds fleer rookie was like the hottest thing ever. Not long after that you could walk into any card shop and there would be a 500 count plastic lock case full of nothing but those Bonds rookies, marked way down. And this was long before the steroids scandals.

 

The internet/ebay made the notion that 99.99% of cards were not only not rare, but readily available. I remember walking into a card shop around 88/89, I was about 12 years old. I spent $50 bucks on 2 cards. 1 was an early 60's Topps Mantle/Mays slugger card and the other was I think a '64 Mays. Both cards would likely have been psa 3's at best. But at the time, there was no ebay, no internet. There was just the 1 card shop within driving distance and he had the only copy of those cards. So they seemed cool and rare. So much for that.

 

 

ps: Should add that sadly but not unexpectedly, that card shop I went to went out of business.

Those basketball packs are called Exquisite.And 300 was wholesale retail 600 or more.The 03/4 case are around 13-14k wholesale for 3 packs.

[TheShadowKnows]

Does anyone here actively collect vintage cards? My dad has Topps baseball complete sets from 60 and 61, as well as a 55 All-American set. All of the cards are nice, he generally bought the best he could find. In comics terms they are all VF to NM. He stopped buying in the mid-90s and hasn't looked at them since, but I was wondering how well something like that has held its value. I suppose I could post in the card forum, but not really worth the bother. Just idle curiousity.

Im assuming 55 all american fb set?

Dont sell those baseball sets.They are a good investment in the grade you state.PM if you have any other questions

[TheShadowKnows]

Griffey UD Rcs were produced in the millions. It wasn't rare at all...it was stockpiled and collected like gold bars

------------

 

never said it was "rare", just not as obscenely mass produced as the Topps 89 set or the following year's UD sets

 

as for bonds, yeah, the traded was "expensive", but doesn't it always work out that way, like the McGwire "tiffany"? I didn't even know where to buy the traded set in 1987 much less a tiffany card. you couldn't get that in woolworth's with your other cards, you'd have to go to a specialty shop, no? i was thinking about Bonds first card in the regular Topps set. Was the regular bonds Topps card actually worth $10 and if so, why the heck didn't my insufficiently_thoughtful_person brother sell his 50 of them when he still could!?!!??!

There was no 89 reg topps only the traded.

 

My guess is a ego thing.I know people who had hundreds of Strawberry,Mattingly,Gooden rookies and just held them.Cardboard thousandaires.

[TheShadowKnows]

i believe it was the 78 topps set that has the murray rc.

 

j

Card number 36 I believe.

[14 of spades]

Those basketball packs are called Exquisite.And 300 was wholesale retail 600 or more.The 03/4 case are around 13-14k wholesale for 3 packs.

 

13-14K for a case with 3 packs? Come again?

[TheShadowKnows]

Does anyone here actively collect vintage cards? My dad has Topps baseball complete sets from 60 and 61, as well as a 55 All-American set. All of the cards are nice, he generally bought the best he could find. In comics terms they are all VF to NM. He stopped buying in the mid-90s and hasn't looked at them since, but I was wondering how well something like that has held its value. I suppose I could post in the card forum, but not really worth the bother. Just idle curiousity.

 

 

Maybe this is obvious but cards of these fellas seem to pretty much stay strong.

 

 

Mantle

Mays

Musial

Clemente

Koufax

Ted Williams

Aaron

Snider

 

There are alot of Hall of Fame players whose cards you can find at reasonable prices. Alot of times you can find nice PSA 5, 6 and even 7 copies for reasonable prices. Above that you get pricey. In truth, some of these guys cards go very cheap, even graded.

 

Kaline

Kiner

Wynn

Matthews

Boudreau

Wilhelm

etc........

 

Every once in awhile I will buy up some PSA 4,5 or 6 cards from the 50's & 60's, strictly Hall of Famers, just because I think they're neat, they present well in the slabs (although GAI's slabs are far better looking) and because they're so cheap. Sometimes you can get a nice 1960's Hall of Famer, graded an EX-MT 6 for under $7.00 shipped. To me, that seems cheap for a presentable, graded card that is 40-60 years old.

 

But I like history and have always been more partial to the "old days" than in cards from 1970-present.

 

Excellent advice...I am sure you know this, but steer very clear of GAI holders. They were letting through the most questionable stuff for a long period of time. Sometimes you can get lucky on a card and it gets through at PSA or BGS, but they are pretty much like PGX.

Unless your cards are perfect and from the fifties grading is a waste.

[TheShadowKnows]

Does anyone here actively collect vintage cards? My dad has Topps baseball complete sets from 60 and 61, as well as a 55 All-American set. All of the cards are nice, he generally bought the best he could find. In comics terms they are all VF to NM. He stopped buying in the mid-90s and hasn't looked at them since, but I was wondering how well something like that has held its value. I suppose I could post in the card forum, but not really worth the bother. Just idle curiousity.

 

 

Maybe this is obvious but cards of these fellas seem to pretty much stay strong.

 

 

Mantle

Mays

Musial

Clemente

Koufax

Ted Williams

Aaron

Snider

 

There are alot of Hall of Fame players whose cards you can find at reasonable prices. Alot of times you can find nice PSA 5, 6 and even 7 copies for reasonable prices. Above that you get pricey. In truth, some of these guys cards go very cheap, even graded.

 

Kaline

Kiner

Wynn

Matthews

Boudreau

Wilhelm

etc........

 

Every once in awhile I will buy up some PSA 4,5 or 6 cards from the 50's & 60's, strictly Hall of Famers, just because I think they're neat, they present well in the slabs (although GAI's slabs are far better looking) and because they're so cheap. Sometimes you can get a nice 1960's Hall of Famer, graded an EX-MT 6 for under $7.00 shipped. To me, that seems cheap for a presentable, graded card that is 40-60 years old.

 

But I like history and have always been more partial to the "old days" than in cards from 1970-present.

 

Excellent advice...I am sure you know this, but steer very clear of GAI holders. They were letting through the most questionable stuff for a long period of time. Sometimes you can get lucky on a card and it gets through at PSA or BGS, but they are pretty much like PGX.

 

The HOFers you mention are by far the most collected, especially Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Williams, Koufax, and Clemente. But vintage cards still have to be heavily discounted to sell if not graded.

If you have really high grade sets, get the best cards slabbed by PSA, Beckett(BGS), or SGC. Then sell the sets.

 

At the recent 2 day show in Charlotte, one dealer was selling nice (and by this I mean EX to NM- cards) for 65% to 75% off. And business still wasn't brisk. He had sold most of the Mantles by Sunday morning, but I still picked up a few Clemente,Maris,Mays,Koufax and Aarons late Sunday and I got him down to about 20% on the lot.

 

New cards have to be discounted tremendously to sell. Unless it's the current "Hot" RC auto or auto/patch or a star card auto/patch numbered to 25 or less. And even then most have to be discounted off of Beckett.

 

People should collect the players and teams they care about and not worry so much about monetary value. And with the way the market is now, it can be done a lot cheaper.

 

 

 

Its just like anything.People will always set up at comic shows and sell at 50% off.I sold 900 worth of vintage cards today at book price.