These days, baseball cards are looked at as more and more of an investment than in the past. Cards obviously are still collected by many people that do not necessarily care about their value just as there were investors in cards back in the 1970s and 1980s. But as cards have become more and more valuable, collectors are taking them a bit more seriously from a financial … [Read more...]
Rise of the Bowman Chrome Autograph
We spent the past couple of weeks talking about the likely impact that case breakers are having on inflating the supply of new card issues, and whether or not case breakers are good or bad for the hobby. Regardless of where you stand on the latter issue, the one thing that is clear is that increasing supply creates logistical issues of great impact for manufacturers, … [Read more...]
Case Breakers and the Value Cycle
Editor’s note: What follows is an edited excerpt from The Modern Baseball Card Investor. When talking about new card issues, one thing that should be clear is that secondary market values drive the entire value/supply chain. When supply is favorable and demand is relatively high, then secondary market values are high, and thus box demand is high; collector-investor … [Read more...]
The Upside of the Modern Baseball Card
“As awareness of scarcity grows, both museums and private collectors face a ‘last chance’ situation every time a major work comes up for sale. Fearing they may never have another opportunity to add a certain artist or period to their collection, they purchase without consideration of past prices.” -- Don Thompson, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of … [Read more...]
Hwang: Scarcity, Grade Dictate Card Values; Not Age
There’s a common misconception that vintage baseball cards are valuable because they are old. But this is not the case. The reality is that the most valuable of the vintage baseball cards – such as a PSA 10 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle or the PSA 8 Gretzky T206 Honus Wagner, for example – are valuable not because they are old, but because they are desirable and because high-grade … [Read more...]
Excerpt: The Card Removal Effect
Editor’s Note: What follows is a second (edited) excerpt from Jeff’s book, The Modern Baseball Card Investor. The first excerpt, The Four Basic Types of Ungraded Strategies, can be found here. The concept of card removal is exceptionally important to understand, as it is fundamental to multiple expansion in graded cards – that is, the spread in value between graded BGS 9.5 … [Read more...]
Book Excerpt: Grade Scarcity and Box Value
Editor’s Note: What follows is a second (edited) excerpt from Jeff’s book, The Modern Baseball Card Investor. The first excerpt, The Four Basic Types of Ungraded Strategies, can be found here. As of January 2014, unopened boxes of 1987 Donruss could be had for $20 to $30 per box, with multi-box lots and 20-box cases running for as little as under $20 per box. Each box … [Read more...]
The Four Basic Types of Ungraded Strategies
Editor’s note: What follows is an excerpt from Jeff’s new book The Modern Baseball Card Investor. When it comes to ungraded cards, players in the game generally employ at least one of four basic types of strategies: 1. Case breaker 2. Case breaker/grader 3. Boxes 4. Singles It should go without saying that in a game where autographs often come at a rate of one or … [Read more...]