I know this has been discussed before....but

According to VCP almost 77 million was spent last year on the purchase of baseball cards. That's over two hundred thousand every day.

What the demographics of these purchasers is can be important in assessing the impact of a minor, short lived, economic downturn. And one of greater significance.

For example, a purchaser who buys cards primarilly for resale, is not as likely to be affected by the economic status as much as a "buy and keep" purchaser may be; because he turns around cards with (ideally) minimal lag time. Therefore, a cycle of buy and sell occurs before any economic change can be noticed. Of course, the longer such a seller holds the cards, the greater the risk of devaluation he will face.

A buy and keep purchaser is only affected if changes in the net worth of his holdings are important to him, assuming that card prices would drop do to economic factors.

Buy and keep purchasers for this analysis fall into two different types. Those whose card buying budget is established independent of his household's operating costs (milk, gasoline, etc.), and those whose card purchasing is dependent on available funds (such as can be generated by overtime, a second job, gifts, and other sources of "extra" money).

Of course, we do not have a handle on this, so I offer the following guess for the $200,000+/day:

Buy/Resale = $75,000/day
Buy/Keep/Budget Established = $100,000/day
Buy/Keep/Budget Variable = $25,000/day

If this guess is close to accurate, then 25/200 ths of the baseball card buying market will react to short term economic changes. This is twelve and a half percent of buyers. And these 12.5% will not stop buying necessarilly, they will decrease their buying in this hypothetical situation.

I think in that case, the 50% with established budgets will "soak up the slack" with no noteworthy effect on card prices.


What do you think?


Gil

interesting Gil...You are correct when you point out a buyer holding on to a card for a longer period of time has greater risk than a "buy and sell" guy.

Is there a way to figure out lets say in the last 6 years what the vintage card market in general has done. Sort of like a stock market graph. Even though i was not in to vintage card collecting back in 2002 it seems completed auctions by Mastro, REA, goodwin show a dramatic increase in price from the data.

Here is a site i go to once in a while....you may have to register but its a neat site. For instance, type in E98 and it will show you auctions from 2007 and as you scroll down it will end at 2001 showing a (2) Cobb cards that sold for $700 by Hunt auctions.

Example #2...type in E107 and scroll down to look at a Plank that sold in 2001 by Hunt for $2,100, i can just imagine what that would go for now.

Gavelprices.com (CLICK THIS)

Mark

I will certainly admit that over the past six years virtually any prewar card which was purchased has performed as a good investment, with some out preforming others by a significant margin. However, the consideration which I am still attempting to address is: " I still say scarce and rare cards will still hold value and go up but the common cards will see a 25-35% drop. I am in NO way an expert but the signs are there. I think 2008-2010 will be rough".

The first portion of that statement appears unassailable, however, the projection that in a less than ideal economy that commons will see a significant drop in value appears to me to be refutable. And regarding the estimate that a two year economic downturn is in the works, I will forgo comment on that subject due to readily available alternate expert sources on that type of prognostication, many of whom are in disagreement with each other.

My contention is that the impact of a decrease in the purchasing of those who depend on "extra funds" to buy cards will largely be offset by those who do not. And momentary price reductions will result in an offsetting increase in buying by those with budgets established for card acquisitions.

I hope some of this is (at least) understandable.