Yep, we are in the 1990's collectibles pre-crash 2 2

[valiantman]

I agree that the price tag is ridiculously high, but I disagree that this is anything like the 90s market.  If one person wastes $60,000, the damage is limited to one person.  When thousands of card and comic dealers bet tens of thousands of dollars each on over-produced items they hoped they could price as if they were rare, well, everyone in the market lost.  When everyone loses, it's a crash.  When one person loses, it's a sob story.  Collectibles don't crash until everyone has the same thing and everyone thinks their item is rare.  (Overproduced cards, comics, beanie babies, whatever.)  If something truly is rare, then the market watches... they don't participate.  Spectators are different than speculators.

[shadroch]

2 hours ago, newshane said:

True that he wasn't worth back then what he is worth today...but I'd say he was already well north of a million by the time 1999 rolled around....

but yes, indeed, probably not rich enough at the time to drop 3 million on a baseball! 

What does (did) his wife do? 

I heard he had a prenuptial agreement that excluded his sports memorabilia collection, so he put a substantial amount of his worth into it.

Most likely a fan boy rumour, but it made sense at the time.

 

[Mercury Man]

3 hours ago, valiantman said:

I agree that the price tag is ridiculously high, but I disagree that this is anything like the 90s market.  If one person wastes $60,000, the damage is limited to one person. 

I can agree with this to an extent, but this is one example of the this pre-manufactured collectible that is once again permeating the hobbies.   Super Rare chase cards = Super Rare variant covers.    

[rainmaker]

whats even crazier is one /100 is already almost to 30k!  https://www.ebay.com/itm/2018-Bowman-Chrome-Shohei-Ohtani-Rookie-Atomic-Refractor-Autograph-38-100-Auto/222944590484?hash=item33e8887a94:g:XooAAOSw2q9a33M~

op your comparing this sale to the 90s market is really off base.  the $60k card in question would probably sell for considerably higher if it gets pulled soon.  ohtani is an interesting figure bringing foreign money into the scene.  is it a lot of money?  yes.  will it be worth this much in 2 years? no way.  is it good for baseball cards and collectibles?  contrary to your initial thoughts, yes.

[ComicConnoisseur]

8 minutes ago, rainmaker said:

whats even crazier is one /100 is already almost to 30k!  https://www.ebay.com/itm/2018-Bowman-Chrome-Shohei-Ohtani-Rookie-Atomic-Refractor-Autograph-38-100-Auto/222944590484?hash=item33e8887a94:g:XooAAOSw2q9a33M~

op your comparing this sale to the 90s market is really off base.  the $60k card in question would probably sell for considerably higher if it gets pulled soon.  ohtani is an interesting figure bringing foreign money into the scene.  is it a lot of money?  yes.  will it be worth this much in 2 years? no way.  is it good for baseball cards and collectibles?  contrary to your initial thoughts, yes.

100 percent agree.

Shohei Ohtani rookie cards as well as Aaron Judge rookie cards last year were both shots in the arm to sportscard collecting. Brought in new fans kind of like the Walking Dead #1 did a few years ago for comics.

New fans means new interest. 

 

 

Edited April 24, 2018 by ComicConnoisseur

[Brian48]

Modern sports cards are like modern comics.  They're printed in quantities far lower than anything in the '90s which were printed in the MILLIONS.  This is for both comics, cards, toys, you name it.  I am so glad I was not collecting anything back in the '90s. 

[thehumantorch]

11 hours ago, FineCollector said:

There's only one copy, so there's that.  I don't know what 1 of 1 cards sell for normally, but if nothing else, it's advertising for the store.  Baseball collectors are nuts anyway, remember what the Mark McGuire home run balls were selling for?

Silly, you can buy a brand new, unused baseball for much less.....

[aardvark88]

6 minutes ago, thehumantorch said:

Silly, you can buy a brand new, unused baseball for much less.....

then get your pair of  ballz signed by Jim Lee, Liefeld and Paul Rubens (Pee Wee).

[thehumantorch]

28 minutes ago, aardvark88 said:

then get your pair of  ballz signed by Jim Lee, Liefeld and Paul Rubens (Pee Wee).

Than I can tell everyone I have Pee Wee balls?

[deadleg]

1 hour ago, thehumantorch said:

Silly, you can buy a brand new, unused baseball for much less.....

Yeah but McGuire took some steroids and than touched that one with a bat. It’s obviously worth more. 

[Bronty]

blowout cards is Tom Fish.. he's bought a number of high profile OA pieces in recent years

[Red84]

16 hours ago, FineCollector said:

There's only one copy, so there's that.  I don't know what 1 of 1 cards sell for normally, but if nothing else, it's advertising for the store.  Baseball collectors are nuts anyway, remember what the Mark McGuire home run balls were selling for?

I don't think you can compare a manufactured collectible like a 1 of 1 autographed card to an actual baseball that was at the center of breaking the most treasured sports record (it was at the time of the homerun race in 1998 before the proverbial s%t hit the fan).

Full disclosure - I'm a huge Mark McGwire fan and was lucky enough to get an autograph from him on Mark McGwire bat day at Busch Stadium back in 2000. My favorite sports memory. 

[Tony S]

6 hours ago, ComicConnoisseur said:

100 percent agree.

Shohei Ohtani rookie cards as well as Aaron Judge rookie cards last year were both shots in the arm to sportscard collecting. Brought in new fans kind of like the Walking Dead #1 did a few years ago for comics.

New fans means new interest. 

 

 

I don't know anything about sports cards and what is good or bad for the hobby. 

But I would dispute the Walking Dead TV show bringing in new comic book fans. Rather the TV show has caused a great deal more interest in the comic book - especially collecting the key issues - among people that were ALREADY comic book collectors. 

At it's peak in season 5, you had 14 million viewers watching the show.  That's dropped by 1/2 to about 6.6 million viewers this season.  The comic book routinely sells around 75,000 to 85,000 copies a month.  Depending on what other titles are being released, The Walking Dead comicbook sometimes slips into the top 10 best selling comic books and is typically in the top 20.  

Obviously, not even a tiny fraction of the 6 - 7 million viewers of the show are coming into comic book stores to buy the comic.  I suspect Amazon probably sells some extra trades to the occasional rare viewer that wants to see what happened in the comics. But even that is few and far between. People can search the internet for what the differences are between the comic and TV show.  

The TV show has interested existing comic book collectors in putting the Walking Dead on their pull list and want list. It hasn't done mess to bring in new comic book collectors. 

 

[miraclemet]

Always thought the advent of the internet (along with the card companies over producing) did a lot to pop the 90s market bubble. 

I remember slowly working on a '51 Bowman set for yeeeeaars, paying $20+ for commons just cause they were so hard to come across (this was 91-93)

By '99 you could pickup any of those common cards for $5 on eBay. Access plays a role. 

The new cards dont have that market shift to deal with, so it just comes down to market interest and market availability. 

[CartoonFanboy]

19 hours ago, shadroch said:

I heard he had a prenuptial agreement that excluded his sports memorabilia collection, so he put a substantial amount of his worth into it.

Most likely a fan boy rumour, but it made sense at the time.

 

That definitely sounds like a rumor. McFarlane was married long before he became successful, so it's highly unlikely that he had any such prenuptial. 

[CartoonFanboy]

22 hours ago, newshane said:

True that he wasn't worth back then what he is worth today...but I'd say he was already well north of a million by the time 1999 rolled around....

but yes, indeed, probably not rich enough at the time to drop 3 million on a baseball! 

What does (did) his wife do? 

I'm not sure what the previous poster was referring to when he said that McFarlane's wife financed the purchase. To my knowledge she has only ever worked as part of McFarlane's company. I've never heard anything about her being rich or anything prior to their marriage (I believe she was the daughter of one of McFarlane's baseball coaches from college or something).

[WolverineX]

8 minutes ago, CartoonFanboy said:

That definitely sounds like a rumor. McFarlane was married long before he became successful, so it's highly unlikely that he had any such prenuptial. 

Agreed.  That's a rumor. 

[1Cool]

49 minutes ago, miraclemet said:

Always thought the advent of the internet (along with the card companies over producing) did a lot to pop the 90s market bubble. 

I remember slowly working on a '51 Bowman set for yeeeeaars, paying $20+ for commons just cause they were so hard to come across (this was 91-93)

By '99 you could pickup any of those common cards for $5 on eBay. Access plays a role. 

The new cards dont have that market shift to deal with, so it just comes down to market interest and market availability. 

It definitely helped kill the golden goose.  Who cared if Spawn 1 had a million copies produced prior to E-Bay since my small town only had 50-100.  I had the contend with the other local buyers who also wanted a copy of this limited number unless I was willing to drive hours to hit up another LCS.  Prices were generated by the fish bowl effect where everything functioned in the bowl and outside was unattainable to most.  Internet cracked the bowl and people really saw how many people had copies for sale and the whole thing fell apart for awhile.  The new market may follow the same formula but the bubble is held together by horders / flippers / dealers selling to each other and keeping the prices elevated.  We will see what happens when the first cracks start forming and people are stuck with a ton of high prices product or multiple copies and the prices start falling.  

[spreads]

I think to use this example to compare it to the 90s pre-collectible crash is grossly ignoring the fundamental macro-economic differences between now and then. 

Look at what has happened in the past 10 years in a zero interest rate environment?  Equity Markets at all time highs, bond markets had a 30+ year run, home prices at all-time highs, rare artwork selling for absurd amounts of money.  The point is, all of these assets have gone through the roof because of their negative correlation to low interest rates. 

Sure that 60k item could definitely crash tomorrow, but unless there is a sudden dramatic macro-socioeconomic event it's not likely a whole collectible asset class (like comics) will crash.  People still have all these other asset classes with value at all-time highs, it's easy collaterialized-borrowing to provide support.  Will comics become not-collectible over the next 10-50 years?  Maybe, but who knows and it won't be a sudden shift in price across the board.

[revat]

22 hours ago, spreads said:

I think to use this example to compare it to the 90s pre-collectible crash is grossly ignoring the fundamental macro-economic differences between now and then. 

Look at what has happened in the past 10 years in a zero interest rate environment?  Equity Markets at all time highs, bond markets had a 30+ year run, home prices at all-time highs, rare artwork selling for absurd amounts of money.  The point is, all of these assets have gone through the roof because of their negative correlation to low interest rates. 

Sure that 60k item could definitely crash tomorrow, but unless there is a sudden dramatic macro-socioeconomic event it's not likely a whole collectible asset class (like comics) will crash.  People still have all these other asset classes with value at all-time highs, it's easy collaterialized-borrowing to provide support.  Will comics become not-collectible over the next 10-50 years?  Maybe, but who knows and it won't be a sudden shift in price across the board.

The other thing I would say is that because of the imperfect knowledge about the market but the accessibility of the market, it should keep a systemwide comic price crash from occurring.  Anytime the value of something previously hot drops, there's someone on ebay (rightly or wrongly) willing to buy it at the newer somewhat lower price to the point where it reaches a new lower plateau, creating something more of a level of cushions rather than a crash, we keeps other people from acting in more reactionary ways that would affect other larger segments of the market.  And also when prices of one hot comic tend to drop, it tends to be because speculative money moves elsewhere, so there's little change in the market as a whole typically.  There's probably no scandal or act of god that will make 33% of comic fans try to sell off their collection immediately or make 25% of all dealers try to liquidate all in the same month.   Yes there may be a bubble for variants, but I don't think that is propping up the market in the same way it was before, and ways to sell off won't destroy stores or dealers because they can sell on line for quarters on the dollar rather than pennies on the dollar.