![]() Topps, then a publicly-traded company, had a stock price of over $20 in the 1980s, which fell to $4.25 by 1996 (Mint Condition, pg. To just a few hundred, while the revenue and stock price of companies like Topps completely collapsed.ġ0. That place smelled like 1991 Stadium Club baseball cards For me it was Sportscard Corner on Montgomery Avenue in Narberth, PA. Hobby shops virtually disappeared, dropping from a peak of 10,000+ in the early-90sĩ. Kids stopped collecting cards, adults stopped investing in cards, and the Hobby transitioned from a mainstream American institution to an underground passion-project maintained by a few thousand diehards. The short version is that the Hobby more or less died, or at least the Hobby as a cultural phenomenon died. Meanwhile, the number of self-identified collectors ballooned into the millions - a 15x increase compared to 1980.Įntire books have been written about what happened next. According to one estimate, the number of card shows held in 1987-1988 accounted for half of all card shows held since 1973. Between 19 the baseball card primary market alone ballooned from $46M to $573M - a more than 10x increase.īy the early 1990s, the circulation of the Beckett price guide grew to nearly 1M subscribers (by comparison, today’s Washington Post has a circulation of 400K), and the number of annual card shows increased exponentially.Ħ. We were all trained - nay, scared - into obsessing over and hoarding our cards, and perhaps unintentionally creating a new generation of crazed collectors. My father was not unlike many when he relayed cautionary tales of putting his cards in bike spokes or when his mother (my grandmother) threw away his best cards. ![]() Those same baby boomers who were buying packs in the ‘50s and ‘60s were now adults with money of their own - they were teaching their kids (my generation) about the hobby. The 1990s should have been the golden age of cards. Three decades later, the disequilibrium switched to the “company side”. I really like the smell, is all I’m saying. It’s the same smell at my friends’ houses who have cards and I love walking into their card rooms, too. ![]() Every time I walk into the room, it hits me, and I get a jolt of energy. But to me it’s the smell of cards, of value, of excitement. Man, the smell! It’s the smell of plastic, of PSA and BGS and SGC slabs, of top loaders and penny sleeves and semi-rigids, and I’m sure to most people it’s probably not a very nice smell. And the reason I tell you this is because of the smell. There are a few safes, but most of the slabs are in black PSA boxes, or stacked on shelves. It’s a small windowless room, with a locked door. I have a room in my house where I keep my cards. Part IV: Risk Factors, Warning Signs and How to Think About the Future Part III: What Inning Are We In Now? Prices, People and Companies Indications of Market Health: A 2021 Timeline Special Theory: Card Shows, Crypto and Closed Grading General Theory: Low-Cost-Bases and One-Less-Buyer Dynamics Part II: The Q2 Crash and Theories of Correction ![]() The Card Ladder 50 Index and what it tells us about the market
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