Q1 2024 - Vintage Card Market Update
A high level view of where the vintage card market sits, and where it could go.
The first quarter of 2024 has been incredibly strong for almost all financial assets.
The S&P500 is up 10%.
Bitcoin is up over 50%.
The real estate market has remained highly elevated even in the face of the highest interest rate environment in over 20 years.
Typically when financial assets see appreciation like we have seen in stocks, crypto, and real estate, more alternative assets like sports cards, memorabilia and collectibles tend to follow suit.
However we have not yet seen that trend come to the vintage card market as of Q1 this year.
Take a look at both Card Ladder’s and Market Movers Primary Indexes tracking the sports card market through Q1 of this yer:
As you can see the broader sports card market has been quite calm. There are some marks of volatility in smaller categories of cards, but for the most part there is not a lot of news coming out of the card market as a whole.
Major Auction Sales:
So far this year we have seen some major auction houses such as Heritage and REA have a few marquee vintage sports card sales that show the current appetite for vintage cards specifically.
I would break the vintage market into 4 categories:
Low End (< $1,000)
Mid Value ($1,000 - $10,000)
High End ($10,000-$50,000)
Ultra High End ($50,000+)
Low End: (< $1,000)
As far as low end goes, I have sold thousands of cards in this price range in the last 6-12 months. The demand for low grade vintage baseball cards continues to stay strong, and in my own experience selling these cards prices have been consistent with the broader market as relatively flat.
A great staple to gauge this price point is the iconic 1953 Topps Satchel Paige in a grade 1 - this card is highly liquid, and almost always a $400-500 card in a 1 grade depending on the eye appeal of the card.
As you can see form this chart from VCP, the card has been little changed in average value to start the year, sitting at an average sale price of $430 over the last 3 months.
Mid Value: ($1,000 - $10,000)
A classic vintage card that fits in this category is the red background, Piedmont T206 Ty Cobb in mid grade. When you walk around the National each summer, every big vintage dealer has at least a few of these sitting in their case.
1909 White Boarder Piedmont 350 Ty Cobb PSA 4
Latest Price Realized: $10,400
The all-time high for this card in a PSA 4 grade was set back in 2022 at Goldin, where a very high-appeal example went for $15,600. Outside of that sale, this card has typically traded around $8k, and as you can see to start ‘24 that’s exactly where the average sales price has been.
The same trend can be applied to the broader T206 market - these cards had their all-time highs all in the 2021-2022 time period, with the rest of the vintage market seeing never-before seen highs that have since come back to earth and stabilized at these current levels.
High End: ($10,000-$50,000)
For this category of vintage cards it’s useful to look at an auction house like Robert Edward Auctions to showcase where the market is.
1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson PSA 3.5
Latest Price Realized: $23,400 on 3/24/24 (+40% from last sale)
Check out the comps before this past REA auction on this card in that grade:
The big takeaway I have from this sale is to show how much eye appeal matters with vintage cards, especially top 100 all time cards like this one.
The previous comp on a PSA 3.5 Jackie was 14k on eBay last year - this ended up almost 10k higher than that, strictly because this card is well centered, has great color, and overall presents very strongly for the grade.
This shows that even in this current flat market, there are still gains to be had on highly desirable, high eye-appeal cards. These trends tend to never go out of style.
Ultra High End: ($50,000+)
This category of cards has the smallest amount of buyers however has the largest impact on prices across all cards in the hobby.
When sports cards make all time highs at new record prices, this tends to trickle down into lower grade examples of the same cards. Perhaps no card has a better gauge on the ultra-high net-worth investor’s sentiment than the Holy Grail of the hobby, the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle in a high grade.
1952 Topps Mickey Mantle PSA 8.5
Latest Price Realized: $2,370,000 (+67% since prior sale on 12/19)
An example of this card in this exact grade has not been sold since December of ‘19 at Heritage, where it sold for $765,000,000. However there had been previous sales in PSA 8 grade at Goldin in September and October of 2023 where examples sold for $972,000 and $1,171,200, respectively.
This sale sets an all time high for the card, and shows how strong the vintage baseball card market is at this level.
The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle currently holds the all time record for a sports card sale at $12,600,000 back in August of 2022 sold at Heritage Auctions.
Where the vintage baseball card market could be headed:
Although the market for vintage baseball cards has been quiet to start the year, there are reasons to believe that the market will heat up as the spring and summer months approach.
As mentioned at the top of this article, other major asset classes such as stocks and crpyto have performed very well to start this year. This largely has been driven thanks to strong economic data in the employment market and overall consumer spending remaining very strong, which has helped corporate earnings remain incredibly resilient.
If we see the U.S. consumer continue to be strong, and the Federal Reserve cut interest rates three times in 2024 as chairman Jay Powell has most recently stated in his latest press meeting, then there is a real chance that alternative asset classes will see an uptick in valuation.
When interest rates lower, the cost of capital becomes cheaper, allowing businesses and consumers alike to take on more debt, and thus purchase more assets. Typically the majority of this excess capital goes into traditional assets like equities or bonds, however as this happens investors see larger gains, and often times look to diversify their portfolios and assets.
This could result in more record sales of higher end cards, which as I mentioned earlier would also trickle down and impact the lower brackets of vintage sports cards and thus drive the overall market higher.
Additionally, the sports cards market tends to heats up in the summer months as larger trade shows take place such as the National Sports Collectors Convention, which is being held this year in Cleveland, Ohio from July 24th-July 28th.
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