[GrangerCollectr]

Awesome take and information! Maybe I need to join some soccer Facebook groups because it's the same old stuff on Ebay and nobody sells soccer on here.

Originally Posted by AsianBrizz

As a middle-aged American living in Southeast Asia, I see this a little differently.

The soccer collector market is not exploding because of American collectors moving over from other sports, but rather from rich Asian collectors who (more and more) have the passion and the money to spend big. I regularly see big prices for new cards on Facebook, much higher than on ebay. Many Asian collectors don't use ebay, for example, or don't know how to see all the items available to the North American market, so things get skewed. You can still get vintage soccer cards for decent prices, but a new 1/1 or 1/10 of a current player like Messi, Ronaldo, or Mo Salah can go for hundreds of dollars or more on Facebook! I'm in about a dozen collector groups on Facebook and I regularly see insane prices on that site. It seems to me that many new Asian collectors, in particular, buy into this idea of high-end and low-end cards, and they're willing to pay top dollar.

Sure, a new Panini Prizm card looks quite slick compared to a Match Attax card or a Bundesliga sticker, but I wonder how much these cards will hold their value over time. I get the feeling that buying some of these cards will be like buying a brand new car that loses a lot of value as soon as you drive it off the lot.

Personally, I might spend $200 on a 60-year old Pele card, but I'm not putting down that kind of money for a 3-month old Rhian Brewster card, even if it is a rookie autograph numbered 1/10 on nice card stock with shiny colors.

Given the expanding wealth in Asia and other parts of the world, I don't think it's possible to accurately predict what these collectors will do with these cards or how they will react over time. The Internet has opened everything up, and I don't believe that everyone collects the same way Americans collected baseball (and then other sports) in the 20th century. We're in for a ride...