Hobby Bubble Peak Post-Mortem: Prospecting

[tjforce]

I can't help but think part of what's hurt the market these past couple years is the absolute collapse in collectability of some of the biggest prospects that people but big, big money into.

The sky high prices were built like a house of cards: New money came in, pushed up the prices of cards that could then be spent on other cards, pushing prices up further. But when a player's market absolutely collapses, that money doesn't go anywhere, there's no 'other side of the trade' that shorted Zach Wilson cards and profits off of his collapse. Between the player collapse, Auction House taking 10-20% of each deal, grading companies charging higher and higher prices, etc, more money was being sucked out of the market.

So a number of things have caused it, but I want to discuss which prospects were the gasoline thrown onto the fire, and which ones have lived up to they hype (or lack thereof), if anything, so there's some talk about this for the next round of prospects, who won't all work out. I'll start with a few:

Zion: This guy might be the poster boy for peak hobby bubble. I don't think there has ever been as much money put into a guy who hadn't yet proven anything on the court, and he came out in a time when the average collector could get some retail wax and make good money by simply grading and flipping. Some real bag holders here.

Ja: Passed Zion at one point hobby wise, but it's been a huge fall from grace these past few months. A year ago people would have told you he'll be the face of the hobby. Now his face is on Instagram next to his hand guns. His Panini Chronicles Dunk card is peak hobby cringe.

Luka: As a player he has definitely panned out, but the timing of his playoff miss this year has not helped. His Prizm rookie and it's PSA 10 pop of over 19,000 is a poster child for the craze as well.

I'll be adding some football players who I think really added to this in a but, but who else we got that people really sunk big money into and how have they performed on the field of play?

[oldgoldy97]

Didn’t that Netflix show save the hobby?

[TheGZA]

"Money sucked out of the market" is a good way to frame what I think you're looking to discuss here. As far as specific players, I still see a clear path to Luka maintaining value primarily bc international exposure and also eventually HAVING to play for a competitive team (right....?) Zion is a maybe, Ja is a no.

Argument can be made for virtually every rookie from the past three years (there's a good thread on it somewhere already). Lesson learned is perhaps don't prospect, IDK

[jcardstore]

literally every player had an insane peak during the covid bubble.

Bol Bol was one of the most lmao players who got hyped, right behind THT.

Trae Young was pretty hyped and never lived up to it.

Anfernee Simons got really hyped for seemingly no reason.

Lamelo hasn't lived up to the hype but he's been injured so hard to evaluate.

Honestly, not a single player besides Luka has lived up to the hype and prices.

[SupermanBrandon]

Hype rarely if ever matches reality. /thread

[brothertona]

How has Trae Young not lived up to his draft position?

[JustinVerlander07]

Originally Posted by jcardstore

literally every player had an insane peak during the covid bubble.

Bol Bol was one of the most lmao players who got hyped, right behind THT.

Trae Young was pretty hyped and never lived up to it.

Anfernee Simons got really hyped for seemingly no reason.

Lamelo hasn't lived up to the hype but he's been injured so hard to evaluate.

Honestly, not a single player besides Luka has lived up to the hype and prices.

Tyler Herro was a $40 prizm base rookie at one point.

[jcardstore]

Originally Posted by brothertona

How has Trae Young not lived up to his draft position?

That's not the question. Also, Trae just isn't that guy despite being billed as "that guy". He's not good enough to lead a title contending team which is abundantly clear

[brothertona]

Originally Posted by jcardstore

That's not the question. Also, Trae just isn't that guy despite being billed as "that guy". He's not good enough to lead a title contending team which is abundantly clear

He was never billed as that guy, he’s been trashed on here and by the media his entire career and has done nothing but average 26 and 10 and gone to the playoffs 3 times.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[NSGJT]

Originally Posted by tjforce

I can't help but think part of what's hurt the market these past couple years is the absolute collapse in collectability of some of the biggest prospects that people but big, big money into.

The sky high prices were built like a house of cards: New money came in, pushed up the prices of cards that could then be spent on other cards, pushing prices up further. But when a player's market absolutely collapses, that money doesn't go anywhere, there's no 'other side of the trade' that shorted Zach Wilson cards and profits off of his collapse. Between the player collapse, Auction House taking 10-20% of each deal, grading companies charging higher and higher prices, etc, more money was being sucked out of the market.

So a number of things have caused it, but I want to discuss which prospects were the gasoline thrown onto the fire, and which ones have lived up to they hype (or lack thereof), if anything, so there's some talk about this for the next round of prospects, who won't all work out. I'll start with a few:

Zion: This guy might be the poster boy for peak hobby bubble. I don't think there has ever been as much money put into a guy who hadn't yet proven anything on the court, and he came out in a time when the average collector could get some retail wax and make good money by simply grading and flipping. Some real bag holders here.

Ja: Passed Zion at one point hobby wise, but it's been a huge fall from grace these past few months. A year ago people would have told you he'll be the face of the hobby. Now his face is on Instagram next to his hand guns. His Panini Chronicles Dunk card is peak hobby cringe.

Luka: As a player he has definitely panned out, but the timing of his playoff miss this year has not helped. His Prizm rookie and it's PSA 10 pop of over 19,000 is a poster child for the craze as well.

I'll be adding some football players who I think really added to this in a but, but who else we got that people really sunk big money into and how have they performed on the field of play?

This is an interesting thread but I totally disagree with the premise. Individual outcomes for speculated prospects has little to do with why the card market has crashed, it simply tanked due to external factors and it inherently being a bubble. This was always a speculative bubble. What happened? Rather obvious:

A bunch of bored people with stimmy checks in an era of decadence/luxury in the US economy, during covid, started "investing" into random markets because they were bored. Couple this with youtubers/"influencers" hyping up products and creating entertainment-content out of breaking boxes i.e. Logan Paul w/ Pokemon. This transferred to other products/areas such as sports cards, Yugioh, random anime spinoff cards, and was already happening with cryptocurrencies, coins, funko pop, later graded comic books, video games, submarkets of vintage lagged behind in sportscards specifically I'd say, etc.

It's that simple. This was a speculative bubble and it popped, the question is how much further will it fall. I don't think Ja "CRIP WALK" Morant waving a gun and ultimately missing like 4 games and doing it again now with effectively zero repercussions to date, is the reason the entire card market tanked. Just because some bozos lost money on Zion, Ja, and Doncic/Tatum (latter might get a ring now) haven't done s---, isn't the reason why ALL CARDS have tanked mightily across all mediums (media?).

Why have pokemon cards tanked? Why did Brady/Jordan prices tank? etc. People are just stupid. If you're paying thousands or possibly 5-6 figures for a card of a player who's done diddly jack s--- in their sport you're a moron, sorry. Buy High, Sell Low. You're facing two guns to the face if you bought a speculative prospect during a giant speculative bubble in the card market, you're doubly losing. It's not the prospect failing's fault the market has tanked, prospects fail all the time.

You're going to go through 1000 Shaun King, Akili Smith, Christian Ponder, Zach Wilson, Baker Mayfield's before you get to one Brady/Rodgers/Mahomes even Brees/Warner/Wilson who's cards aren't worth anything really. And you'll go through 500-1000 NBA bums before you get to a Bron/Jordan, or maybe it will take another 30 years before we see someone close. Not trying to be all doom and gloom here, but a lot of people on this site think the overall market is just going to maintain or even go up in the future, and more people will be in cards. Will they? I'd say all the people, i.e. anyone who bought into cards in 2020-2022 basically - are going to leave and never look back because they took massive Ls, and if they bought Ja/Zion for sure they took their Ls.

With all that said Wemby soon tho.

[KhalDrogo]

Originally Posted by TheGZA

Lesson learned is perhaps don't prospect, IDK

Don’t prospect when the performance needed to sustain the prices isn’t achievable. Which is basically every prospect today.

But in 2019 you could buy unpicked Trae and Luka Optic base for $3-10. That was a worthy roll of the dice.

[jcardstore]

Originally Posted by brothertona

He was never billed as that guy, he’s been trashed on here and by the media his entire career and has done nothing but average 26 and 10 and gone to the playoffs 3 times.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Now share the splits....

In 27 playoffs games he's shooting 40/30/85 on 21 shots a game and 4.4 TOs.

That's laughably bad for your so called "best player". It would be pretty hard to find someone who's supposedly the face of a franchise who has been worse in the playoffs.

[JeremyNick]

Originally Posted by KhalDrogo

Don’t prospect when the performance needed to sustain the prices isn’t achievable. Which is basically every prospect today.

But in 2019 you could buy unpicked Trae and Luka Optic base for $3-10. That was a worthy roll of the dice.

With a hobby built and dying on $$$ prospecting since 2020, I’m comfortable saying rock bottom is when it becomes generally feasible to prospect again.

We aren’t close to that yet.

[eastbayak]

Originally Posted by jcardstore

literally every player had an insane peak during the covid bubble.

Bol Bol was one of the most lmao players who got hyped, right behind THT.

Trae Young was pretty hyped and never lived up to it.

Anfernee Simons got really hyped for seemingly no reason.

Lamelo hasn't lived up to the hype but he's been injured so hard to evaluate.

Honestly, not a single player besides Luka has lived up to the hype and prices.

Bol Bol was pumped 2-3 separate times.

Such fun times lol.

[NSGJT]

Originally Posted by KhalDrogo

Don’t prospect when the performance needed to sustain the prices isn’t achievable. Which is basically every prospect today.

But in 2019 you could buy unpicked Trae and Luka Optic base for $3-10. That was a worthy roll of the dice.

Two great posts. Yes, I totally agree. It's all about price. Which is why it's absolutely insane that anyone has paid a premium or really ultra-mega premiums for prospects even during covid.

A lot of dumb people accidentally made money by just having cards and a lot of dumb people bought in thinking the rocket just keeps going to the moon. Not much different from a GME meme stock or bitcoin really.

Originally Posted by JeremyNick

With a hobby built and dying on $$$ prospecting since 2020, I’m comfortable saying rock bottom is when it becomes generally feasible to prospect again.

We aren’t close to that yet.

And yep, I've been trying to say this but I think there are a lot of people still invested into cards and who rationalize on this site. There's an alarming amount of people who think the market right now in mid-2023 being 2x, 3x, 5x in places is "normal" and there is just way more interest in the card market, collecting, etc.

I'm not sure why people think that (well I do, they're coping) because most of the people who got in did so to make money and "invest" not necessarily caring about cards that much.

[jcardstore]

Originally Posted by NSGJT

Two great posts. Yes, I totally agree. It's all about price. Which is why it's absolutely insane that anyone has paid a premium or really ultra-mega premiums for prospects even during covid.

A lot of dumb people accidentally made money by just having cards and a lot of dumb people bought in thinking the rocket just keeps going to the moon. Not much different from a GME meme stock or bitcoin really.



And yep, I've been trying to say this but I think there are a lot of people still invested into cards and who rationalize on this site. There's an alarming amount of people who think the market right now in mid-2023 being 2x, 3x, 5x in places is "normal" and there is just way more interest in the card market, collecting, etc.

I'm not sure why people think that (well I do, they're coping) because most of the people who got in did so to make money and "invest" not necessarily caring about cards that much.

The main problem with "prospecting" in basketball over the last few years on here, IG, youtube, etc... is that the people supposedly prospecting know little to nothing about actual basketball.

They opened up some box scores or just randomly threw money at bums because some other dude told them they could run fast and jump high.

Everyone made money during covid no matter what so they all thought they were geniuses despite being generally clueless about the sport.

Terrance Ferguson was hyped here on BO because he had like 2 20 point games in a week or something despite being a bad NBA player. I could list 100 different guys who were like this

[GOATcards]

Originally Posted by NSGJT

Why have pokemon cards tanked? Why did Brady/Jordan prices tank? etc.

it's relative to a baseline. Compared to pre-pandemic prices, MJ cards (well, the key one for the hobby) is up like 2.5x. But down like 75% from a very brief peak. (It's basically at a price where I was told, on the way up, "time to sell," but holding it for about 2 months from there brought about 3x that amount. Dumb luck I guess, probably the case for a lot of peak-covid sellers.)

People are just stupid. If you're paying thousands or possibly 5-6 figures for a card of a player who's done diddly jack s--- in their sport you're a moron, sorry.

It's a gambler's rush thing. It's a market a stay well away from, focusing on the boring ol' established names.

Not trying to be all doom and gloom here, but a lot of people on this site think the overall market is just going to maintain or even go up in the future, and more people will be in cards. Will they?

I think it depends on whether more people will be into sports (although you mentioned many other classes of collectibles), and that's probably mostly a constant. Is it whether people who are already into sports, but not into cards, going to get into or stay with cards? That would depend on something else more intrinsic to cards/collecting itself. Many sports fans are really into the MJ legacy, but how many of them are into it enough to have cardboard pics of him?

As for the overall long-term trajectory of a market like this, like in terms of fundamentals - and main fundamentals here would be players' cultural appeal and the aesthetics of the collectible - I'm thinking a lot of it is tied to financial wealth which has its own long-term fundamentals (namely the productivity of the economy). I thought by now there would be models developed that show how much correlation there is between financial wealth and the hobby. (You'd probably have to separate "the hobby" into vintage vs. modern, and other ways. Those Wagners and Ruth rookies continue steadily toward the moon.)

[NSGJT]

Originally Posted by GOATcards

As for the overall long-term trajectory of a market like this, like in terms of fundamentals - and main fundamentals here would be players' cultural appeal and the aesthetics of the collectible - I'm thinking a lot of it is tied to financial wealth which has its own long-term fundamentals (namely the productivity of the economy). I thought by now there would be models developed that show how much correlation there is between financial wealth and the hobby. (You'd probably have to separate "the hobby" into vintage vs. modern, and other ways. Those Wagners and Ruth rookies continue steadily toward the moon.)

Those Wagners/Ruths and all of vintage is pumped right now. It was the last thing to be pumped because the hype beast Supremes who were into basketball or football or pokemon didn't care about 1890-1940s baseball cards. And those cards, yes, were a more legit investment.

I don't think they are going to the moon, I think they are being pumped and are the last submarket to be speculated on as it's advertised by influencer losers, youtubers, etc, as "a real investment". They're inflated. I'm not saying vintage hasn't gone up, but a lot of the mega sales are private aka fake on top of that. And it goes up modestly, maybe tracking inflation, maybe doing a bit worse or better. But we never saw vintage "go to the moon" before across 50+ years prior to a covid bubble, it's just doing so now following suit in the speculative process.

I'm not sure about the numbers for Jordan either, I think his stuff absolutely sky rocketed during covid. I'm sure it might have went up a bit prior but, nothing comparable. Same with vintage. There might have been some pre-covid pump, I did hear of with Mantle/vintage, but nothing compared to covid. There is no logical reason why cards will ever boom like they did during the bubble, there would have to be another speculative bubble for some reason, and likely never as big as that one.

[GOATcards]

Originally Posted by NSGJT

Those Wagners/Ruths and all of vintage is pumped right now. It was the last thing to be pumped because the hype beast Supremes who were into basketball or football or pokemon didn't care about 1890-1940s baseball cards. And those cards, yes, were a more legit investment.

I don't think they are going to the moon, I think they are being pumped and are the last submarket to be speculated on as it's advertised by influencer losers, youtubers, etc, as "a real investment". They're inflated. I'm not saying vintage hasn't gone up, but a lot of the mega sales are private aka fake on top of that. And it goes up modestly, maybe tracking inflation, maybe doing a bit worse or better. But we never saw vintage "go to the moon" before across 50+ years prior to a covid bubble, it's just doing so now following suit in the speculative process.

I'm not sure about the numbers for Jordan either, I think his stuff absolutely sky rocketed during covid. I'm sure it might have went up a bit prior but, nothing comparable. Same with vintage. There might have been some pre-covid pump, I did hear of with Mantle/vintage, but nothing compared to covid. There is no logical reason why cards will ever boom like they did during the bubble, there would have to be another speculative bubble for some reason, and likely never as big as that one.

the Wagner and Ruth RCs might be placed into a special class of their own, "vintage" doesn't even do justice to them. They're iconic and quite scarce even by vintage standards. Their long-term trajectory has pretty consistently been upward only.

52T Mantles apparently fluctuate a bit more. As iconic and scarce as that card is, it isn't a moon card. (I say its main appeal is to boomers who saw him play, Ruth's appeal is beyond that. I'd say in between the Ruth RC and the Mantle would be the Goudey Ruths, quite a few more of those in circulation.)

Ultimate moon card is the Baltimore News Ruth, yes?

[yiguiri2002]

You are giving ninja a pass by not bringing Sekou up

[yiguiri2002]

Originally Posted by tjforce

I can't help but think part of what's hurt the market these past couple years is the absolute collapse in collectability of some of the biggest prospects that people but big, big money into.

The sky high prices were built like a house of cards: New money came in, pushed up the prices of cards that could then be spent on other cards, pushing prices up further. But when a player's market absolutely collapses, that money doesn't go anywhere, there's no 'other side of the trade' that shorted Zach Wilson cards and profits off of his collapse. Between the player collapse, Auction House taking 10-20% of each deal, grading companies charging higher and higher prices, etc, more money was being sucked out of the market.

So a number of things have caused it, but I want to discuss which prospects were the gasoline thrown onto the fire, and which ones have lived up to they hype (or lack thereof), if anything, so there's some talk about this for the next round of prospects, who won't all work out. I'll start with a few:

Zion: This guy might be the poster boy for peak hobby bubble. I don't think there has ever been as much money put into a guy who hadn't yet proven anything on the court, and he came out in a time when the average collector could get some retail wax and make good money by simply grading and flipping. Some real bag holders here.

Ja: Passed Zion at one point hobby wise, but it's been a huge fall from grace these past few months. A year ago people would have told you he'll be the face of the hobby. Now his face is on Instagram next to his hand guns. His Panini Chronicles Dunk card is peak hobby cringe.

Luka: As a player he has definitely panned out, but the timing of his playoff miss this year has not helped. His Prizm rookie and it's PSA 10 pop of over 19,000 is a poster child for the craze as well.

I'll be adding some football players who I think really added to this in a but, but who else we got that people really sunk big money into and how have they performed on the field of play?

Crazy to think that despite the pandemic bubble, there are probably some guys who were worthy to pick up at some point and you can make a profit on (SGA, Garland).

Melo and Antman should be the next ones after those 3. Although they came up at the end of the pandemic boom.

Btw did you ever mention the secret projects you were working on? I might have missed them so not sure

[tjforce]

Originally Posted by brothertona

How has Trae Young not lived up to his draft position?

He's very much lived up to his draft position.

He has not lived up to the $400k or so his Prizm 1/1 sold for a couple of years ago.

It would have been hard to live up to that.

[brothertona]

Originally Posted by tjforce

He's very much lived up to his draft position.

He has not lived up to the $400k or so his Prizm 1/1 sold for a couple of years ago.

It would have been hard to live up to that.

That’s my view as well, he’s very much been everything you hope for at that draft slot. Card valuations of course not but neither has Luka. Luka has been a terrible investment since 2019.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[tjforce]

Originally Posted by NSGJT

This is an interesting thread but I totally disagree with the premise. Individual outcomes for speculated prospects has little to do with why the card market has crashed, it simply tanked due to external factors and it inherently being a bubble. This was always a speculative bubble. What happened? Rather obvious:

A bunch of bored people with stimmy checks in an era of decadence/luxury in the US economy, during covid, started "investing" into random markets because they were bored. Couple this with youtubers/"influencers" hyping up products and creating entertainment-content out of breaking boxes i.e. Logan Paul w/ Pokemon. This transferred to other products/areas such as sports cards, Yugioh, random anime spinoff cards, and was already happening with cryptocurrencies, coins, funko pop, later graded comic books, video games, submarkets of vintage lagged behind in sportscards specifically I'd say, etc.

It's that simple. This was a speculative bubble and it popped, the question is how much further will it fall. I don't think Ja "CRIP WALK" Morant waving a gun and ultimately missing like 4 games and doing it again now with effectively zero repercussions to date, is the reason the entire card market tanked. Just because some bozos lost money on Zion, Ja, and Doncic/Tatum (latter might get a ring now) haven't done s---, isn't the reason why ALL CARDS have tanked mightily across all mediums (media?).

Why have pokemon cards tanked? Why did Brady/Jordan prices tank? etc. People are just stupid. If you're paying thousands or possibly 5-6 figures for a card of a player who's done diddly jack s--- in their sport you're a moron, sorry. Buy High, Sell Low. You're facing two guns to the face if you bought a speculative prospect during a giant speculative bubble in the card market, you're doubly losing. It's not the prospect failing's fault the market has tanked, prospects fail all the time.

You're going to go through 1000 Shaun King, Akili Smith, Christian Ponder, Zach Wilson, Baker Mayfield's before you get to one Brady/Rodgers/Mahomes even Brees/Warner/Wilson who's cards aren't worth anything really. And you'll go through 500-1000 NBA bums before you get to a Bron/Jordan, or maybe it will take another 30 years before we see someone close. Not trying to be all doom and gloom here, but a lot of people on this site think the overall market is just going to maintain or even go up in the future, and more people will be in cards. Will they? I'd say all the people, i.e. anyone who bought into cards in 2020-2022 basically - are going to leave and never look back because they took massive Ls, and if they bought Ja/Zion for sure they took their Ls.

With all that said Wemby soon tho.

It's all these things... But it's also because there are players who went from big money worthless, and the best example is in football just over the last year.

Mahomes happened. His stuff started selling in the 6 and 7 figures. A few people made a whole lot of money on him, and a whole lot of people wanted to do the same by buying the 'next Mahomes'.

First it trickled down to Burrow and Herbert becoming 6 and 7 figure card guys. They both followed that by playing well, but not well enough to maintain those prices.

Then it trickled down to guys like Zach Wilson, Trey Lance, Mac Jones, and Justin Fields. They became 5 and 6 figure guys, despite accomplishing nothing. Those guys (3 of the 4 of them) absolutely crashed and burned, and their high end cards very very quickly became unsellable.

Like I said before, nobody was on the other side shorting those cards. The value disappeared, and now there was less money to put into Mahomes, Brady, etc.

Combine that with the big funds, Alt, etc, pulling money out, the overall pie just got smaller.

[tjforce]

Originally Posted by eastbayak

Bol Bol was pumped 2-3 separate times.

Such fun times lol.

So gross.