Back on October 30, 2004, a weblog post focused on a serious question, “Why use Beckett Grading Service?” Over the last few years, my collection of trading cards has been reduced. Right now my primary focus involves picking up carefully selected Beckett Grading Service (BGS) encapsulated cards from auction houses or private collectors. Right now the prices have hit record lows and picking up some seriously awesome cards seems manageable and strangely affordable.

For the send time I am going to edit and rework my essay, “Five major modern issues are changing the value of trading cards.” In 2004, the essay developed from my observation that the social perception of the game of baseball is not the only issue involved in answering the question of if my baseball card collection would survive the test of time. In the interest of clarity, I have tried to contain my analysis in the following list of, “five major modern issues are changing the value of trading cards.”

1. Expensive card rating has become important in the strange world of sports trading cards Beckett has generated a dichotomous two-class system. Beckett professionally rated and certified cards and those that are in a separate more common category by comparison. The word common has a very specific meaning in the world of trading cards. Common refers to the players who do not have enough name recognition to be in popular demand by the people participating in the collectible sports items or memorabilia market. Beckett charges several dollars at a minimum for the card rating service, quickly making the hobby very expensive. If you actually intend to sell your valuable cards at market value, then participation in the Beckett Grading Service is not an option it is a necessity. For better or worse certified rare cards have a higher value when graded based almost exclusively on the trust placed in the grading card companies.

2. Card companies over produced during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Market saturation has destroyed the value of trading cards for about a ten-year period. People simply have too many copies of these cards to create the illusion of scarcity in the market driving up the prices. Unfortunately, for card collectors and the game of baseball the number of successful players with rookie cards during this period is simply too small. Ken Griffey Jr., Sammy Sosa, Randy Johnson, and recently Curt Shilling are great players, but are only five of over five hundred active players.

3. Online auction houses corrected a major information communication failure in the sports collectibles market. Right now online auctions houses are connecting buyers and sellers within any market failures related to communication. When the only way to get a certain players card was to keep buying wax packs, or pay the regional market price from the local collectible sports items or memorabilia store. If you want to participate in online auctions two worlds of tracing exist that do not mix for the most part, the collectors who only buy and traffic in graded cards, and those people who are selling cards that not rated.

4. Brick and mortar collectible sports items or memorabilia stores are closing all around the country. Stores made money when they could charge a regional premium for local favorite players and did not have to lower profit margins to compete with a globally connected marketplace of online auction houses. Modern stores are simply public faces to buy up trading cards from the public in order to sell them in online auctions.

5. The market of buyers is shrinking, while the number of sellers is increasing. Now that anyone can sell that old collection through online auction, the market performs better. Students of modern economics know that without a seller’s monopoly the number of collectible sports items or memorabilia stores is going to continue to shrink. The more competitive in the market online auction sellers are the lower prices are going to get.

Instead of focusing on selling cards, I have started to consider the long term benefits of collecting a few select graded cards. Rest assured updates will follow during the next few months or even years.