Modern trading cards are breaking sales records; How long can it last?

Sep 03, 2020

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Mike Trout. LeBron James. Conor McDavid. Patrick Mahomes.

These guys are arguably the biggest stars in their respective professional sports – especially if you’re talking to card collectors. With that popularity comes extraordinary prices realized for their trading cards.

For years, vintage was king when it came to secondary market prices, culminating with a 1909 T206 Honus Wagner that sold for $3.12 million in 2016 through Goldin Auctions. It was the highest known price for a single baseball card.

Last month, the record was broken by Mike Trout’s 2009 Bowman Chrome Autographed SuperFractor, which sold for $3.93 million through Goldin Auctions. In July, a LeBron James 2003-04 Exquisite Rookie Patch Auto /23 sold for $1.8 million.

Now, a Giannis Antetokounmpo 2013-14 National Treasures Rookie Patch Auto NBA Logo (a 1-of-1) is anticipated to sell for around $2 million through … Goldin Auctions. As of Thursday, September 3, the card sits at $660,000 with less than three weeks to go.

(Photo credit: Goldin Auctions)

Before these modern card sales, six- and seven-figure auctions were left to vintage cards such as a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, 1916 M101-4 Sporting News Babe Ruth and 1909 E90-1 American Caramel Joe Jackson.

So, what’s changed? Why are modern players grabbing attention over tried-and-true legends whose names have gone down in sports history?

Accessibility

When talking about accessibility, I don’t mean having access to cards — although that seems to be getting more difficult lately. It’s about access to athletes.

You want to watch Fernando Tatis Jr., on the San Diego Padres? All you have to do is put on the MLB.TV app and tune in. You can follow and write to players on social media and instantly access their stats, news and more.

They’re in your face.

I was recently chatting with Eric (@ThoseBackPages on Twitter) on this topic and the first thing he brought up was how you are seeing these players in real time. There is always access to them. You can watch any of them any time you want, whether it’s Tatis Jr. smashing a 3-0 grand slam or Luka Doncic nailing a game-winning overtime buzzer-beater. Click a button and here’s the highlight.

As Eric puts it, there’s not a whole lot retired guys can do that will increase the value of their vintage cards 10-fold in a year. He’s not wrong.

Perceived vs. actual rarity

The rise in baseball card prices that began in the 1980s was fueled, in large part, by baseball fans who came into money and wanted to reacquire a piece of their childhoods or saw cards as an investment opportunity. Vintage cards — led by the T206 Wagner and Mickey Mantles — sparked interest in the idea that cards could be valuable, which in turn drove collectors to buy tons and tons of new product, thinking it would in turn be valuable someday (most of it wasn’t).

Similarly, the recent rise in modern cards sales has been fueled, in large part, by fans who came into money and wanted to acquire a piece of their childhoods or see cards as an investment opportunity.

Vintage cards are often coveted without being rare (there are dozens of 1952 Topps Mantles on eBay right now, for example). A rare Trout should be worth more money than a vintage card with lots of copies. It’s refreshing to see modern cards getting their due after so many of them turned out to be worth far less than we’d all hoped.

Part of the value in modern cards is in the manufactured rarity by the card companies. While collectors don’t have an exact number of the vintage cards that were printed, modern cards have their print runs foil stamped directly on them.

We know when it’s a 1-of-1 or numbered to just 23 or 99.

PR Hype Machine

A number of the high-ticket cards have one thing in common: the auction house, Goldin Auctions. Ken Goldin has been in the memorabilia business a long time. According to his bio on Goldin Auctions’ website, he’s been involved in the memorabilia business since he was 11.

Some may remember the days he used to call in to Don West’s show on HSN.

Goldin was a co-founder of Score Board, the company that signed Shaquille O’Neal to an exclusive autograph deal in 1993. One year earlier, Score Board’s Classic brand inked a deal with Shaq that scooped all of the other companies looking to make NBA cards of him — including Topps, Fleer and Upper Deck. Shaq’s earliest autographed cards were produced by Classic, and his signed cards didn’t appear in another brand’s products until the end of the decade.

Goldin understands how to get attention. These days, he’s become a mainstay for media outlets to discuss the booming trading card industry. He’s appeared on Bloomberg News, Fox Business, ESPN and even TMZ.

When have you seen card-related news on TMZ? When Goldin Auctions is involved (one of the other times when comedian Rob Schneider’s 1951 Bowman Willie Mays card was stolen. Evidently he’s a big collector?!).

Goldin Auctions is clearly taking advantage of the moment, but it’s more than that — they also know what they’re doing. They have become the official auction house for companies such as the Basketball Hall of Fame and Jackie Robinson Foundation.

The publicity Goldin Auctions generates for these types of cards does not hurt. And the more these news stories make it online, the more people that notice the astronomical prices of cards and the more people whose eyes turn into dollar signs.

Disposable Money

Much like with the explosion of Topps Project 2020 earlier this year, there are people right now with disposable money who do not know what to do with it. They can’t go out to restaurants or casinos; they can’t go on vacations or quick getaways. Instead, they have the urge to find something else to do with their money, to find that next rush.

There’s a rush to selling or buying a huge card. There’s a rush to busting open an expensive product and then pulling a card that you could flip into a car. This doesn’t happen often, but those long odds don’t deter collectors looking to embrace a little risk.

Things in the hobby are hitting another stratosphere right now.

Will it all come down? Will the bubble burst?

In reality, we don’t know what is going to happen. The hobby hasn’t had enough cycles, in my opinion, to be able to determine how it will react when things change again. The telling aspect will be when a vaccine is created for COVID-19 and then people can go back to a life that is closer to what it was like before the shutdowns.

Until then, we really don’t know. However, one thing does seem certain and that is modern cards are king right now while vintage takes a back seat to things that are new and shiny.