Are You Buying Cards or Price Histories? + Finding the Next PMG + When Comps Become Self-Fulfilling

Are you buying the card, or are you buying its price history?

Jeremy, Chris McGill, David Chase, Joe Poirot and Joshua Adams bring their discussion about the next generation of collectors to its conclusion by asking whether newcomers really need to inherit the collecting preferences previous generations created.

Chris remembers a time when sellers couldn't find buyers for a Michael Jordan PMG Red at $10,000. Today, that same card is worth many multiples of that amount.

So why couldn't the next generation of collectors do the same thing?

Instead of spending enormous amounts chasing the cards previous generations already turned into grails, perhaps new collectors can discover overlooked cards, sets and players, build their own collecting culture and eventually create an entirely new hierarchy.

Jeremy boils his advice down to something simple: forge your own path.

The panel discusses independent thinking, research, critical analysis and why finding overlooked value doesn't simply mean declaring that an unpopular card should suddenly be valuable. Scarcity, aesthetics, distribution, history, player significance and relative value still matter.

They also discuss hobby cycles and why quieter markets may actually encourage collectors to become more creative, explore new areas and discover cards that get ignored when established grails are rapidly appreciating.

Then the conversation takes an interesting turn into comps themselves.

What happens when a collector is willing to pay MORE for a card if the transaction becomes a publicly recorded comp? Conversely, if you buy a card privately for considerably less than its perceived market value, what incentive do you have to report that sale and potentially establish a lower comp for something you now own?

Jeremy and Chris discuss the incentives surrounding private-sale reporting, while the panel considers how collectors can estimate value when a rare card simply doesn't have a recent comparable sale.

Plus, Jeremy discovers Frank Robinson in real time and, within minutes of hearing more about his career, is already making offers on cards.

Four decades into the hobby and there are still new lanes to discover.

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