When this boom first started, I immediately tied the insane growth to people existing in a brand new world, one where they had all the money they would normally spend, but no place to spend it. No eating out, no extravagant vacations, nothing. Because people that have money like to make more money, they are start looking for places to take this extra income and spend it on something worth while. Something like cards.

Here is the thing, though.

I never expected this to explode the way it has. That initial group of spenders who started buying and buying and buying eventually spread to parts of the population that never had exposure to collectibles in this way. Celebrities, influencers, entire platforms, all decided that this first blip on the radar was an indicator of big things to come. From that point, everyone was all in.

From that point it was 16 months of pure adrenaline, as collectors from all corners of the world decided that spending their money on cards was what they wanted to do. Exponential growth followed, to the point where people in target were fighting over cards, and PSA had to stop (!!!) taking submissions for grading because they were overrun with orders.

In the meantime, a few things happened. First, the vaccinated population started growing to a point where states felt much more comfortable opening up their previously closed off parts of life. Second, the places where all those people would usually spend their money came back to the forefront of their consciousness. Lastly, the backlog of all those people trying to cash in started to move through the works.

This meant, less money was going to be spent, supply went up, and most importantly, interest started to dwindle. If there is a ton of demand, but no supply, prices spike – basic economics. But when you start seeing a huge influx of supply mixed with waning demand, its a recipe for a plateau at best, or a downward crash at worst. As I talked about in a previous post, things arent all going to come crashing down to earth at once. Its not like that million dollar card is just going to back to being worth a thousand.

As mentioned, the trends will start in the artificially created value first. The places where people went to get their fix when the original place was too expensive. Those 4th year Prizm singles that are available in the hundreds of thousands? That’s where things will soften first. The stuff that is readily available and has a growing supply thanks to PSA clearing their backlog will be dropping very fast. People will start to see that even though the demand was insane, the supply was small due to external factors. Factors like “this card was never valuable in the first place, so why invest to make it available to the public” type of situations. Those market supply limiting factors are well on their way to being cleared, which means that dam is about to break.

The truly rare examples, those cards that are from an era where supply never existed in the first place, those things will stay valuable for a longer period of time. Hopefully quite a bit of time. To ensure that the boom period doesnt lead to a massive bust, those cards need to maintain their value. If we start to see massive declines, thats when the panic should set in. Luckily, even as recent as this past week, record prices for those types of items are still happening. Everything else seems to be falling, as expected.

Reports from the recent big Dallas show seem to range from cautiously pessimistic to people telling tales from their hellscape of despair resulting from a lack of buyers and an overflow of sellers. Remember, 3 months ago at the last show, people were still riding high – that’s how much the narrative has shifted.

To answer the question of where this leads, I think its still too early to tell. I thought the wave of interest driven by famous people would last longer than it did. Unfortunately, the banks of the other side of this giant sea of card related growth seem to be visible from the ship, and the waters behind us look to be much more expansive than those in front.