General Forum

AS a stark testimony to the value of some early 90's cards... a local dollar store here in Canada is selling unopened wax boxes of 1991 Topps baseball for what would amount to about $2.75 in USA dollars ($3.60 Canadian dollars) per box!!! Wow!

Like ever  one else here.  I know guys that have 100s of boxes thinking they would make money in 20 years.  Sad  That is why i do not buy for investment.

Value, schmalue! I still have many cards from that era on my Want List. It's about the collecting players and teams that interests me. If something's too costly then I'll enjoy from afar.

It is crazy how much some of those cards sold for in the early 90's versus now. It does make it easier to build the sets that I couldn't afford on my childhood allowance.

Here is how crazy, looking at an old beckett dated January 1989, 1988 Donruss #657 Greg Jefferies booked at $7.00 and now is listed at .25. In another guide dated October 1994 the same card is listed at $2.50. Im sure there are other good examples of value changes if I spent more time looking but it seems that the overproduction of cards has lowered prices and hurt the hobby. I recently bought a collection from another member on this site and as I am slowly going through the cards Im surprised at the amounts of duplicates new and older cards. Most of the collection was from an old card shop that closed. I have a 5000 card box filled with 1989 topps baseball. 

I'm not sure that it's sad. It's maybe sad that collectors spent so much in the day and now they have little value but I agree that it's maybe not so sad for a collector who didn't buy high. I think it's great that I can still buy the cards I need from the junk era so affordably. What will be interesting is to see if history shows us what's going to happen with the autograph and serial number cards of today that people are paying big money for. I feel the market ob those cards will only move in one direction and that is down.

I would buy a truckload for that price. Look at all the Chipper Jones rookies you could pull. Not too mention weren't they randomly inserting vintage Topps cards that year to. Me and a friend split a case several years ago and I didn't get any of the older cards inserted but I did get some nice Chipper Jones rookies and stuff

I think you're on to something with the AU and SN cards of today. Take a product that has Mike Trout AU cards that are numbered /100, /50, /25, /10, /5, and /1. Note that this is just an example. Basic math tells us that there are 191 Trout cards in that product, with the only difference being a color of foil or background. (Again, this is an example).

Take it a step further; let's say that there's five separate products with those SNs. Now we are at 955 AU Trout cards with minimal differences. Stretch that over just three years: 2,865 Mike Trout autographed cards. Exaggeration? Only a little. When there's so many 1/1s produced, are they really that rare?

Remember those Signature Rookie cards that were only 1 of 5000 from the 90s that can be picked up for cheap? I truly think that's the way that we are moving in today's market. We will get there - eventually.

I have a handful more thoughts on this topic, but I'll shelve them for now. 

I totally agree with you! Just look at how awesome it was to pull a MEM (or even better, an AU) card of someone in the 1990's. Today a MEM card starts at a BV of $4.00. That same card of a nobody would have been $25 or better in the late-90's. I have a Game-Used MEM card of both Brett Favre and Albert Pujols from the mid-2000's. Both have a BV of $25 today! My Ozzie Smith Topps RC card has a value of twice what any of my AU'd cards of him have at this point in time.

One-of-Ones are basically a joke these days! I can easily get base 1/1's of 7-time NASCAR Champion Jimmie Johnson for about $30 each now. There are so many of them out there that no one even haggles on the price anymore. Even autographed memorabilia 1/1's for a superstar can be had for less than $100 now! Topps and Panini are destroying the value of their cards just by producing so much of everything. A 1/1 isn't really a 1/1 if there are 12 different ones! When Printing Plates first got released in packs, four 1/1's was okay. But now there are several more 1/1's besides the plate cards! It's gotten ridiculous!!!

91 Topps isn't a bad one to have. As mentioned, there are Chipper RCs in them. They go for about $15 box/$275 (case of 20) on eBay. Since you're up in Canada, is it the OPC version? They go for $50/box. Definitely worth a second look, even maybe stashing away a box or two. If they have a sealed case, it's defenitely worth the investment.