Sports Card Oversupply (Again!)

Back in the late 80s and early 90s there were a lot of sports cards that people prized highly, thinking of them as good long term investments. But, as we know now, for many of these same cards you’d be lucky to get a nice meal out from selling some of them, even if the player had a spectacular career. Hence, why the name ‘Junk Wax Era’ is used to describe the cards printed during the late 80s and early 90s. Oversupply of card production just can’t meet the demand. Luckily for us nowadays, we have the advantage of historical perspective and can learn from the past.

When Overproduction is a Reality, Seek out Less Common Stuff

When you think of some of the most iconic sports cards of the junk wax era, it is very possible that the iconic card of that player is actually much less valuable today than some other random card of theirs that you’ve never seen or heard of. “Wait, what?! That doesn’t make sense.” No, hear me out. It actually does. Because of that shorter print run, nowadays, while the supply of some iconic junk wax era cards is enormous, other less well known cards can be harder for a collector to find. The supply is lower. And even if the demand is lower, the demand that does exist can have a tough time finding that lower supply.

So, what does this say about some of today’s modern cards. Well, nothing is a direct parallel, so nothing could be said absolutely directly, but there are some things to consider. Nowadays, there are sets that tend to be considered the ‘flapship’ sets, and rookies of players in those sets are looked at as something closer to what may be their ‘iconic’ rookie card. With modern baseball cards, perhaps it’s the Bowman Chrome 1st or in basketball and football perhaps their Prizm rookie. But these are also sets in which the base rookie cards over the past few years have been overproduced pretty heavily. Maybe not to the extremes of the junk wax era, but still pretty heavily. As such, there is historical precedence to consider the possibility that some of the less well known rookie cards that are not as popular as these flagship releases could become more valuable over time, at least for players who actually do remain collectible long-term (which is an entire different article that I’ll write about later). It is hard to know for sure what will happen in the future, and the fact that each player just has tons and tons more rookie cards in different sets nowadays- different parallels, different brands, etc, makes the modern day context very different, but this is something worth considering closely if you are trying to make wise decisions with modern sports cards.

Sometimes “Rarity” is Not Remembered Accurately

If you look at cards back from the 90s, even though most sets included pack odds for different kinds of cards, it is not always the case that these pack odds are something remembered that much by collectors anymore. As a result of this, there can be some cards that really were quite common that are misremembered as being quite rare, and there can be other cards that are actually quite rare that can be misremembered as being common.

For example, the 1995–96 Fleer Metal Slick Silver insert set is one that can hold a pretty high value nowadays. Part of this, I am sure, is because it just simply is a phenomenal looking card, but part of it seems to be that it is remembered as being not such a common card to many collectors. However, at 1 per 7 packs, this was actually one of the most common insert sets from Fleer Metal that year. So the fact that the Jordan Slick Silver PSA 10 sells for over $600 feels too expensive compared to other somewhat common inserts of the time.

On the other hand, there are other cards where the opposite happens. Take for example the 1994–95 Skybox Center Stage cards. Despite the fact that these were inserted at a rate of 1 per 72 packs, which is incredibly rare, it is possible to find the most expensive card from the set, the Shaq card, for under $10 ungraded. That is extremely inexpensive for a card that was so hard to get and that just plain looks amazing. But this set has one main thing going against it. The previous year’s inserts of the same name from Skybox Premium, were inserted at a rate of 1 per 12 packs. The two sets both look quite similar to each other, so despite the fact that the 94–95 set is 6 times rarer, the two years kind of end up getting lumped together in collector’s minds. It isn’t a set that is considered particularly rare, because in 93–94, it wasn’t. The 93–94 Center Stage card of Michael Jordan can be found for under $10 raw, so for any card in the 94–95 set it becomes nearly impossible to surpass that Jordan card, despite the fact that the 94–95 cards are significantly more rare.

How Does This Apply to Now?

So what could this possibly mean in relation to what is going on nowadays? Well, the first thing that jumps to mind is, for me, I think that most non-numbered color parallels will end up, for the most part, getting lumped together in the long-term, even if some of them are more common and some of them are rarer. There are going to be some exceptions to this, if they are particularly sought and unique parallels, like say the Cosmic parallels which are their own unique thing, but otherwise I think all the other seemingly endless lists of non-numbered colored parallels will in the long-term all just basically be considered one thing.

This is the first article in a series I will be writing outlining some different learning from the ‘junk wax era’ relevant to sports card collectors and investors today, so be sure to look out for those other articles!