💖Happy Valentine’s Day to you and your favorite sports card💖
The Numbers
1 week % change
This week the data shows:
–Baseball listless after two good weeks –Basketball second straight solid showing –Football suprisingly strong with the season done –Soccer slightly negative –Pokemon doing Pokemon things for the 4th week running –One Piece strongly negative; good next week if the pattern holds –S&P 500 back into the red – more in The News below –Gold continues it’s macro-driven outperformance –Bitcoin continues its slump
Pokemon is up 7.8% on the month, and even more importantly, has shown a consistent 1.5% or more gain across all four weeks. It turns out, it CAN keep getting away with this, and with marketing ramping up for the 30th Anniversary, I wouldn’t bet on its momentum slowing down any time soon.
Regarding sports in the U.S., we’ve entered the February Purgatory, with baskeball the only major sport running (my soccer brethren read that again before you yell at me).
I always thought that baseball cards gain more momentum towards the beginning of March, but it seems saavy buyers are starting earlier from what I can gather. This is a clear indicator of maturing market dynamics, as known arbitrage trades start happening earlier and earlier in liquid markets like the stock market or currency markets…
Looks like sports card markets are getting more sophisticated.
The News
Remember these bad boys?
This may just be me, but I missed the news in late January that President Trump was floating the idea of mass $2,000 stimulus checks funded by tariffs. The concept circled back around, as bored journalists couldn’t seem to resist the urge to write new articles with titles like “What ever happened to those Trump-promised stimulus checks?,” sounding exactly like a little kid reminding you of a promise you’d forgotten you’d made.
“Stimulus” may make you think of “Covid” which may make you think of “crazy sports card bull market,” but before you go out and buy all those PSA 10 Zion Williamson base cards in anticipation, I would guess that even if this stimulus did happen, it’s very unlikely that it would kick off a similar effect now. The low-end global landscape has shifted considerably.
Most importantly, the domestic landscape shows serious recession risks. Gold surging is historically a massive indicator, and add continued higher-than-generally-reported inflation and Warren Buffett moving from stocks into his highest-ever-cash position to the red-flag-list. The last time the Oracle of Omaha was this cash-heavy…
2008.
If you’re a long-term sports card investor, it’s a good time to think about a plan for rotating out of riskier ultra-modern and prospects into vintage and GOATs.
The Framework
This week’s Slabnomics post carousel comparing sports card markets to historical alternative asset markets may not seem to be the most practical knowledge, but just wait until you see what I’m cooking up.
A big finding was that rolexes show incredibly consistent timing patterns, that may help me build forecasting tools for you all soon (🤞).
The high-end acting independently from the low-end in sports cards is a finding I’ve been expanding on for almost two months, and this research empowers us to map what markets they act like.
The high-end behaves like fine wine or fine art, and the low-end flippers are very much akin to the sneakerheads. Check the post for more.
Against the weighted algorithm I developed to compare all these 8 markets, Comics is the best all-around comp, showing 76% correlation with high-end sports cards, and 85% with low-end. This makes sense, as comics ans sports cards share all of:
Documented boom-bust cycle driven by manufactured scarcity + speculator influx
Post-crash recovery enabled by grading infrastructure separating real scarcity from artificial
Live split between genuinely scarce vintage and potentially oversupplied modern
The 1990s comic crash is a familiar tale to sports card enthusiasts:
Shift from “hobby” to “Investment”→Craze begins→Suppliers overprint→Crash
What does this guide us towards in the future? No crystal ball on my desk, but in this and elsewhere
True Scarcity always wins out over Manufactured Scarcity.
❝
“Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful”Warren Buffet
Keep Building,
DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. The content reflects the author's personal opinions and analysis and should not be construed as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any assets. Sports cards and collectibles are speculative investments with significant risk of loss. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The author may hold positions in assets discussed in this newsletter. Readers should conduct their own research and consult with qualified financial, tax, and legal professionals before making any investment decisions. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept these terms.
