So let’s start the site by talking about the hobby industry’s favorite subject: MONEY!!! Sooooo fun, I know, but with the sports card market going parabolic of late, there’s been lots of talk lately about values and how the hockey market isn’t anywhere near that of baseball or basketball.
It never will be. Outside Canada, Russia and maybe a few other select countries, hockey is not at the forefront anywhere else. Every village around the world has a basketball hoop and a field, but rinks are much rarer. There’s no Asian money that’s going to come into the hockey market that’s fed by nostalgic memories of watching Jordan or Kobe play and personally equating that to you experiencing a sliver of the American pop culture machine.
And let’s face it. America rules all things pop culture, for better or worse. Vintage baseball is romanticized in its roots being part of the fabric of Americana…
“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.”
Vintage football doesn’t share that history. I’d argue modern football does, especially since the explosion of fantasy football and Game Pass/Red Zone. That’s why, I feel, Tom Brady will always be more popular than Montana or Namath. Brady was on the forefront of the sport when the sport was at the forefront of the culture. It’s the same reason Jackie will always be more popular than Jim Brown. Jordan more popular than those before — and likely after — him.
For hockey, Gretzky is the one… in Canada, hockey is always at the forefront of culture and has been for ages but he’s just a tiny speckle when it comes to the aforementioned pop culture machine so he will never compete on any level with the Jordans, Lebrons, Bradys, or Ohtanis. Yes, he does have a couple million dollar PSA 10 sales, but that’s entirely due to the wonderful quality control of the OPC/Topps printing presses and PSA’s arbitrary population control. If that card had a pop count like the Fleer Jordan PSA 10, it’d be a five-figure card.
Now what about the Celebrini gold outburst sale or the since-pulled Bedard gold outburst bounty? Doesn’t that show the potential of hockey? Well, no. All a bounty shows these days is a smart company farming free marketing from all of us jumping in and talking about it. The Celebrini sale is an outlier for a couple reasons…
The purchaser, Benjamin Be, has “f@# you money” — and has so much “f@# you money” that he doesn’t care if he’s being bid up by opportunists, whether individuals themselves or the industry as a whole. (Sidenote: I’d love to have that problem! lol). So I believe the Celebrini market to be irrational and concentrated. You could say the irrational part can also be said about Ohtani currently, and while I do agree, the thing about the Ohtani market is that it’s international and Shohei, due to his unique skillset, longer resume and baseball’s standing on the hierarchy of sports, is a much better bet to be a generation defining-player than Macklin, who has played two seasons — and in one of those seasons, he was only a tad better than Michkov, numbers-wise.
So what’s the point of this post? Heck, my thoughts appear to have spiraled as I was writing, lol, but the gist is this: many cards going parabolic in hockey are eventually going to get CRUSHED, in my opinion. “But it’s different now”… sure, it’s different in that the industry has more money being thrown into it on the illusion that it’s different now. But like any house of cards (ha!), when one card gets removed, it will have a ripple effect, and the ripple effect will hit the irrational and concentrated ones the most.
The Gretzky PSA 9s or 10s will be fine. The iconic hockey cards will feel a downturn but they will be fine. Some of those cards going for $5000+ cards these days though… oh man, look out! Those Schaefers, soon-to-be McKennas, and those (in my opinion, many being pretty ugly) five-figure Gretzky autos or inserts from the ’90s wearing a Rangers jersey — cards most people didn’t care for until the hype machine of Jordan ’90s cards made them take off. Man, those cards, in my opinion, are going to get slaughtered. “Parabolic” in hockey doesn’t equate the same numbers as “parabolic” in basketball or baseball and we may already be parabolic.
In closing, tread carefully.
(PS: new site, so if there’s any issues you come across, contact me here or on Instagram… Thanks!)