So whats the future of the baseball card hobby? Will the cards we have now go up in value? Will new collectors flock to get that new shiny baseball cards? Or perhaps nobody will care anymore and baseball cards will become a thing of the past only to be forgotten?
I hope that last one won't come true but sometimes I feel we are on the verge. It seems that every time you turn around another shiny card of the same player is been produced. Players like Albert Pujols, Derek Jeter and other stars are signing cards left and right. Its watering down the collectibility of baseball cards. I guess you can also say the same thing about any other sports cards.
So here is what I think is going to happen in the future. Collectors who collects cards by players will start seeing a softer market on their cards. Every time a set is made we have at least one autographed card in that set dedicated to a player if not more. Now baseball card companies produces multitudes of products each year. If this process is repeated we have at least twenty autographs per player, per year.
Now for the people who buys to resell cards I think now might be the time to abandon ship. Not to say there is no money to be made but if older cards keep dropping in value your really just flushing your money down the toilet. Cards from years ago unless severely short printed will probably drop tremendously in value. Now of course there are certain players who just don't sign much and their cards are more expensive. Having said that, this could be an insight and a possible solution to fix the future of our hobby.
When something is limited it makes it more collectible. There is a reason why cards from the 90's are not worth the paper they are printed on. Its because it was overprinted and soon the autographed card market might follow suit. So the simple solution would be to limit the amount of autographed cards.
Perhaps they should limit each player to only one autograph per set per year. I can understand rookies having having multiple autographs across each product since they're still unproven. But the overabundance of not only star player autographs are killing the hobby. I don't mind a great player signing cards but sometimes enough is enough. And we have absolutely no need for players who are doing horrible in the major leagues to sign filler cards.
