(Scroll to the end to find the details of this tonight’s livestream!)
North America discovered the value of collectibles in the 1970's. This was when large auction sales, and stories of valuable treasures found in attics, basements, and more, became front-page news. The 70's is when collecting went mainstream.
Collector and writer Harry Rinker describes this as when America became collecting conscious.
There was a wholesomeness to this early collecting movement. Americans were rediscovering and celebrating their old furniture, toys, and family heirlooms. Objects that were passed down through their family, or waited patiently in storage from their childhoods.
Old collectible toys that are sure to be loved by some collectors out there!
This was the time before mass produced pop culture collectibles, but it laid the foundation for them. The 70's may have started as a boom in antique furniture and other cultural artifacts, but it grew into new attention for sports cards and comic books. Both categories that, even by the 1970's, already had a long history of production. (Sports cards were first produced in the 1800's, while the first comic books date back to the 1930's.)
Rare copies of sports cards and comic books surged in value at auction: in 1985, a T206 Honus Wagner sold for $25,000, with prices growing from there. By 1991, a T206 sold for $450,000 (to Wayne Gretzky, of all people).
The comic boom kicked off a bit later, with an Action Comics #1 (the first appearance of Superman) selling for $82,500 in 1992.
These were category-defining sales that earned big headlines. And, with it, the antique collecting boom of the 70's evolved into a pop-culture collecting boom of the 90's.
Across both sports cards and comics, it was sales of truly rare pieces that kicked off the hype cycle. And it was the mass-produced modern products that ultimately crashed the market.
The high-profile sales of truly rare sports cards and comic books inspired more people than ever to start collecting. It's easy to relate: after learning of the riches earned by early collectors, who can blame people for jumping into the collecting hobby. Surely, if they hold long enough, they'll get watch their collection become truly valuable...
Of course, this isn’t what played out.
It’s estimated that, at the peak of the 90's sports card boom, the card companies were printing 81 billion cards a year. Compare that to the approximately 10 billion cards produced by The Pokémon Company in 2024 (2025 figures have not yet been released). This period of massive overprinting is now known as the ‘junk wax era’ and cards from this era continue to be cheap, despite being more than 30 years old.
The comic book industry followed a similar trend with massive quantities of new books being printed throughout the 90’s. Having seen the values of golden-era comic books, collectors behaviour shifted: books were carefully packed in polypropylene bag with acid free backing boards. Many would purchase multiple copies: one to read and consume, and one or more to keep in long-term storage.
The publishers, meanwhile, were more than happy to support these new behaviours. Who could blame them? They printed more, in order to meet the speculator demand, and released all kinds of collectible cover variants that reinforced the need to buy multiple copies of the same book.
The result is an era that is absolutely flooded with supply. Where even the “rare” collectible cover variants were printed in the millions.
In hindsight, the crashes across both these categories were inevitable.
But, even so, they did not permanently kill the categories. Both sports cards and comic books remain popular collecting today.
If anything, the companies producing sports cards and comic books proved the viability of mass-produced collectible. Pokémon cards have benefitted from their lesson.
In the 70’s, when Americans first became collectibles conscious, collectors focused on antiques and other cultural and historical artifacts. Objects that served a purpose in the past, and remained as a reminder of those times.
Today, pop-culture collectibles are in constant production. Modern Pokémon cards are printed in enormous quantity, and enjoyed by millions (hundreds of millions?) of people around the globe. The excitement of modern releases helps fuel demand for long out-of-print vintage cards.
Modern and vintage cards participate as part of a large Pokémon ecosystem. One where new items are constantly introduced to the market, while the items of the past are left to cement their historical legacy (or linger in obscurity).
Along the way, the companies producing these modern collectibles have learned to harness the seed that began with collecting consciousness, and shape it into something much larger.
They’ve created an absolute monster.
As usual,
Thanks so much for reading the TCG Buyers Club newsletter. My name’s Grey, I buy cardboard, and I’m on a mission to make collecting and investing in Pokémon simple.
(And, honestly, I’m not sure this newsletter post achieved that goal 😂)
Cheers 🍻
P.S. I’ll be live TODAY at 7:30 pm ET to go deeper on this topic, and answer any questions you have. Please feel free to reply to this email with any questions you have and I’ll be sure to address them during the live. Here’s the link: