Thursday, September 19, 2019

Was I Wrong?

Yesterday I was able to sneak a quick visit to one of our card shops in Nagoya, Bits.  I picked up some supplies (which I'll probably devote a post to later) and some more 1980s Calbee cards for the sets I'm working on.

I also had a chat with the owner which made me rethink some of the stuff I wrote in a post a few weeks ago where I asked why Japanese people don't seem to collect vintage cards much.  Actually I think the individual observations I made in that post still stand, but the entire premise might not: maybe people in Japan are more into vintage than I thought.

This chat emerged out of my request to see the box of 1980s Calbees that he keeps behind the counter.  I knew it was there because he had let me browse through it on my previous visit with Dave.  I didn't have my 1983 and 1984 checklists with me on that previous visit so I had been meaning to peruse that box again with those in hand.

When I asked to see it the guy was almost apologetic, "I haven't added any to it since your last visit so its the same ones you saw last time"  he told me.  I explained the reason for my wanting to see it nonetheless and he handed it to me.  Then he started telling me why he has so few older cards.

"Until about a decade ago I used to buy older cards all the time" he said.  "People were just constantly bringing them in and I was constantly buying them."

Then, one day, people just stopped bringing them in.  Supply, rather than demand, had disappeared.

When I wrote my previous post I had kind of been under the impression that the reason card shops here don't stock vintage stuff is because nobody is interested in it.  But actually the opposite is true: they don't stock it because so many people are interested in it it has become hard to get (at least at prices that would make economic sense for a card shop).

Yahoo Auctions seems to have played the biggest role according to him.  Once people realized they could sell their old cards there, everyone stopped bringing them into shops to sell.  I suppose the same thing must have happened in the US years ago with the advent of Ebay (my card collecting days in North American pre-dated Ebay....and the internet....so I missed out on that transition).  Just cut out the middle man, it makes perfect sense.

This kind of jives with another fact that I've been noticing in the 6 years since I started this blog: prices realized for vintage cards have definitely been creeping upwards on Yahoo Auctions while supplies seem to be going downwards.  This is especially evident with 1970s Calbee cards that are selling for sky high sums, but I've also noticed it with my recent interest with menko.  The listings for menko a few years ago seemed to be a lot more robust than they are now, it definitely seems it is harder to find good stuff. And I constantly feel a sense of "I wish I had bought more while it was still available" when thinking of the stuff that I used to routinely find.

So anyway, while the market for vintage cards is definitely way smaller and less well developed than it is in the US, I'm starting to think I was over-stating the lack of interest.  Perhaps vintage is in!

14 comments:

  1. I had missed your previous post on the subject, but did go back and read it. I think this post is a perfect companion to that previous post, and I find the insight to be very interesting. As someone who has done almost no traveling, it's really nice to be able to learn about the habits of collectors in other countries.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, hobbies do vary quite a bit around the world!

      Delete
  2. I imagine online selling has really opened the door to collecting and making it accessible for everyone. Maybe create more of a demand than supply at the moment. Interesting read!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It sure has made it more accessible to me at least!!

      Delete
  3. I think it makes more sense that vintage is in... but then again... I look to all of the Japanese card bloggers (you, SumoMenkoMan, Zippy, NPB Card Guy, Ryan @ This Card Is Cool) for your expertise and just go with the flow.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think vintage is still smaller than interest in current cards, but it still exists at least!!

      Delete
  4. In retrospect there's one key element that's missing in both your/my thoughts that absolutely plays a part into this discussion. What even is "vintage" in the Japanese card collecting world.
    Obviously anything from before WWII (that's survived) counts, most things from the 50's, 60's and 70's would likely count. I'm sure the inaugural set of Calbee cards probably just gets in there. Question is, when's the cut off year? It sure ain't 1981 like it is in the US, but I'm still lost there. Depending on that, I think it changes the scene a lot.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know that Engel views "vintage" as anything before 1991 and BBM's first set but I don't know if the actual Japanese card collecting community follows that.

      Delete
    2. Any reason this Engel persons said 1991 specifically?
      Like if someone made an argument that 1988 (you know because it'd be the final year of the Showa era) I'd get it, but 1991? I'm lost there.

      Delete
    3. 1991 was BBM's first year doing cards. BBM was the first manufacturer to take a US-style approach to baseball cards - 10 card packs, factory sets, insert cards, etc - so it's a major turning point in the hobby. But again I don't know if Japanese collectors view it the same way.

      Delete
    4. I think Engel's cut off of 1991 makes some sense, the introduction of BBM really did radically change the hobby.

      Its no more or less arbitrary than assigning 1981 as the beginning of the modern US hobby on the fact that Fleer and Donruss entered the market that year.

      As a Calbee collector my only hesitation with placing too much importance on 1991 is that while there were a lot of cosmetic changes in cards that time period, particularly switching from mini to phone card sized cards, otherwise the cards weren't any easier to obtain after 1991. The real cut off for Calbee seems to be 1998. After 1998 they must have ramped up production of the sets because it is really easy to find post-1998 Calbee cards in bulk for quite cheap, while cards before that year are quite difficult to find (and more expensive). I suspect that because the popularity of Ichiro was reaching a peak in the late 1990s, people started buying way more of the cards.

      Delete
    5. Ah makes sense. Yeah, no I don't think '91's the vintage cut off for anyone. The US-style BBM's introduction or not.

      Delete
  5. The big change in card collecting in the US that Ebay brought about was the demise of a large percentage of the brick and mortar card shops. I have been concerned that Yahoo! Japan Auctions is having the same effect in Japan. There's a couple card shops that have moved into smaller locations on higher floors in recent years (Wrappers, Quad Sports) and a couple that have apparently moved into on-line/card show sales only (Prime Time in Osaka and maybe CAPS in Nagoya) - I've wondered if this is a response to less foot traffic because of YJA.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, it does seem like Yahoo Auctions is doing to card shops here what Ebay did to US shops 15-20 years ago. Bits seems to do a lot of their business online too, on my last visit nobody else was in the store but the owners, who seemed to be filling online orders.

      Supplies are the one area where brick and mortar stores can still get me in the door, I suspect it makes up quite a bit of their sales these days.

      Delete