Collectibles Illustrate Supply and Demand

The Great Recession's effect on collectables illustrates Supply and Demand principals. When in demand, values stay higher. When supply is excessive, value declines.

Coins Continue Collecting Value

Jared Fields reports that coin collecting is still strong. “The hobby is not one that loses money.”

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Baseball Hits Fewer Home Runs

“High-end baseball memorabilia pieces are maintaining their value, and selling, even in the tough economy,” writes Dieter Kurtenbach, but “sports cards, despite being the simplest and most accessible form of memorabilia, has been the area hardest hit by the economic downturn.” Interestingly, “baseball’s Steroids Era has also affected the baseball memorabilia market.” Likewise, “expensive team jackets often have a hard time getting off the bench,” reports George Castle. Castle concludes: “sales are down overall, but older collectors will still pay around $100 for a 1930s or 1940s scorecard in good condition.”

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Not Funny When Comics Don’t Pay

“Few comics from the past two decades have much value. If they do, we're talking a few bucks,” Nancy Crawley learned while trying to sell a small stash. And Jesse Kates tells why: “Today's comics are published in enormous quantities. A typical issue of The Amazing Spider Man will have a print run between 300,000 and 500,000 copies.

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Creative Destruction Defined

Was it dead? A former Home Depot building, behemoth tribute to big-box retail’s hey day, sat empty on Convoy street. The real estate boom ended. Invested couples became more interested in reducing credit card balances and the spare bathroom retiling project got canceled. Plywood replaced front doors. Months touched aging on the paint and gave free reign to the weeds between cracks. The abandonment taunted the adjacent Target store, and probably inhibited their traffic because the center looked vacated while driving by.

Suddenly a fence surrounded the shell. Lifters, cargo containers with glistening copper pipes, and stacks of lumber became the area’s features. Workers with utility belts and dusty pants swarmed the complex. The brash noises of pulverizing and hammering filled the air with shock and energy. A sign appeared explaining the metamorphosis: COMING SOON: COSTCO. Indeed, it was too soon to declare this building a carcass; a change of deeds and fascia resurrected it from slumber and slumming.

In 1942, Joseph Schumpeter defined The Process of Creative Destruction:

We are dealing with an evolutionary process… Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is, but never can be, stationary… The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new market, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates.

Creative Destruction Pending

The following entities are crushing under the force of creative destruction. As you can see, it is not the services or goods they offer that are outmoded; it is the transaction venue.

Destructing

• Land-line Telephones

Creating

• Wireless Devices

Destructing

• Paper Publications

Creating

• Blogging
• Content-On-Demand
• e-Publishing
• Peer-to-Peer Publishing

Destructing

• Retail Book Stores

Creating

• e-Publishing
• Online Purchasing
• Public Libraries
• Tablet Reading

Destructing

• Retail Rental DVDs

Creating

• e-Viewing
• Online Ordering
• Strip-center Box Dispensers

Destructing

• Swap Meets

Creating

• e-Lists
• e-Marketplaces

Destructing

• Technical Manuals

Creating

• Audio & Video Instruction
• Context-Sensitive Help
• Help by Chat
• Online Forums