Sports card collecting has long been a popular collecting pursuit. It is one of the few multigenerational collecting categories that has stood the test of time despite numerous speculative bubbles, market crashes, and overall instability that would make even the most risk adverse stock market investor take cover in bonds. In its infancy, sports cards, mainly baseball cards, were marketed to kids as a simple and inexpensive collectible that could be traded or end up in the spokes of their bicycle wheels. Over time, when these items became coveted collectibles, manufacturers realized that they could profit from this trend, and in the 1980s and 1990s specifically, massive amounts of product were dumped on the open market. This led to the first great speculative bubble and subsequent crash in the early 1990s. Many collectors, speculators, and dealers were hurt when this transpired, and some thought this would be the end for sports card collecting as we knew it. This was not the case. Amazingly, as someone now in my 40s, when I look back at the collectibles market, there are certain markets that tend to move in both predictable and unpredictable market cycles. Numismatics is one of these categories. Right now the investment grade rare coin market is heating up again, and several new auction records were broken within the last year. I see this market getting even more overheated with the current monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. Sports cards are quickly becoming another market that seems to go in cycles with some pretty amazing crashes in between. I have written about this phenomenon before. Target stores just recently announced that all modern era sports cards and Pokemon cards will no longer be sold in stores. To be fair, if you just glanced at headlines surrounding this announcement, I am sure some people assumed this was due to a lack of demand for these products, but that is not the case. The demand for newly stocked sports cards and Pokemon cards is so high that customers are lining up outside stores waiting to be able to clear out all the newly stocked trading cards and resell them online. This recently came to a head when several of these shoppers got violent, and, as a result, Target Stores made the decision to only allow the most in demand trading cards to be sold on their website as opposed to being stocked in stores. This all begs the question of how did we get here? While it is true that the pandemic really added a dose of gasoline to the proverbial spark that was already there, collectible trading cards started to rise a few years back due to the popularity of third-party grading. This was one of the primary drivers to the rare coin market back in the mid- to late 1980s, and third-party grading also is what propelled vintage comic books to new highs in the beginning of the 2000s. Now with the advent of top tier grading companies like PSA and BGS, sports (and other collectible) cards are having their day in the proverbial sun. When most collectors think of buying a graded collectible, or even getting a collectible graded, they usually associate it with vintage items, and this is usually a savvy move. Modern-era mass-produced collectibles tend to be a horrible investment over the long term, and most of these types of collectibles are easily found in near mint condition or better, making the need for third-party grading almost moot. However, manufacturers are starting to learn from this, and now companies are using mass-produced security to entice would-be collectors. Make no mistake, this concept is not new. If you remember watching any late night infomercials in the late 1990s and 2000s telling you that you need to act now because the latest mass-produced collectible item is being made in limited quantities, then you get the concept of mass-produced scarcity. Unfortunately, a lot of collectors fall for this: the limited-edition video game, the rare holo-foil Magic: The Gathering card, or even the limited-edition action figure. Now we have a whole trading card industry that figured out if you just limit certain cards or even create one-of-a-kind cards in blind packs, the sky is the limit. Remember when a pack of baseball cards cost only about 25 cents? Well, today we have packs of collectible trading cards that cost $100 a pack! Pull a one-of-a-kind refractor card from that pack that was autographed by a high-profile popular player, and guess what? If it gets graded, it can be seen selling for well over five figures on eBay or at auction, and the card may have been produced this same exact year! So much for attempting to invest long-term in a Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card. Now fortunes are won and lost minute by minute, pack by pack that is opened. Have your own YouTube Channel by chance? You can actually get literally tens of thousands of views (and substantial amounts of advertising revenue) just by hosting a high end pack opening yourself. Sadly, we are no longer in the 1980s anymore. Is it any surprise that collectible trading cards were not going to accelerate in popularity? Newly minted investors and lucky speculators are learning a valuable lesson here, but the most valuable lesson has yet to materialize. Its the lesson that middle aged collectors know all too well: The trend is your friend, around the bend, until it ends. And make no mistake my friends, this too shall end, and when it does it is going to be disastrous to some of these short sighted speculators and unsophisticated investors paying $40,000 for the latest and greatest modern era sports card simply because the manufacturer claims it is limited edition or one-of-a-kind. I think I would rather buy the Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card instead. More to come, because this story isnt over it, it is just beginning. Shawn Surmick has been an avid collector since the age of 12. He currently resides in his hometown of Boyertown, Pa., and is a passionate collector of antiques and collectibles. His articles focus on various topics affecting the marketplace.