[Archive]

Posted By: mr. moses

right or wrong.
cards:
hard assets
easy to buy sell and store
established hierarchy for rarity and price
large pool of collectors and investors
in the news
you can carry one in your pocket
memorabilia:
often cumbersome to move around, store, display
smaller pool collectors
has many specific niches that become collecting areas of their own (bats, autos, gloves, photos, etc.)
harder to buy and sell overall - less liquid
more items that are somewhat unique therefore harder to price when buying or thinking about resale
requires more in-depth knowledge
expensive
fewer dealers (of course if there were more buyers then there would be more dealers)

(edited to add the following):
one or two weeks cannot define the success or failure of the site. People have to find their way here. It's likely to grow as people start to do the "look what I have and how it shows" although it's a bit more difficult to take the pix. Problem also is that bat guys may not be interested so much in trophies - trophy guy doesn't care about cabinet photos (unless there's one with a trophy in it , and so on. I have some great lemon peel baseballs, Heubach statues, advertising pieces, photos and more. They would take LOTS of work and effort to show and post to the board. What would be my motivation? A good deal of the posts on the card side are about populations of a set, who is good to deal with and who is bad, the history and evolution of the cards or the company, what to look for and whatever...... Memorabilia people SEEM a little less inclined to share certain specifics, have less information to go on that they haven't had to develop THEMSELVES, and other motivations I'm not quite clear about. Memorabilia also seems to be more about the unusual or usual aspects of the object itself. A card is after all is said and done just a card. Usually who held the card or why is less likely important than the card itself. Memorabilia is by definition quite different...... Oh yeah - it's a bit harder to encapsulate Cap Anson's traveling equipment trunk than a card.