Remorse

[frankbmd]

Let's collectively explore this topic and consider your hobby history to do so.

Do you suffer more from Buyer's Remorse?

1. Realization of overpayment soon after a purchase
2. Engage in an auction "bidding" war and end up regretting winning the auction
3. Making a purchase late one evening under the influence of a stupefying substance and wonder when it arrives "Why the hell did I buy this?"
4. A market "bubble" bursts within months of a purchase devaluing your purchase by 50% or more
5. You suffer from spousal abuse when your hobby appetite cuts into your grocery budget.
6. How about placing a bid on a lot in an online auction that you realize is too high after placing the bid and then praying until the end of the auction that there is a greater fool than you out there who will outbid you?

or

Do you suffer more from Seller's Remorse?

1. Realization that the buyer pool contains no one that agrees with your asking price.
2. You sell an item for fair market value and one year later the fair market value has doubled
3. The item you have sold disappears into a postal black hole and you have to refund the payment.
4. Your hobby focus is fluid and when you sell an item, you are fine, but later you have an uncontrollable urge to purchase the same item again for a lot more than your paid initially.
5. You're no longer a kid and move on to other mature pursuits, so you consign your whole collection. Five years later you stumble onto Net54 and get reinfected.
6. Have you ever sold a card and experienced remorse before you mailed it?
7. What about listing a card on BST and receiving 7 "I'll take it"s in 15 minutes, realizing after the fact that its current market value is three or four times the listing price. Ouch!!!
8. Have you ever sold a card to someone and then at some point in the future bought the very same card back from the same person for more than you sold it for?


or

Do you suffer more from opportunity lost remorse?

1. The card you didn't buy before it appreciated.
2. The card you didn't sell before it depreciated.
3. The auction house overbid after you fell asleep or passed out.


These are just examples, but more will be added to this post from time to time as they appear in this thread. Initially the hobbyist is a buyer in most cases, spurred on by the thrill of the hunt and the acquisition of treasures. At some point though the closet is full, or the man cave is full, or the house is full, and selling becomes a necessity. If life intervenes and selling is necessary to fund other immediate needs, remorse can be both a sentimental and financial disaster.

Please share your remorse. If it is too painful, consider this thread to be an AA meeting. Finding someone like yourself in the hobby can be reassuring and therapeutic perhaps or not.

[T206Collector]

These are the ones you identified that I experience, in order of most pain:

1. Sell an item for fair market value and one year later the fair market value has doubled
2. Realization of overpayment soon after a purchase
3. Realization that the buyer pool contains no one that agrees with my asking price.
4. Your hobby focus is fluid and when you sell an item, you are fine, but later you have an uncontrollable urge to purchase the same item again for a lot more than your paid initially.

[bobbyw8469]

I have done #1 so many times it's not even funny

[Peter_Spaeth]

My biggest regrets are cards I did NOT buy.

[Bill77]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

My biggest regrets are cards I did NOT buy.

This and over paying for what I do buy.

[conor912]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

My biggest regrets are cards I did NOT buy.

Same here.

[rjackson44]

frank is funny

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

My biggest regrets are cards I did NOT buy.

Bingo! There are cards I didn't buy that I would really like to have owned and now know I will not ever own because they got to freakin' expensive, then there are cards that I thought were good investments but for whatever reason I didn't buy them. A dozen of the right card purchases 30 years ago (when I was busy chasing mainstream postwar cards) and I would be retired today. But in the words of the great philosopher Schlemiel of Mumzer, whadayagonnado?

[bmattioli]

Remorse? I was told by my ex to come and get my stuff because she was moving. Thought I had the time and was told they are all gone.. GONE.. Saddest day in my life.. Remorse I didn't call earlier..

[hcv123]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Bingo! There are cards I didn't buy that I would really like to have owned and now know I will not ever own because they got to freakin' expensive, then there are cards that I thought were good investments but for whatever reason I didn't buy them. A dozen of the right card purchases 30 years ago (when I was busy chasing mainstream postwar cards) and I would be retired today. But in the words of the great philosopher Schlemiel of Mumzer, whadayagonnado?

Really relate to a lot of that! More sellers remorse than buyers remorse.
Some specifics:

Bought a rare test issue in an auction many years ago - sold shortly after for about 2k. 10 years later the exact same card (the guy who purchased from me died) sells at auction for 23K

Bought a huge Clemente collection with a really nice 1968 3D - right around the time PSA started. I sold it raw for $6500 and was really happy about it till the guy I sold it to got it graded (PSA 9!) and a week after I sold it to him it was a 30K card.

Mom passed in 2008 - I got a little $$ as a result that I wanted to put into collectibles. I was SUPER close to pulling the trigger on a PSA 8.5 Clemente rookie for 10k - nuff said - bought some freakin comic books that have barely appreciated instead!

Passed up the most incredible 58 Kahns Clemente for ~$500 (very likely the one residing in a PSA 6 holder today)


While I have paid more at times than I believed to be fair market and felt remorseful about doing so, Almost every time I have been grateful to have "overpaid" at the time for something that today would be "stolen" for the price I originally paid.

[Bestdj777]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

My biggest regrets are cards I did NOT buy.

Same here. I once considered selling my entire collection and using the money to hoard lower grade 52 Topps Mantles. Realistically, I probably could have picked up 6-8 additional ones had I done so. It would have been fantastic having them during the last bubble when low grade ones were bringing $10,000 a piece...

[ullmandds]

REMORSE! I have some!

Remorse over selling my childhood collection to buy a beat up 77' camaro

Remorse over trying to "invest" in baseball cards...it hasn't worked terribly well overall. Buying the cards I like has worked out much better!

[Bagwell-1994]

#1, 2 & 3 big time for me regarding buyers remorse!! Beginning around July 2018, I began compulsively buying up cards in a frenzy. I had saved up a good chunk of money over the years and figured I never treat myself so why not build a collection now, something I always dreamed of as a poor kid? But little did I know what started off with a 1941 Play Ball Dimaggio and Teddy ball game, would eventually lead into me buying most of the 1941 play ball set, many 1948 Bowmans, then many 1952 Topps, then numerous vintage HOF rookie cards

After buying a ton of cards I finally learned about vintagecardprices.com and realised I had wayyyyyy over paid for many of my cards, with respect to the VCP price gauge. Not to mention I was buying the grade, not the card (centering, corners, buying BVG instead of PSA or SGC). I exhausted most of my savings. Took a couple months off, built a little savings back up, then dove in head first harder than ever LOL!

Bought a 1952 Topps Mantle PSA 2, a 33 Goudey Ruth & Gehrig. Then decided to sell a lot of cards I had previously bought to UPGRADE to higher quality/grades of the same cards, now that I knew more about the quality of the cards.

I'm now sitting on a hell of a collection, by my standards, valued well over $60K. MOST HOF rookie cards from 1948 to now I own and in PSA 5 or higher. Despite all this urge to own these cards, I sometimes wonder should I sell the whole lot and put that money back in the bank? What if this market crashes and I completely lose my tail here?! But another part of says to just hold on them, keep them in the safe deposit box until I hit my 60's and who knows, maybe they'll be worth even more and can help my family or help me retire. If we could only see the future!

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

[LeftHandedDane]

I get remorse most often when I find a card I want, which I think is worth $x, but the current bid is well below $x, so I think I can steal it so I put it a snipe below the value and end up getting outbid.

Or when I run across a hard-to-find card, overbid on it, and still lose out.

These are neither buyers nor sellers remorse - but losers remorse.

But then there are those times when I put in a max bid and end up winning for something significantly less and start to wonder what the heck am I missing about this card? Thats when the buyers remorse kicks in.

[bounce]

I guess maybe I've done a good job of getting remorse out of my system from a collecting standpoint - possibly because my collection is still way too big?

Couple things that have worked for me:
1) I rarely ever buy something with the sole intention of resale, which I think has prevented me from making some really dumb decisions. If I do buy with resale as at least a potential motivation, it's usually still something that I'm interested in (player, team, set, something). If it doesn't fit into some portion of what I'm trying to collect, I usually just pass and that includes taking cards in trade. I do fewer deals because of this I'm sure, but it also keeps me out of deals I shouldn't be in.
2) I never think about what I sold once it's gone. If I sold it, I did it for a good reason at the time and got what I thought was fair in the sale. At that point, I'm on to the next pursuit - and experience has taught me there's always something else to pursue.

This year I did create a list of around 25-30 cards that I really want for my collection, so that's certainly focused my searching. My struggle has really been trying to keep focused on those cards, as well as being patient for those cards in the grades or eye appeal/quality that I desire.

[Leon]

I will go out on a limb and say many of us, including me, suffer from most of these (if not all of them). The real question isn't "if", it is how often?

Originally Posted by frankbmd

Let's collectively explore this topic and consider your hobby history to do so.

Do you suffer more from Buyer's Remorse?

1. Realization of overpayment soon after a purchase
2. Engage in an auction "bidding" war and end up regretting winning the auction
3. Making a purchase late one evening under the influence of a stupefying substance and wonder when it arrives "Why the hell did I buy this?"
4. A market "bubble" bursts within months of a purchase devaluing your purchase by 50% or more
5. You suffer from spousal abuse when your hobby appetite cuts into your grocery budget.
6. How about placing a bid on a lot in an online auction that you realize is too high after placing the bid and then praying until the end of the auction that there is a greater fool than you out there who will outbid you?

or

Do you suffer more from Seller's Remorse?

1. Realization that the buyer pool contains no one that agrees with your asking price.
2. You sell an item for fair market value and one year later the fair market value has doubled
3. The item you have sold disappears into a postal black hole and you have to refund the payment.
4. Your hobby focus is fluid and when you sell an item, you are fine, but later you have an uncontrollable urge to purchase the same item again for a lot more than your paid initially.
5. You're no longer a kid and move on to other mature pursuits, so you consign your whole collection. Five years later you stumble onto Net54 and get reinfected.
6. Have you ever sold a card and experienced remorse before you mailed it?
7. What about listing a card on BST and receiving 7 "I'll take it"s in 15 minutes, realizing after the fact that its current market value is three or four times the listing price. Ouch!!!
8. Have you ever sold a card to someone and then at some point in the future bought the very same card back from the same person for more than you sold it for?


or

Do you suffer more from opportunity lost remorse?

1. The card you didn't buy before it appreciated.
2. The card you didn't sell before it depreciated.
3. The auction house overbid after you fell asleep or passed out.


These are just examples, but more will be added to this post from time to time as they appear in this thread. Initially the hobbyist is a buyer in most cases, spurred on by the thrill of the hunt and the acquisition of treasures. At some point though the closet is full, or the man cave is full, or the house is full, and selling becomes a necessity. If life intervenes and selling is necessary to fund other immediate needs, remorse can be both a sentimental and financial disaster.

Please share your remorse. If it is too painful, consider this thread to be an AA meeting. Finding someone like yourself in the hobby can be reassuring and therapeutic perhaps or not.

[bensie]

The thing that I've suffered from more often than those listed is buying a card that I thought was one thing, but turned out to be something else. It mainly happens with the modern issues, and is why I've stopped purchasing anything more recent than 1980s junk wax. The last lot this happened to me on was a lot of 4 2013 bowman aaron judge cards that for some reason I thought were bowman chrome. Apparently there's a huge price difference, and I basically paid bowman chrome prices for bowman paper cards. Oops, lesson learned.

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by bensie

The thing that I've suffered from more often than those listed is buying a card that I thought was one thing, but turned out to be something else. It mainly happens with the modern issues, and is why I've stopped purchasing anything more recent than 1980s junk wax. The last lot this happened to me on was a lot of 4 2013 bowman aaron judge cards that for some reason I thought were bowman chrome. Apparently there's a huge price difference, and I basically paid bowman chrome prices for bowman paper cards. Oops, lesson learned.

You think that's bad? You should see the lot of 4 M116 (not T206 -- oops) Honus Wagner portraits I bought for $2,000,000 a few weeks ago. Nice centering and all, but I don't think I'll be getting that money back.