Quote:
Originally Posted by Snapolit1
Bob - that makes a lot of sense. My wife and I bought our first home in a neighborhood that charged a premium for homes for a number of reasons, most prominently the reputation of the public schools. After our kids were well into the public school system we realized that the schools were nowhere near what people sold them as. In fact they they were downright lousy in a lot of ways. But none of our friends would hear it. Even people who knew what we were saying was true, basically said "hey it doesn't help any of our property values to say anything disparaging about the schools . . . . It's the perception of the schools that benefits all of us." And nothing ever changed. Sort of like what you are saying here.
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Exactly why I mentioned it, because it is a typical human trait to not want to rock the boat. Just look back at that survey/poll thread asking everyone their age. The top of that bell curve is late 40s-early 50s on here. So most of the members are older and been collecting for awhile. Which means likely most of us have been collecting long before the card prices surged recently, and for probably a lot of us, before prices increased over the last decade or two, and even farther back than that for a few others. Which means a majority of us long time collectors are sitting on a lot of appreciated value in our card/memorabilia collections. And even if when we started our collecting we didn't really care about the value of our cards that much, it is impossible to ignore how valuable many of our collections have become. And with maybe only an extremely rare exception or two, no one will want to see all that value suddenly just go away.
If worst comes to worst and a catastrophe or illness befalls some collector or their family, trust me, there is an additional level of comfort in the back of their minds because now they know they can sell their collections, if they absolutely have to, for more than they ever thought. Even though they may have never started their collections with the intent of it being an investment, that is what most of these old collections have become. And no one is voluntarily going to want to give up that additional peace of mind these appreciated collections have brought them. It is found money, like taking a pair of jeans out of the dryer and finding a $20 bill in the pocket you didn't know you had. So there may be that kind of thinking in the back of a lot of people's minds as to why they may look like they all just agree on a lot of hobby related things. They subconsciously don't really want to say or do anything to truly hurt the hobby and their "found" money. It is simple human nature to want to be as financially safe and secure as possible.
Basically the same thing Steve as in your example with the school district you're in, and the home values.