Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
Nobody rational would have an investment portfolio consisting of only or mainly cards.
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100% agree with this statement. Although based on responses to other threads, plenty of our fellow collectors might pursue this asset allocation strategy.
Confession: having ~25% of my own personal assets in cardboard scares me a bit sometimes, although most of that concentration is due to the recent runup in prices over the last few years. Otherwise I would be closer to a much more reasonable 5-10%. Add to it the fact that the cardboard collection is fun money and not "gotta have it to survive", and it feels a little less dire.
At the same time, if what I understand is correct about the OP, then the horse is already out of the barn in terms of holding most or all of his personal assets in the form of cardboard. Now we're just talking about what to do about it given the current lay of the land, and over what time to get it done, particularly given a general plan to divest of the cardboard in the coming weeks/months/years. Bottom line is we're really just rearranging the deck chairs a little by trying to evaluate ordering of sales and whether to sell tomorrow or spread it out a little.
If I were in your shoes, particularly given your relatively short horizon, I wouldn't try to move too quickly to shift everything over. Certainly if you get nice prices that work for you on your stuff, then by all means, sell baby sell. But I wouldn't feel huge pressure to SELL NOW just for the sake of selling so that I can diversify my investments for the next X years.
As others have noted, I would also consider the tax implications. If selling everything tomorrow means you get to pay a fat tax bill, and selling over time means you get to avoid most of that tax by keeping your income in a lower tax bracket and avoiding all those sweet tax enhancers (including at the state and local level for those of us lucky enough to live in high tax jurisdictions), then I would give some serious consideration to minimizing my tax bill, at least within reason, and within the contours of your financial needs and situation. But maybe I'm just projecting because if I were to sell today, then about 40% of my proceeds would go to taxes, which would put a serious dent in any budget.