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Posted By: Hankron

Many times the best investment is not buying a bad investment. There's nothing sinful about keeping the money.

$10,000 gives you a lot of leverage that should save you money. I would look to purchase a quality collection or collection of items, where the individual items are lower than normal as it is a group lot. You might find something worthwhile in a Leland's or Robert Edwards auction (or not). I would highly recommend you get advice from experienced collectors/dealers who can give good judgement on the quality and value of the collection.

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I once bought a collection of 500 photographs for about $1,500, because I knew I could sell each photo for well more than $3 each. Almost all collectors want 1 or 2 photos at a time, not 500.

Anyway, I did the biggest sin of a seller which is to sell someone what I paid for the photo collection. I like this person but he is very cheap. After doing the math ($1,500/500), he felt I should sell him one of the photos he liked (naturally one of the best) for $3. I passed on that idea.

He said, "But you bought the photos for $3 each."
I said, "No, I didn't. I bought 500 for $1,500."
He said,"What's the difference?"
I said, "The difference is you would never have bought 500 photos for $1,500. In fact, no one else was either, that's why they're mine."

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If someone with reasonable experience in collecting came to me and said he had to invest money in baseball cards right away this instant, I would tell him to keep his money. If he said that would like to put his $10,000 into sports memorabilia by the end of the year if good deals came up, I would say that's something work looking into.

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Last tip: Just because it's in bulk and marked down 90% from retail doesn't mean it's a good deal. A lot of cheap crap is still crap.