Not O/T - Does Marriage Counseling Work?

[wolterse]

Gents -

As we are all aware, this is a HUGE month on the auction block. I've spent many hours combing through numerous catalogs and web pages carefully selecting those lots that fit - oh so well - into my pre-war collection. Visions and feelings of anticipation, adrenaline, and anxiety flowing through my mind and body as I see the clock strike zero to declare me the winner. Hooray!

Yes, this is my goal. Yet, I've run into a bit of a roadblock.

My wife.

I brought all my finanial data to lunch with us on Saturday. I explained how everything would flow - our savings plan, her investment priorities, and my hobby 'stash' - into a plan that we could both agree to. And I got hobby stash budget approved. Yes! Here I come...but not so fast.

My wife tells me yesterday - 'Erich, you say baseball cards are an investment (yes, that's how I position it to her - I could never get away with spending the money I do by saying this is a hobby!). Well I need you to prove it to me. If I'm going to allow you to spend X over the next couple weeks, than I need you to prove to me that it is a good investment for us. If it is, then I'll support your decision 100%. If it's not, then I'm going to dramatically decrease the amount of dollars I allow you to spend on your cards!'



I've been asked to present my 'findings' on the value that my current collection has increased over the past couple years. I need to benchmark it against (S&P500?) some baseline so I can demonstrate how well we're doing and why I deserve to spend my 'stash' this month.

A few questions for the board:
1) How would you position your stash budget to someone that doesn't 'get' why we love this hobby so much? Someone who only sees how much I spend and rolls their eyes.
2) Do I use VCP to value my cards, find trends, asking prices, and compare that to what I paid?
3) How do I benchmark my collection against a baseline that my wife would understand? S&P500 is down 10% from 2 years ago. I'm confident my collection is outpacing this metric. This could really make me look good!
4) Any other advice and wisdom would be helpful.

Yours in collecting,
Erich