Looking for cardboard investment

[SAllen2556]

I understand the OP's intent isn't to spend his kids' inheritance here, but as a simple collector I've always found the idea of "investing" in this hobby to be an interesting topic. Investing in baseball cards feels similar to investing in art - risky at best and very foolish if you're not an expert in the field. What cards have truly out-performed the safer investment markets like the stock market, bonds, etc.? If you had $50k to invest, who in their right mind would invest in sports cards as their primary investment? I'd much rather own a piece of property, for example. It seems like some people use the "investing" justification to fuel what could best be termed an addiction! (Again, I understand this was not the intent or situation of the OP.)

If you went back to, say, 1985, what cards could you have purchased that would have beaten the stock market or real estate over the last 30 years? I think of my parents' house in 1985 worth about $50k then, that today would sell for around $200k today. Could you have beaten that with sports cards? Wagner and Mantle come to mind, but who back then would have believed the prices today would be what they are? Just think if you'd purchased $50k worth of 1985 Topps baseball cards…yuck!

What if you had purchased the entire 1914 Cracker Jack set, or every t206 card except the biggies back then, would you, in fact, be ahead? It's fun to think about the whole time-machine thing and what you could have invested in vs. what you actually did. In 1978 I paid $5 for a 1953 Topps Al Rosen because I was 12 and it was the first "old" card I'd ever seen and I had to have it. It had two holes in it and today is worth about….$3, maybe.