The trend in Wagner cards

[Prof]

Originally Posted by raulus

Maybe said another way, the person (or persons) who inherit the assets will step up their basis to fair market value on the date they inherit. So if you bought it for $100, and then die when it's worth $1,000,000, your heirs will have a basis of $1,000,000.

So if they sell right away, in theory there should be no gain or loss, because the sales price should be equal to the fair market value ($1,000,000 in this case), which is their basis.

If they wait to sell, then any appreciation after that date would be taxed when they choose to sell. I suppose the recipient could also choose to pass it down again when they die, in which case it gets stepped up again, at least under current law.

A few years ago, there was a proposal to start to tax gains that hadn't been taxed in the last 90 years. But that proposal hasn't gone anywhere so far, so in theory the inheritance tax benefit process could continue for as long as your heirs continue to not need the money.

Hypothetically, do you know what the process would be like here?

- A person dies, and an old photo album gets distributed to a relative. Basically, "Hey, we're cleaning out the house. You want this?"
- Nobody searches through it for 10 years.
- Finally, they look through it, and find a T206 Doyle error card glued to a page.
- They consign and sell the card for 1 million.

Is there like a retroactive appraisal assessment for when the person received the album 10 years ago? Then, you subtract that 10-year-old value from the 1 million, and that's what you pay the gains on?

Or are you just paying on the 1 million since it was never appraised at the time?

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And what about if the item was truly unique to the hobby with no past market value?

If there was a retroactive appraisal, would they just pull an educated estimate out of their butts that was smaller than the present day value from selling it?


(Sorry if this is derailing the thread a bit.)



Back on topic, Wagners are cool. I wish I had one.