ESPN: Famous Honus Wagner card sells for record $2.35M

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Posted By: Colt McClelland

What strikes me is that, assuming Brian Seigel owned the card for approximately 7 years and paid $1.265M, he had an annualized return of about 13% by my calculation. That's obviously not bad. However, considering the risk and liquidity issues associated with this collectible, I don't think it can really be viewed as a home run from an investment perspective. I guess another way to look at it is to say that maybe the new owner is getting a very good buy at this price.

I know that no one is really trying to say this was a home run investment here, but I just thought it was interesting to point out the actual return on investment. A gain of over $1M sounds great at first blush, and in reality it's not bad. However, there are certainly a lot of other investments that would have done much better over the last 7 years and probably with much less risk.

Also, I didn't have time to go back and do all of the calculations, but my guess is that this 7 year period of ownership is among the lowest yielding periods of ownership for this card in terms of annualized return on investment.

I'm not trying to start a debate of investing vs. collecting or anything like that. I just thought this was interesting to point out.