Nowadays We Have Price Guides For Everything

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Posted By: peter chao

Here's an idea for a new price guide if some of the unemployed Beckett's or SCD people want to try it. If you have been in the hobby for 10 years or more, your mind works as a historical price guide. By this I mean, when you see a Babe Ruth card you instantly think of steady appreciation, low risk.

In other words, we remember trading cards, buying and selling cards. By doing this we have a pretty good idea that #53 1933 Goudey Ruth is about as safe a purchase as you can make.

But how about all the newbies to the hobby who don't have a reserve of all this past pricing information, where's a price guide that is going to help them. That's where an energetic entrepreneur can make some money. Develope a historical price guide.

You can pretty much arbitrarily pick a starting date for various cards and sets and draw a curve for historical and present prices. If you really want to play soothsayer you can make a projection as to the future price of a card.

And if your right then Warren Buffett step over, there's a new kid in town.

Edited to read you're right because Barry pressured me into it.

Peter

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Posted By: barrysloate

"You're right"

Peter, if we can just get you to remember that one little rule, I'll never bug you again. Promise!

Thank you Peter

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Posted By: Dave F

Peter
Maybe I just don't understand today. What would be the reason for wanting a price guide with information on what a T204 Ramly Donovan was worth 10, 7, or 4 years ago?
Seems like your trying to treat the cards like a stock for solely investment purposes? If your wanting safe, wouldn't a savings bond or something be a little more feasible?

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Posted By: davidcycleback

Anyone who buys and resells on eBay (for example), knows that there is wide variation in how the same thing sells two weeks apart. For this reason alone, I doubt price guides that quote a single price for anything.

Auctions involve so much chicanery (shilling, book bidding, idiot bidders bidding against each other, sale fell through as buyer didn't pay, item misdescribed, time of day, etc), I don't consider auction prices to be entirely reliable indicator of financial value. In many of these high price auctions, you don't know if the buyer paid and there was even a sale.

The hobby likes to focus on record setting prices, but these are far more often than not unreliable prices for the average collector or seller. By definition and nature, a record is abnormal, even freakish-- and its difficult determining the normal by focusing on the abnormal. To determine the normal, you usually start by throwing out the freakish (high and/or low), or you look at the abnornal and say "That ain't it."

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Posted By: peter chao

Dave F.,

I agree that we don't buy cards just for investment. However, when some people are willing to spend $10,000 and more for card, I suggest that the person is hoping the card is going up in value.

Peter

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Posted By: Dave F

Peter
I think that "most" people that spend $10,000 on a single card...do so because they have lot of disposable income. If they need that card to go up in value...then they certainly shouldn't be buying it IMHO.

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Posted By: peter chao

Dave F.,

I totally agree with you. Let me put it this way, it's impossible for every $10,000 card to continously go up in value. If that were the case, why bother with the stock market or the real estate market, just put all your money into cards.

Peter

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Posted By: Peter Spaeth

I think I need a translator/interpreter.

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Posted By: Joe Pelaez

There you go again, with your Stock Market Mindset.

WERE YOU EVER A COLLECTOR of anything???

Joe

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Posted By: joe brennan

I collect empty apple sauce jars because I like apple sauce.

In Rememberance of James W. Brennan Sr. 1924-1982. Dad, thanks for everything you did for me.

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Posted By: peter chao

Since you consider yourself a real collector. What do you do when a must have card becomes too expensive.

Peter

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Posted By: Joe Pelaez

"Since you consider yourself a real collector. What do you do when a must have card becomes too expensive."

Peter
-------------------------

Hello Peter,
That's simple, and my answer will be foreign to your mind.

My approach, and your Wall Street Journal approach, are two totally different worlds in my hobby.

As to the elusive card, made so by the investor part of my hobby, ..... I just wait for the stock market roller coaster ride to bring the card to a level that I'm comfortable in.
I either get it, or don't get it, in any case, the collector challenge is still there.
The collector challenge is different than that of building a stock market portfolio. ... it's a different kind of fun, and that's foreign to you.

Peter, I've been at this long before plastic world, and the investors came on the scene.

I'm happy to say that I still get the same enjoyment every time that I find a card that fills an empty slot in my binder.

WITH NEVER EVER THE THOUGHT OF WHAT WILL THE CARD FETCH ME LATER.

I doubt if you comprehend what I just said, it's not in your investor mind set.

Have you ever enjoyed the cards, and not for the $$$$ they represent?

Joe