Given today's real estate market

[Leon]

Originally Posted by phikappapsi

Leon. I think his point was, you could probably do that with a house too, if you were willing to sell a 400,000 house for 200k. Maybe the cards you're talking about have a value of 400k, but given the current market, if you wanted to sell them fast, you'd have to underprice.

I have bought and refinanced several houses. No one can get money the next day through that method. And I think with the cards I have in mind I could get 150% of what I paid and at least 80% of market value quickly.

[barrysloate]

Originally Posted by Leon

I have bought and refinanced several houses. No one can get money the next day through that method. And I think with the cards I have in mind I could get 150% of what I paid and at least 80% of market value quickly.

Leon- agreed that rare baseball cards are a very liquid asset, and that you could get 80% of their value rather quickly. But you would be leaving 20% of their value on the table. I think any asset discounted that deeply would be pretty easy to sell. If your home is worth 500K and you put it on the market for 400K I don't think it would take too long to sell either.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Leon- agreed that rare baseball cards are a very liquid asset, and that you could get 80% of their value rather quickly. But you would be leaving 20% of their value on the table. I think any asset discounted that deeply would be pretty easy to sell. If your home is worth 500K and you put it on the market for 400K I don't think it would take too long to sell either.

But I couldn't have money tomorrow with the house deal?

Regardless, my whole thoughts were based on what is best for his families living conditions. Since it sounds like the house would be an investment the choice becomes which is a better investment, cards or a house? Most folks would say a house, I have cards . That being said, of course there will be more of our members (except for the folks that shudder to think of our cards as investments) relative to the general population who would take the cards. And lastly when I think of deep discount it's not 20% it's about double that. But that is relative and everyone has their own idea.

[barrysloate]

Fair points but I think any asset that would have to be deeply discounted to sell quickly isn't so great. If you had a stock portfolio (boring) and you had to sell stocks the same day you would probably get 98% of market value. The real asset of baseball cards is the enjoyment factor.

[glynparson]

I don't think one is more liquid than another. At %'s of value I think the liquidity changes the equation. Plus I guarantee a House in my area is more liquid than an equal value of 1988 donruss so I think it depends on some things like what is in your collection and what % of full value do you want same with house whats the location condition etc. There really is no correct answer the more I think about it, but I have more faith in houses having close to current value forever than I do in baseball cards always having their current values.