CBC News story comparing Canadian home prices to baseball cards valuations

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by arc2q

There have been a rash of these articles recently discussing the "baseball card bubble"and all of them are flawed, this one included. The one example the author gives is the T206 Wagner (although unnamed) that Gretzky purchased for $500,000 in the early 90s. Guess what? It's worth a heck of a lot more than that now. If you bought a house in the 90s for $500K that sells for $4M now you'd have made a fantastic investment!

These articles all mistakenly conflate the saturation of the modern baseball card market in the 90s with the idea that baseball cards are not worth anything anymore. It is a flawed premise. Those cards were never worth much -- no one should have invested in early 90s cards thinking they were going to get rich. As a teenager I knew then it was foolish as they just kept printing more.

But investing in vintage cards then would have been highly lucrative and it remains a solid investment (although very few of us do this for the investment aspect).

Stop comparing risky financial ventures to baseball cards! It doesn't compare.

+1. While we may not actually collect for investment purposes because true collectors really don't buy for the purpose of resale later on, I think an item's appreciation potential is often a consideration, just as it should be. Even if you never intend to part with your collection, it will outlive you, and creating an estate for the eventual, ultimate purpose of benefiting others that survive ourselves is always a good thing!

Best regards,

Larry