Remorse

[Bagwell-1994]

#1, 2 & 3 big time for me regarding buyers remorse!! Beginning around July 2018, I began compulsively buying up cards in a frenzy. I had saved up a good chunk of money over the years and figured I never treat myself so why not build a collection now, something I always dreamed of as a poor kid? But little did I know what started off with a 1941 Play Ball Dimaggio and Teddy ball game, would eventually lead into me buying most of the 1941 play ball set, many 1948 Bowmans, then many 1952 Topps, then numerous vintage HOF rookie cards

After buying a ton of cards I finally learned about vintagecardprices.com and realised I had wayyyyyy over paid for many of my cards, with respect to the VCP price gauge. Not to mention I was buying the grade, not the card (centering, corners, buying BVG instead of PSA or SGC). I exhausted most of my savings. Took a couple months off, built a little savings back up, then dove in head first harder than ever LOL!

Bought a 1952 Topps Mantle PSA 2, a 33 Goudey Ruth & Gehrig. Then decided to sell a lot of cards I had previously bought to UPGRADE to higher quality/grades of the same cards, now that I knew more about the quality of the cards.

I'm now sitting on a hell of a collection, by my standards, valued well over $60K. MOST HOF rookie cards from 1948 to now I own and in PSA 5 or higher. Despite all this urge to own these cards, I sometimes wonder should I sell the whole lot and put that money back in the bank? What if this market crashes and I completely lose my tail here?! But another part of says to just hold on them, keep them in the safe deposit box until I hit my 60's and who knows, maybe they'll be worth even more and can help my family or help me retire. If we could only see the future!

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[LeftHandedDane]

I get remorse most often when I find a card I want, which I think is worth $x, but the current bid is well below $x, so I think I can steal it so I put it a snipe below the value and end up getting outbid.

Or when I run across a hard-to-find card, overbid on it, and still lose out.

These are neither buyers nor sellers remorse - but losers remorse.

But then there are those times when I put in a max bid and end up winning for something significantly less and start to wonder what the heck am I missing about this card? Thats when the buyers remorse kicks in.

[bounce]

I guess maybe I've done a good job of getting remorse out of my system from a collecting standpoint - possibly because my collection is still way too big?

Couple things that have worked for me:
1) I rarely ever buy something with the sole intention of resale, which I think has prevented me from making some really dumb decisions. If I do buy with resale as at least a potential motivation, it's usually still something that I'm interested in (player, team, set, something). If it doesn't fit into some portion of what I'm trying to collect, I usually just pass and that includes taking cards in trade. I do fewer deals because of this I'm sure, but it also keeps me out of deals I shouldn't be in.
2) I never think about what I sold once it's gone. If I sold it, I did it for a good reason at the time and got what I thought was fair in the sale. At that point, I'm on to the next pursuit - and experience has taught me there's always something else to pursue.

This year I did create a list of around 25-30 cards that I really want for my collection, so that's certainly focused my searching. My struggle has really been trying to keep focused on those cards, as well as being patient for those cards in the grades or eye appeal/quality that I desire.