Collecting, Investing- Hypothetical ?

[steve B]

I've collected stuff pretty much my whole life, and I will say that hitting it big with any collectible as an investment is pretty risky. Overall, unless you get really lucky, they won't keep pace with a simple index fund. Like traditional investing, there's a chance to really make a lot. But just like traditional investing, you have to be early to things, and very lucky.

Just as you could have bought Amazon at some crazy low price, you also could have bought pets.com or any of the host of failed .com companies that were around at the time.

Even among sports collectibles, that happens. when I started collecting, T206 Hofers like Young were $10 with Cobb maybe a bit more, and some a bit less. And not much difference between VG and ex. Did I buy them? Nope, the values were stable from year to year, but seemed to jump every few years. I should have caught on when they got to around 100-150, but nope.


So what you need to find is something that isn't currently collected by large numbers of people, but which has a lot of mass appeal. Then figure out which items are the best, and buy them as much as possible.


Even then, it's no guarantee.
Some stuff I've been a bit involved in like that

Early home computers - Were becoming huge just before 2000, busted along with the .coms, and haven't really come back. The "important" ones like Altair have held value, as have the popular ones like C64, but the rest aren't much more than curiosities. At the $2-10 they used to run at yard sales they're still not bad they just take up a lot of space.


NASCAR diecast - Going well, had a price guide, then just nothing. Overproduction pretty much did in the whole thing. I'm sure some are still "good" but the ones I found that cataloged $20-50? Nope. Just another sort of cool thing in a box.

The same for Hot wheels that aren't actually old. Even the ones the guides said were "rare" My daughter opened one she found to play with, and I couldn't really get mad. Especially after looking it up on Ebay, to find it was selling for about what I paid plus shipping.


What would I look for now?

I like a lot of the space related stuff. While the moon landing will be hot till maybe the end of the year, it will fade for another 10-25 years.

I'd go after stuff related to the current private space companies, especially anything identifiable with good provenance that's been flown. Actually flown space stuff of any sort is good, but there may be a small window of time where any that comes up will be ignored.