The vault (and other things) in Atlantic Magazine

[oldjudge]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

This is mostly a history on sports cards. There are so many articles like this online - boringggg. The author also briefly mentions the vault at the end and that's it. The only section that stood out was this:

The market for the new hit cards has been fueled by a new generation of young buyers. At Manhattan’s Midtown Sports Card Show, I met Sharon Chiong, half of a two-woman partnership called BlackJadedWolf. Chiong is a high-end broker-dealer and card-buying consultant with a network of clients around the world. Born in Manila and raised in Queens, Chiong collected basketball cards as a fan during the last boom but came to cards as a profession only after leaving the diamond trade. “I went from one luxury business to another,” she told me. The day I met her, she had $1 million worth of inventory listed on eBay.

Chiong’s typical buyer is a Wall Street guy in his 30s or 40s who loved cards as a kid, drifted away after the bust, and returned in recent years with money to spend. Some collect anew the cards that had filled childhood closets, only now they are seeking ones in Gem Mint 10 condition; others are drawn by the limited-edition-hit craze. Lately, Chiong has seen an uptick in slightly less affluent clients looking to invest four- or five-figure sums made from flipping other nontraditional assets, such as Bitcoin or limited-edition sneakers.

So two women started a card company and are high-end broker-dealers who have a network of clients from around the world, and a typical buyer for them is a Wall Street guy? How come I have never heard of them before? Weird.

From one diamond to another. Seems like a natural progression to me.