Baseball cards as an asset class

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Posted By: Eric Brehm

I would guess that most people who collect baseball cards don't buy cards because they want to make money on them, but because they want them for their collections. But of course collectors do hope that the cards they buy will at least hold their value over time, in case they want to sell them someday. So in that sense they are 'investing' their money in their collection.

There are exceptions to this of course -- for example speculating on rookie cards, even to the extent of buying multiple copies of a particular player's card. That is not collecting. I don't know how many people actually do this however.

Baseball card dealers buy cards with the intention of making money on them, but they usually want to turn them over quickly, as opposed to holding them for the long term. So that isn't really investing, it's buying and selling a commodity. (Some people do this in the stock market too.) I guess a collector who sees a good deal on a card and snatches it up because they know they can immediately 'flip' it to someone else for a profit would fit into the same category.