Baseball cards as an asset class

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Posted By: boxingcardman

If that involves card sales, so be it.

Again, without veering too far off into politics or economics, I think a very good point was touched on but not expanded above, namely, that one of the reasons why certain investments (like cards) are marginalized is the reluctance of the conventional investment community to look at them. Stocks, bonds, real estate, etc., have been "canonized" as quality investments, nevermind the collapses and volatility that pops up to bite the investors in the behind every few years, by an industry looking to earn from them. The investment advice industy is not comfortable with collectibles as investments because (1) they don't understand them, and (2) there are no commissions or other money to be earned in advising a client to buy them. We live in an era where packaging an idea is often more important than the idea and where institutional hostility to new ideas is part of the background noise. Marshall McLuhan said "in big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so they can be clobbered at once" [see marshallmcluhan.com] and he has never been more right than with financial advisors. Conventional investment professionals don't want to be the first one to champion a new investment, so they don't take maverick positions and they certainly don't advise their clients to invest unconventionally. And it isn't like the investment industry doesn't advise people to buy crap, it just advises them to buy crap that fits into a specific classification it understands. I lost all my investment in Enron, but I can fall back on a whaddayagonnado, I invested it excuse. But if my same investment in T206 went into a freefall, I'd be ridiculed, even though I'd still have the cards to enjoy and possibly sell later on. I can show a financial planner 30 years of dramatic market price increases in cards but they will still advise me that I am wasting my money and I should buy stocks instead.

Finally, look at who is buying this stuff. We have a lot of lawyers, investment pros, CEOs, etc. I do not believe that all of the educated, astute people who we know are 6 and 7 figures into cards are consciously pissing away their money; many are tighter than a bullfrog's butt and none of them are going to fritter away that kind of money on something they don't believe will pay off over the long term.