Investment Potential

[barrysloate]

What's been touched upon and should be considered seriously is we are experiencing a generational shift in the baseball card collecting hobby. The baby boomers who spent most of their childhood collecting cards, and who were responsible for their renaissance, are getting older and are beginning to cash in. There's a new generation of hobbyists taking their place, but they did not grow up collecting cards and are probably smaller in number. I would be wary of looking at baseball cards today as purely an investment. Not saying they won't appreciate in value, but probably not anywhere near what we saw between say 1985 and 2005.

Why not simply build a nice collection of quality cards and memorabilia, and hopefully when the time comes to sell others also will recognize how nice it is. If you have a good eye and know how to buy desirable material, you probably will make some money on it in the long term. But don't expect to see the crazy price increases we've see seen during this past decade. That was as much a bubble as anything else.