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My original magic card collection was stolen out of a gym bag when I parked in a not-great side street in Philadelphia in the late 1990s. Some homeless guy pro

My original magic card collection was stolen out of a gym bag when I parked in a not-great side street in Philadelphia in the late 1990s. Some homeless guy probably dumped it in the trash a few blocks away. At the time, the collection was worth about $3000 -- it was revised and antiquities up to about Ice Age-era cards. I had, I think, 5 of the power nine cards and a full set of 4 of each dual land. It would probably worth close to $100k or more today if I sold everything at face value. Even so, the return isn't that great, compared to other things you could have invested in: Today an unlimited black lotus is about $4k. In 1995, it was about $300, if I remember correctly, maybe even a little bit less. If you bought a black lotus in 1995, you'd have about a 1,300% return. If you had bought Hasbro stock instead, you'd have about 700% return. if you had bought apple stock, you'd have had 12,000% return, and the market for stocks is a lot more liquid than the market for magic cards.

GFischer 9y ago
The one advantage is that you can use knowledge of the game to know in what to "invest" as opposed to other stuff. Considering the game is a huge money sink, it's very dangerous for anyone to see it as merely an investment. Those that do can make a LOT of money. There are some online exchanges doing very smart stuff (probably applying the same sort of stuff they do for stock trading). I used to play, and sold all my cards cheaply (about 2010), after that older format tournaments exploded and my collection would be 20 times more expensive today. I did do some very good purchases - I pre-purchased 8 copies of the Tarmogoyf card before launch for 2 dollars, then sold them years later for 200, and they would be worth 500 today.
mrisoli 9y ago
I guess most people don't look at Magic in terms of liquidity and return. Anecdotally, while most people I've met who played magic got into the game just like me, for fun, I knew one guy who dove head first and instead of buying enough cards to build a deck invested into having a good supply for sales and trading purposes, he used to make a good markup on them and eventually opened up his own shop, today is one of the game's biggest dealers and started dealing with magic cards around the mid 90s while only about 15, that is a good sign of being an entrepreneur in what was then a somewhat untapped market.
jrs235 9y ago
And with that being said, I feel like the title should have "investing" in quotes.
Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago
Of course there were better investments, but you are cherry-picking. Apple in 1995 wasn't exactly an obvious stock to buy. At that time, Apple was thought to be practically dead. How many people had the vision (or rather the luck) to pick a stock providing more than 1300% return? A realistic benchmark would be S&P500, and that would give you a 150% return.
- Anderkent 9y ago
  Well, Magic cards is cherry-picking too. Not only do you have to guess which cards will be valuable later, you're cherry-picking at the moment where you single out Magic cards, from all possible collectibles.
- gnicholas 9y ago
  Yes, but GP is also cherry-picking cards. Black Lotus was a valuable card back then, but that doesn't make it a good investment. If they had printed other cards with similar powers, for example, it wouldn't be worth as much as it is. A better comparison would be unopened packs of Magic cards vs the S&P. I don't know how that comes out though.
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    Probably much worse; who wants old lands or cards that were never particularly good?
    - gnicholas 9y ago
      Yes, but unopened packs hold the allure of possibility. The price fetched wouldn't be based on the certainty of lands, but on the possibility of the uncommon or rare cards that could be inside.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        The scenario I envisioned was that these things were opened before being sold; if we're talking about unopened ones the answer should be relatively easy to find.
mjamesaustin 9y ago
Based upon that specific example, it would have been better to invest in Apple stock. But Black Lotus over that time period is not the best return rate, not by a long shot. To give a counterexample, when I started playing Commander in 2011, Gaea's Cradle was $20. Today, only 6 years later, it's $270, a 1,350% return in less than a third the time. There are countless more examples where I feel like an idiot for not buying cards sooner, thinking they were expensive at the time, and their value shot upward as the popularity of a new format (Commander) took off.

GFischer 9y ago

The one advantage is that you can use knowledge of the game to know in what to "invest" as opposed to other stuff. Considering the game is a huge money sink, it's very dangerous for anyone to see it as merely an investment. Those that do can make a LOT of money. There are some online exchanges doing very smart stuff (probably applying the same sort of stuff they do for stock trading). I used to play, and sold all my cards cheaply (about 2010), after that older format tournaments exploded and my collection would be 20 times more expensive today. I did do some very good purchases - I pre-purchased 8 copies of the Tarmogoyf card before launch for 2 dollars, then sold them years later for 200, and they would be worth 500 today.

mrisoli 9y ago

I guess most people don't look at Magic in terms of liquidity and return. Anecdotally, while most people I've met who played magic got into the game just like me, for fun, I knew one guy who dove head first and instead of buying enough cards to build a deck invested into having a good supply for sales and trading purposes, he used to make a good markup on them and eventually opened up his own shop, today is one of the game's biggest dealers and started dealing with magic cards around the mid 90s while only about 15, that is a good sign of being an entrepreneur in what was then a somewhat untapped market.

jrs235 9y ago

And with that being said, I feel like the title should have "investing" in quotes.

Al-Khwarizmi 9y ago

Of course there were better investments, but you are cherry-picking. Apple in 1995 wasn't exactly an obvious stock to buy. At that time, Apple was thought to be practically dead. How many people had the vision (or rather the luck) to pick a stock providing more than 1300% return? A realistic benchmark would be S&P500, and that would give you a 150% return.

Anderkent 9y ago
Well, Magic cards is cherry-picking too. Not only do you have to guess which cards will be valuable later, you're cherry-picking at the moment where you single out Magic cards, from all possible collectibles.
gnicholas 9y ago
Yes, but GP is also cherry-picking cards. Black Lotus was a valuable card back then, but that doesn't make it a good investment. If they had printed other cards with similar powers, for example, it wouldn't be worth as much as it is. A better comparison would be unopened packs of Magic cards vs the S&P. I don't know how that comes out though.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  Probably much worse; who wants old lands or cards that were never particularly good?
  - gnicholas 9y ago
    Yes, but unopened packs hold the allure of possibility. The price fetched wouldn't be based on the certainty of lands, but on the possibility of the uncommon or rare cards that could be inside.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      The scenario I envisioned was that these things were opened before being sold; if we're talking about unopened ones the answer should be relatively easy to find.

mjamesaustin 9y ago

Based upon that specific example, it would have been better to invest in Apple stock. But Black Lotus over that time period is not the best return rate, not by a long shot. To give a counterexample, when I started playing Commander in 2011, Gaea's Cradle was $20. Today, only 6 years later, it's $270, a 1,350% return in less than a third the time. There are countless more examples where I feel like an idiot for not buying cards sooner, thinking they were expensive at the time, and their value shot upward as the popularity of a new format (Commander) took off.