4 ms·

Matt Levine today: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-17/the-companies-are-in-charge-now https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-17/t

by kgwgk 8y ago

Matt Levine today: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-17/the-companies-are-in-charge-now https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-17/the-co... "Sounds great! So if I am running a $10 billion institutional portfolio how much of it should be in Legos? ">In one extreme case, a kit for Star Wars Darth Revan that retailed in 2014 for $3.99 went for $28.46 on eBay a year later -- a 613 percent premium. "Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. So the extreme case is making a profit of … $24.47 over a year? I mean, I guess you could buy … a million … of those Darth Revan sets … and … put them somewhere … but … no, I am going to say no, this is not a strategy with institutional capacity. (And you can’t use it as an additional signal in your multifactor general model of what stocks to buy, because they are Legos, not stocks.) I suppose if you are a perverse sort of finance professor though you should be using a factor model to trade Legos in your personal account; let me know—and, more importantly, brag to your students constantly about—how it goes."

patorjk 8y ago
At the height of baseball card collecting in the 90's, my best friend's dad went out and bought a closet full of baseball card sets (not classic sets, but sets from the time period). He told my parents he was doing it to save for his son's college education.
- nkrisc 8y ago
  That's kind of tragic. Out of curiosity, do you know what happened to the cards?
  - patorjk 8y ago
    Sadly I'm not sure what happened to them, my family moved away from the area when I was 14. I caught up with him a few years ago, and he did go to college, though I'm not sure if the cards were sold to help pay for it. As an aside, his dad was for the most part a pretty smart guy, he had a PhD in Physics. He just got caught up in the hype and made a bizarre financial decision after reading articles on the projected value of baseball cards in the future.
    - nkrisc 8y ago
      I had imagined the worst case, "I traded our cow for magic beans" scenario, but without the goose with golden eggs.
- oskkejdjdkjd 8y ago
  Intellectual Darwinism.
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  Yeah. People don't get this, but what you want to collect is what kids are having fun with today that they'll want to have fun with again when they're older. Nostalgia and natural rarity. If it weren't for emulators, I'd wager that old Nintendo systems would be the rage right now.
  - kgwgk 8y ago
    Nintendo has sold over 10 million units of the NES Classic Edition and Super NES Classic Edition.
    - moate 8y ago
      While this shows the demand is there, it also shows that the "if it weren't for emulators..." part of OP's comment is important. Stashing a mint NES back in 93 with the hopes of making fat stacks today would have been a folly because of how people are valuing the whole thing(they value the game/experience, not the console/object).
      - einr 8y ago
        So maybe not the NES console, those are still only moderately pricy even in mint condition due to the extreme number of consoles made, but certainly if you bought a stack of Little Samsons and Mr. Gimmicks and Panic Restaurants for $39 each in ’93 and sat on them until today you would be set for a while: https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F233057313810 https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eb... Yes, the ROM can be had for free and the experience of playing the game is identical. No, a collector doesn’t care.
        moate 8y ago
        But a game is not a system...There are def individual GAMES that are bananapants expensive (I'm looking at you Super Copa!) but the systems aren't as expensive. Maybe I'm just being pedantic?
- nostrademons 8y ago
  My dad did the same with Magic: The Gathering. It actually would've worked okay (though still probably not as good as investing in an S&P 500 index fund), except that he died, my mom knew nothing about M:tG (or negotiating, for that matter), and she took the first lowball offer from a card dealer she ran across. He made a nice 80% profit off of them, at least. On the plus side, I had a lot of fun showing off & playing with my dad's "investment" as a teenager.
  - santoriv 8y ago
    He probably did pretty well if he invested at the right time. There were a few cards I got when I was a kid that were worth $6 at the time and spiked to about $800 in 2018 -> http://www.mtgprice.com/sets/Revised/Underground_Sea http://www.mtgprice.com/sets/Revised/Underground_Sea. I dumped everything valuable in my collection as I just play for fun occasionally and "bad" cards are just as fun as "good" cards.
twic 8y ago
Matt's been out of the game for a while now, so this is an understandable oversight. Obviously, you don't trade cash Lego. You trade Lego asset swaps.

by kgwgk 8y ago

patorjk 8y ago

At the height of baseball card collecting in the 90's, my best friend's dad went out and bought a closet full of baseball card sets (not classic sets, but sets from the time period). He told my parents he was doing it to save for his son's college education.

nkrisc 8y ago
That's kind of tragic. Out of curiosity, do you know what happened to the cards?
- patorjk 8y ago
  Sadly I'm not sure what happened to them, my family moved away from the area when I was 14. I caught up with him a few years ago, and he did go to college, though I'm not sure if the cards were sold to help pay for it. As an aside, his dad was for the most part a pretty smart guy, he had a PhD in Physics. He just got caught up in the hype and made a bizarre financial decision after reading articles on the projected value of baseball cards in the future.
  - nkrisc 8y ago
    I had imagined the worst case, "I traded our cow for magic beans" scenario, but without the goose with golden eggs.
oskkejdjdkjd 8y ago
Intellectual Darwinism.
3pt14159 8y ago
Yeah. People don't get this, but what you want to collect is what kids are having fun with today that they'll want to have fun with again when they're older. Nostalgia and natural rarity. If it weren't for emulators, I'd wager that old Nintendo systems would be the rage right now.
- kgwgk 8y ago
  Nintendo has sold over 10 million units of the NES Classic Edition and Super NES Classic Edition.
  - moate 8y ago
    While this shows the demand is there, it also shows that the "if it weren't for emulators..." part of OP's comment is important. Stashing a mint NES back in 93 with the hopes of making fat stacks today would have been a folly because of how people are valuing the whole thing(they value the game/experience, not the console/object).
    - einr 8y ago
      So maybe not the NES console, those are still only moderately pricy even in mint condition due to the extreme number of consoles made, but certainly if you bought a stack of Little Samsons and Mr. Gimmicks and Panic Restaurants for $39 each in ’93 and sat on them until today you would be set for a while: https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F233057313810 https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eb... Yes, the ROM can be had for free and the experience of playing the game is identical. No, a collector doesn’t care.
      - moate 8y ago
        But a game is not a system...There are def individual GAMES that are bananapants expensive (I'm looking at you Super Copa!) but the systems aren't as expensive. Maybe I'm just being pedantic?
nostrademons 8y ago
My dad did the same with Magic: The Gathering. It actually would've worked okay (though still probably not as good as investing in an S&P 500 index fund), except that he died, my mom knew nothing about M:tG (or negotiating, for that matter), and she took the first lowball offer from a card dealer she ran across. He made a nice 80% profit off of them, at least. On the plus side, I had a lot of fun showing off & playing with my dad's "investment" as a teenager.
- santoriv 8y ago
  He probably did pretty well if he invested at the right time. There were a few cards I got when I was a kid that were worth $6 at the time and spiked to about $800 in 2018 -> http://www.mtgprice.com/sets/Revised/Underground_Sea http://www.mtgprice.com/sets/Revised/Underground_Sea. I dumped everything valuable in my collection as I just play for fun occasionally and "bad" cards are just as fun as "good" cards.

twic 8y ago

Matt's been out of the game for a while now, so this is an understandable oversight. Obviously, you don't trade cash Lego. You trade Lego asset swaps.