19 ms·

Collectibles are terrible investments

158 points by exolymph 5y ago

jleyank 5y ago
Crypto isn't fully a collectable as it's quite hard to have hidden transactions using Beanie Babies or Picassos. The latter aren't terribly anonymous and only valued if known. It's also damned hard to e-transfer physical objects unless Musk or Bezos have their transporters working.
- civilized 5y ago
  Wired just had a big article about how the public nature of the blockchain enabled the Feds to track down a network of child abusers.
  - formerkrogemp 5y ago
- majormajor 5y ago
  Not sure exactly what you mean here, is it the idea of using NFT sales as a way of laundering money or such? (I'm making the same distinction as the article of talking just about NFTs vs crypto in general.) Seems like any sort of physical collectible would be great for under-the-radar transactions - claim you found them in the attic or something when it's time to turn them into cash, nobody's going to expect original receipts. Anything on a blockchain seems far riskier. Using Beanie Babies would've worked better before the bubble burst and people would still pay crazy prices for common ones compared to now, of course...
- PKop 5y ago
  How are crypto assets on public blockchains more anonymous than physical exchange in the real world? Art or beany baby exchanges could easily occur without leaving a trail.
wpietri 5y ago
I get the urge to collect, and I totally get why people feel their collections are valuable. But having personal feelings of value are not correlated well with financial returns! Indeed, as the Beanie Babies example shows, the more people have feelings of value the more incentive there is for others to profitably reduce the correlation. In high school I worked in a library. Every once in a while somebody would want to donate their National Geographic collection. (For those unfamiliar, it is a high-grade, highbrow magazine that has been published for more than a century.) After subscribing for decades and lining them up on the shelf, they really valued those well-made treasuries of knowledge. But we were a library, so we already had sets. At least then, there wasn't much in the way of a secondary market. So we had to break their hearts and explain that we couldn't help them.
- kens 5y ago
  The other aspect of National Geographic is that people didn't throw them out, because they might be useful in the future for a school project or something. This was such a cultural factor that the Journal of Irreproducible Results wrote an article "National Geographic: The Doomsday Machine", projecting that the massive weight of saved National Geographics would eventually cause geological subsidence, flooding towns and eventually sinking the US into the sea. They concluded that "Publication and distribution of the National Geographic magazine must be stopped at all costs!" if the US was to survive. https://xray-delta.com/2011/05/10/national-geographic-the-doomsday-machine/ https://xray-delta.com/2011/05/10/national-geographic-the-do...
  - djbusby 5y ago
    I did my part. Cut out parts to use for school. Pictures of Amazon and Congo. Earned that C+! NatGeo is now owned by the Mouse.
Forge36 5y ago
As chance would have it, I'm at my parents and we were digging through beanie babies joking about how we could be sitting on a gold mine (sorry reader, we weren't). Even have that price estimate book. We had one "rare" beanie, it last sold on eBay for 15 dollars. I can't image who was selling some for $1000 1 bid this year. If I had to guess: money laundering on eBay.
allturtles 5y ago
I find this argument very strange: > But it is, because in the long run, assets without cash flows cannot increase in value more than the economy as a whole. If something appreciates faster than the whole economy in the long run, it eventually eclipses the whole economy, which is impossible. No one is operating on an infinite time horizon in their investments, so this argument seems moot. You can certainly find collectibles that have grown faster than the economy as a whole over a period of O(decades), which is all any human needs. e.g. a Black Lotus card from magic was about $15 in 1994 and about $11,000 (or more, depending on age and condition) in mid-2021. [0] In that same time period, the S&P 500 has gone up only about 10x. [0]: https://infinite.tcgplayer.com/article/A-History-of-the-Price-of-Black-Lotus/6328d04e-a921-4200-b289-961b1c852ae4/ https://infinite.tcgplayer.com/article/A-History-of-the-Pric...
- Waterluvian 5y ago
  Tangent: based on my internal perceptions throughout the past decades, I’m positively shocked that a Black Lotus is only worth $11,000.
  - ip26 5y ago
    At some point the bidder realizes instead of four lotus, they could buy a late model 911 instead.
  - totoglazer 5y ago
    I was as well. Apparently it’s not true though. Here’s a record at half a million. https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/l6lpol/a_black_lotus_just_set_the_record_for_most/ https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/l6lpol/a_black_lo...
    - allturtles 5y ago
      See above, it is (or was) true, for a conservative (not record) price estimate. Most lotuses in existence are not mint alphas.
  - allturtles 5y ago
quickthrower2 5y ago
I am sure NFTs perform terribly in the short term too, in aggregate. Most NFTs are not celebrity endorsed and will just languish even in the bull run. (Like most shitcoins). Real estate is in between IMO - kind of a collectable but there is cash flow but it doesn’t have the upside growth of stocks, unless it is some kind of rezoning or redevelopment. Gold is more like a collectable (no revenue stream) as is any other commodity.
- edgefield 5y ago
  Sorry but real estate is nothing like a collectible. It has tangible value as a form of housing or for some commercial purpose (retail, office, etc.).
  - gweinberg 5y ago
    Real estate that isn't being used for anything and won't be for the foreseeable future is sort of kind of like a collectible. But even then presumably there's the idea it will be used for something someday.
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    I mean on a collectable-investment spectrum, it is further towards collectable than stocks.
    - quickthrower2 5y ago
      Which I can justify by saying do you know of houses purchased and kept empty for years in high rent demand areas. It is pretty common.
ggm 5y ago
There are highly specific valuable toys and dolls, generally they weren't made to feed a mania like beanie babies. If you have an old mamod steam engine, or hornby 0 gauge clockwork (or more expensive German ones) or some dinky cast model cars made early in their production cycle, they may have appreciated above CPI. Most won't have. That whole "Toy Story" sub-plot about the Japanese market for dolls has a thin edge of truth: Akihabera has/had a man whose entire stock of vintage hifi valves would fit in one suitcase, but a single KT66 valve sells for ¥100,000 Investment in anything this quirky is risky. You'd trivially outperform most purchase with more rational investment. Art investment works, at the medium high end but the cost of certification and ownership is non zero. You need climate control, conservation, insurance. Wine is a bit of a busted flush. Lots of fakes, and substitution in storage, or outright fantasy of existence before purchase even: imaginary wine being sold amongst investors sight unseen, buyer and seller mutually unaware the market facilitator was lying. Pink Diamonds are scarce: the Argyll mine shut down. Hard to know if the whole diamond scam is going to explode or not, it's been on the brink since the 60s. Gold jewellery and diamonds sold for use sell massively below owners inflated expectations. Antique jewellery like collectibles and antiques depends on certification and forgery was rampant right back in the 18th century. I wonder how many stamp and coin collections turn out to be harmless valueless hobbies? I'm holding on to a huge box of pdp8 and pdp11 "flip chip" modules in original DEC cardboard boxes. I doubt they will ever be worth selling, but sentiment plays its part too. Unboxed they list for $5, arguably below cost!
formerkrogemp 5y ago
- bruce511 5y ago
  Alas sarcasm is rarely appreciated here (and I presume / hope you are being sarcastic?)
  - formerkrogemp 5y ago
eyelidlessness 5y ago
I come from a family of collectors, motivated both by personal joy and sometimes potential dollar signs. No one on this side of my family is wealthy, quite a few struggle to make ends meet. To our credit, none of us spend more than trivial sums for any such collecting[1]. It is possible to make money collecting, but it’s very time sensitive and an active hustle. You pretty much only want to do it if also get joy from the collecting itself. Which is the thing. Collectibles are a terrible financial investment. They can be an excellent personal life enriching investment. If you have a good healthy attitude towards it acknowledging it’ll probably yield low financial gain, and high positive emotional response… go nuts. Just don’t let it usurp your long term plans. 1: Except me. Anyone want to buy a really nice acoustic guitar that could use a more attentive home? I have a laughable number of them which I never play! I’m not in need for cash but it’d be nice to reclaim some space, and any proceeds would go to helping out my fam with much tighter budgets.
- andygcook 5y ago
  What region are you located in?
  - eyelidlessness 5y ago
    Seattle
- dntrkv 5y ago
  > You pretty much only want to do it if also get joy from the collecting itself I think this is key. In my experience, the best (and usually most valuable) collections are by those that are very passionate in whatever niche it is. These people usually don’t set out to make money but to acquire pieces that they really want. In my case, I collect vinyl because I love having physical copies of my favorite music. But I also enjoy seeking out rare albums and getting them for a good price, not because I want to resell them, but because I just don’t want to pay more than I can and I’m in no hurry. The interesting thing to me is how much time it takes to develop your taste in these niche topics. It’s not something that you can even accelerate. You just dig deeper and deeper over many years until you find yourself listening to some bizarre album on repeat and then decide you have get the vinyl.
amznbyebyebye 5y ago
I just like little cute miniature things that are all just a little bit different. They all look like they go together like a family but are all unique. But when you put them all together they look complete.
- zenlikethat 5y ago
  NFTs really have a brain virus to them that it's hard to understand until you buy your first ones and kick around in the communities. Nothing new under the sun so I'm sure there are beanie baby, wine, fine art meetups and communities too but the hyper-charged and Internet nature of NFTs and crypto really creates an interesting phenomenon. Doesn't mean it's a good idea to ape into them, but it's certainly curious.
magicroot75 5y ago
Houses also do not generate income. And many people also feel the urge to consider them an investment.
- zenlikethat 5y ago
  They do if you rent them out.
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    You can rent out other collectibles too
    - zenlikethat 5y ago
      Is the income from that comparable to the income you can get from renting out a house?
      - charcircuit 5y ago
        You may be able to with cars.
  - magicroot75 5y ago
    I'm aware. I meant personal homes not intended for rent.
    - majormajor 5y ago
      Not owning a home generates negative income in its own way...
- hotpotamus 5y ago
  Tell that to my landlord.
- bruce511 5y ago
  I assume you are talking about a personal home you live in. In this context a house generates income by reducing a non-optional expense. [1] In other words, once paid off, you are living rent free[2]. Since housing is usually a large part of any budget, this is a significant cash-flow gain. While paying it off it also has the effect of "fixing" rent [3] - potentially over a long period of time. This can work as a hedge against inflation - or to put it another way, in inflationary environments it can cause your housing cost to diminish. Ownership also provides a hedge against rampant house price inflation,which drives up rent. Lastly it acts as a store of future value[4]. If the market goes up then "downsizing" on retirement can free up cash. If the market goes down, then you have a place to live rent free. Either way you have a place to live. Whether home ownership is the right option for you depends on your circumstances. It can be a critical investment for some, or a hindrance to others. [1] there are clearly enormous differences in housing costs based on location, size and condition. You may get better returns by simply renting a cheaper house, and investing the difference. [2] while you won't pay rent, or mortgage, you will encounter very real maintainence costs and taxes. These will be less than rent, but still a very real number > 0. [3] if your mortgage interest rate is flexible then inflation will likely drive up interest rates, but this is a secondary effect and applies to the interest portion of loan repayment, not the capital portion. This can change literally overnight, a renter typically is insulated from this for the duration of the lease, but may then see an exaggerated increase on the next lease. [4] assuming you buy a house you can afford. If you reach for something you can't ultimately afford it will likely end badly.
Gamecollector 5y ago
Have to disagree. I would say choosing the right collectibles is an acquired skill that takes a long time to develop and usually applies to a niche market, and that's why it seems like collectibles overall are a bad investment. Not only do you need to be good at estimating future value/demand, you need to be good at acquiring items for a good price + ensuring they're not fakes. If you blindly buy "collectible" items then yes, you will lose money because the "collectible" moniker is usually a cheap marketing tactic to crate the false impression of scarcity/value. I have been buying/selling collectible video games (and related hardware/paraphernalia) for over a decade and many items are still sitting in a storage unit waiting to be listed because they continue to appreciate so quickly. My only regret is usually that I didn't buy more of each item.
- rweichler 5y ago
  Venture capital is the same thing. Most collectibles/startups are trash. But there's that 1 out of 1000 that outperforms everything else combined.
gpspake 5y ago
I collect toys. I don't think of them as investments. I just enjoy them and think they're cool. I feel like this is the way with collecting. If it's all about the return then you don't really get the full enjoyment out of it and you set yourself up for disappointment when you want to sell and your precious aren't worth as much as you thought.
- aksss 5y ago
  This is the way. I don’t know about pop culture toys, but I’m a caretaker of items that will outlast me. Preserving them is my responsibility. Cashing them in is only a last, last resort, and when you think about value appreciation over generations, it changes how you think about items - they can be relatively inflation proof items, a way to store wealth, maybe not grow wealth unless your time horizon is at least measured in decades. But I definitely think of my ownership as temporary.
sydthrowaway 5y ago
How about NFTs?
petarb 5y ago
What about collectibles like Magic the Gathering? Some cards have had serious appreciation. Eg Alpha black lotus going for $500k
- Gigachad 5y ago
  It's almost impossible to predict which trading cards will be worth more in the future. Unlike investing in an index or Apple where there is a very good chance they will be bigger and more successful in the future than they are now.
scode2 5y ago
One way that collectibles can generate dividends is by renting them out to others. For instance, video game items like CS:GO skins. The popularity of a Chinese skins renting site caused increases in the prices of mid-tier items as investors bought them to lend to others.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
The math is off, but they have a point. If you want to invest, buy equities. If you want to collect, collect. Is my promo copy of the Late Great's "Turpentine" ever going to be worth something? Irrelevant, burn it on the funeral pyre along with the rest of that stuff when I die. That album rocks, though.
neilv 5y ago
The math gets even worse when you consider the US tax rates for gains on collectibles. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/061715/how-are-collectibles-taxed.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/06171...
- randerson 5y ago
  I've heard of people using art to reduce taxes. Something like: Get the art appraised (the higher the appraisal the better), and donate it to a museum or other 503(c)(3) to reduce your taxable income by the appraised value. If you have an actual willing buyer you'd still be better off selling it. But whereas stocks and bonds have an obvious value upon donating them, there's a lot more potential for generous appraisals for this purpose. I'm happy with my stocks and bonds and a clean conscience, but I've heard that a lot of the money among collectors is made this way.
  - hackernewds 5y ago
    art is also easy to smuggle in case one's entire country is hit with broad carpeted sanctions, and less likely to be burgled since it has to be sold in the primary markets. not to mention the whole arts appraisals circle is a farce, and driven with just the right bars of subjectivity.
- aksss 5y ago
  I get the impression that unless you’re going through an auction house or selling super high-profile items, there’s no 1099-Misc or whatever going to the IRS - in other words, cash sales and unreported.
  - seanp2k2 5y ago
    The real purpose of crypto is money laundering. Even easier than art.
zenlikethat 5y ago
So funny enough, there _are_ some people looking at ways of generating cash flows with NFTs. For instance, some projects have offered a chunk of their fees from resales to users, or offer a token reward for staking the NFT. Or in Bored Ape Yacht Club's case, they just 'airdropped' a bunch of a new token over to holders, giving them free money essentially. Yes, just about everything out there still feels pyramid-schemey due to its emphasis on increasing price, so I don't disagree with anything written in the article... _but_ it's not impossible that NFTs could generate some cash flow through a smart contract piece. Dealing with regulation is tricky -- since an NFT that can generate cash flow is basically a security. The SEC is likely to shut that down hard, and it's safest to avoid as a builder. But anyway, unlike a beanie baby it's feasible that NFTs could generate cash flow (staking, lending as an item in an in-game economy... etc).
- omginternets 5y ago
  > For instance, some projects have offered a chunk of their fees from resales to users, or offer a token reward for staking the NFT. Something feels off about that, but I’m not sure what. It seems like a fundamentally different kind of “cash-flow” than what the article is referring to. It’s still capped by the total appreciation of the asset.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  > lending as an item in an in-game economy... That's never going to happen in a real game because no game developer is going to spend time supporting some "item" bought somewhere else. There's no incentive for them. They can much more readily just sell their own in-game items and make all the money from the sale. This has the positive side effect for the developer that the in game item can't be taken to some other game.
  - redisman 5y ago
    It also completely breaks the game economy and experience if you can bring a bunch of random valuable stuff with you when you start.
deleted 5y ago
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kumarvvr 5y ago
Its bold to even call them investments. They are akin to a lottery / market speculation. They are assets with no underlying value, other than the subjective whims of the prospective buyer. A rich mans game, if you will.
- bdangubic 5y ago
  like cryptocurrencies? ;-)
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ayngg 5y ago
The concept of the Masterworks thing that they are talking about was tried previously with other collectables, notably Mythic Markets with Magic: the Gathering cards. You can do a quick google search to see how that turned out and the controversy that surrounded it.
buildbot 5y ago
In general I completely agree with this article, unless the collectible generates value in itself and is limited. For example film cameras and more rare medium format digital cameras are appreciating now quite a bit, above original MSRP
- Gigachad 5y ago
  It's extremely difficult to work out which things will be valuable and after the effort and time spent holding the item, you didn't really do that well. Incidental profits from reselling stuff you happened to hold that gained in value. Most stuff never goes up in value. Most technology, even the famous/popular stuff has only gone down in value. With a few exceptions of things which were later seen as iconic but rare. Stuff like the original Nintento gameboy can be bought now for less real value than they were new. Almost certainly because there are so many around. So you have to be a fortune teller to work out what item will be more popular in the future than it is now.
  - buildbot 5y ago
    I completely agree - anything mass produced is not going to fall into this category. Also collecting from new is always pretty iffy. But buying used and holding onto gear for a few years is not going to lose you much money. Definitely do not quit your day job but its not particularly hard to make a little money on the side.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nradov 5y ago
  Once the population of photographers who ever used film cameras dies off, the value of most old film cameras as collectibles will drop near zero.
  - buildbot 5y ago
    As someone who was born after film was dead and now has quite a lot of film cameras, I don’t think this will be the case.
TedShiller 5y ago
Wrong. As always, it depends. If you’re buying $50 million paintings then none of this article applies
- aksss 5y ago
  A $50 million painting isn’t considered a “collectible”, is it? I wonder where that boundary is. A part of a collection isn’t necessarily a collectible.
  - TedShiller 5y ago
    > A $50 million painting isn’t considered a “collectible”, is it? It is if you're wealthy
WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
Collectibles are a great investment if you're a dealer. Buy the collectible for 50% of it's selling value. Sell it to a collector for 100%. Pretty profitable, if you ask me. If you are a collector, never buy anything less than the ones that are in the highest condition and very rare. Also make sure it's highly wanted by other collectors. Those are the ones that shoot up in value. Anything else tends to not keep up with inflation. I think that's why collectables are thought to be a bad investment.
scyclow 5y ago
As someone who sells and genuinely enjoys collecting NFTs, it always boggles my mind when I find people who genuinely believe that they're good "investments".
WalterBright 5y ago
The only Star Wars action figure worth having: https://www.etsy.com/listing/708113857/aunt-beru-and-uncle-owen-burned-star https://www.etsy.com/listing/708113857/aunt-beru-and-uncle-o...
- me_again 5y ago
  I wonder if Obvious Plant fake items will one day be valuable. https://www.instagram.com/obviousplant/ https://www.instagram.com/obviousplant/ They seem rare enough...
- rsync 5y ago
  The only action figure worth having: https://www.hideousplastic.com/?p=5136 https://www.hideousplastic.com/?p=5136
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dqpb 5y ago
NFTs are collectibles to the same extent that CRDTs are literature.
vmception 5y ago
Great article, yes, Masterworks is a joke or their price index is disengenious Yes, past performance is not indicative of future results, its also the best metric we have for future results Not responding to a request for comment means nothing But the Beanie Babies… there was a rational trade there, a supply constriction when a supplier wasnt able to fulfill the beanie baby production contract. The founder resolved this and flooded the market and the prices tanked. Beanie babies arent the best example of irrational exuberance. Yes there were people far removed from active trading that merely believed in price appreciation, do these people matter? They exist in the most rational markets too
poink 5y ago
The exception to the cash flow argument, if you’re willing to stretch the definition of “collectible” a bit, are rare items that can be used to generate revenue by skilled artists/artisans who might be willing to pay a premium to rent the collectible. I’m thinking things like Stradavarius violins. There are NFT projects that are trying to operate in this way. That NFT game that recently got robbed is one example. Players are apparently being staked by investors who are loaning them valuable characters. People trying to license their NFTs for use in media are another. I don’t think any of this will work for NFTs, mind you.
AlbertCory 5y ago
This is your regular statistical reminder: The plural of "anecdote" is not "data"
koonsolo 5y ago
Beanie Babies seemed indeed like a terrible investment. Crypto on the other hand, outperformed everything else. Too bad a lot of you on HN missed out on this.
- lalaland1125 5y ago
  If you were early enough into Beany Babies, you did make quite a bit of profit
  - koonsolo 5y ago
    If you bought and sold at the right time, yes. That is more of a luck factor. Bitcoin is still hitting new highs after 10 years.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      Yes, that’s because the hand-wavy promise of utility is used to onboard new crypto buyers. Beanie babies quickly proved to be utterly useless.
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    I was once the world's largest seller of Beanies, back in the 90s. Ty even tried to buy me off. I gambled the fad would last two years. It did. I made a fortune and then pissed it all away.
dirtyid 5y ago
I wadger a lot of collectibles become valuable if they can be preserved for a couple hundred years.
TrackerFF 5y ago
I'm a guitarist, and have been buying / selling guitars for some 20 years now - and while I agree that the vast majority of guitars that are seen as collectibles would lose against the stock market, there are some exceptions. The "holy grail" of guitars would be the 1959 Les Paul Standard, though any from 1958-1960 with high grade of flames (that is, wood figuring on the maple top) is very collectible. And there are some others that will fetch lots of money (Flying V in Korina, from same period, for example). In 1959, said guitar with case would retail $307.5 - that's equivalent to $3038.06 in current money / purchasing power. These days, such a guitar will cost you minimum $200000. That's almost 11% annual ROI. If it's a beautiful "case queen" that's been laying in its case for most of the time, you could easily get $500k. That's almost 12.5%. Or if it's a celebrity owned, the sky is the limit - though your initial investment would have to be much higher, unless the guitar was acquired ages ago. Same goes for Fender Strats and Telecasters from the same period (up to the early 60s) - though these are in much higher abundance. Nice ones can be had for $25k-$50k, which would give you a return right around, or above, the stock market. But of course, few would have known this, back in the day. These guitars didn't become collectible until the 70s, and certain artist playing them helped the hype. With that said, I don't think people that bought these as an investment, are too much into investing. It's a nice alternative/side investment that you can enjoy as you age - if you play guitar. They don't generate rent, they don't generate dividends, but that was never the point either. So far, they've proved to be investments on par with the stock market - even beating the stock market if you have the right item. In fact, some of them have outperformed the stock market by magnitudes for the past 2-3 decades. Those $200k Les Pauls only sold for a fraction back in the 90s, so the majority of appreciation is a more recent thing.
baobabKoodaa 5y ago
This article conflates multiple distinct mechanisms in a way that doesn't make sense. For instance, the author implies that stock returns (in the long run) are comprised of economy-wide growth and dividends. The author provides a hypothetical example of 8% stock return being explained by 5% economy-wide return and 3% dividend return. This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, dividends are a mechanism to transfer wealth from the company to its shareholders. Emphasis on "transfer". Dividends do not magically create new wealth out of thin air. If a company decided that - all else being equal - they will reinvest profits instead of paying dividends this year, the investors' returns would not be affected. Value of the skipped dividend would simply appreciate the stock price instead (when a company pays a $1 dividend, their stock price drops by $1). Secondly, the author implies that without dividends a stock investors's returns would be constrained by economy-wide growth. This is nonsensical. You can own a company within a stagnating economy and that company can still turn a profit. Even if the economy is growing at 0%, a company might still make 10% profits per year. The connection between economic growth and company profits is not what the author believes it to be.
- bkyiuuMbF 5y ago
  Combining capital growth and yield is quite standard across the industry for measuring total return. Yes the dividend is reflected in the share price (it doesn't grow as much as it might have if reinvested) but that's completely fine. Combine them to get the total return. Pretty normal.
  - baobabKoodaa 5y ago
    > Combining capital growth and yield is quite standard across the industry for measuring total return. Yes it is, but that's not what the author of the article was doing. They were not looking at capital growth of the stock, they were looking at economy-wide growth. Those are entirely different things. As I said, you can have a stagnating economy with 0% year-on-year GDP growth, and at the same time, the average company within that economy will be turning a profit.
pjerem 5y ago
Basically any best selling Lego set will sell pretty high if you can store them in mint condition during 20 years (the time for the kids playing today to become 30). But I guess it’s not that easy to store enough of a high volume toy (when boxed) during 20 years for the operation to be really valuable. (Edit : imagine just having kids and a room full of brand new legos)
RickJWagner 5y ago
I knew a guy who put thousands in baseball cards. To the best of my knowledge, he's still storing them and working to keep them from getting moldy in his garage. I don't think he's ever had an offer to buy that's been close to what he put in.

158 points by exolymph 5y ago

Crypto isn't fully a collectable as it's quite hard to have hidden transactions using Beanie Babies or Picassos. The latter aren't terribly anonymous and only valued if known. It's also damned hard to e-transfer physical objects unless Musk or Bezos have their transporters working.

civilized 5y ago
Wired just had a big article about how the public nature of the blockchain enabled the Feds to track down a network of child abusers.
- formerkrogemp 5y ago
majormajor 5y ago
Not sure exactly what you mean here, is it the idea of using NFT sales as a way of laundering money or such? (I'm making the same distinction as the article of talking just about NFTs vs crypto in general.) Seems like any sort of physical collectible would be great for under-the-radar transactions - claim you found them in the attic or something when it's time to turn them into cash, nobody's going to expect original receipts. Anything on a blockchain seems far riskier. Using Beanie Babies would've worked better before the bubble burst and people would still pay crazy prices for common ones compared to now, of course...
PKop 5y ago
How are crypto assets on public blockchains more anonymous than physical exchange in the real world? Art or beany baby exchanges could easily occur without leaving a trail.

wpietri 5y ago

I get the urge to collect, and I totally get why people feel their collections are valuable. But having personal feelings of value are not correlated well with financial returns! Indeed, as the Beanie Babies example shows, the more people have feelings of value the more incentive there is for others to profitably reduce the correlation. In high school I worked in a library. Every once in a while somebody would want to donate their National Geographic collection. (For those unfamiliar, it is a high-grade, highbrow magazine that has been published for more than a century.) After subscribing for decades and lining them up on the shelf, they really valued those well-made treasuries of knowledge. But we were a library, so we already had sets. At least then, there wasn't much in the way of a secondary market. So we had to break their hearts and explain that we couldn't help them.

kens 5y ago
The other aspect of National Geographic is that people didn't throw them out, because they might be useful in the future for a school project or something. This was such a cultural factor that the Journal of Irreproducible Results wrote an article "National Geographic: The Doomsday Machine", projecting that the massive weight of saved National Geographics would eventually cause geological subsidence, flooding towns and eventually sinking the US into the sea. They concluded that "Publication and distribution of the National Geographic magazine must be stopped at all costs!" if the US was to survive. https://xray-delta.com/2011/05/10/national-geographic-the-doomsday-machine/ https://xray-delta.com/2011/05/10/national-geographic-the-do...
- djbusby 5y ago
  I did my part. Cut out parts to use for school. Pictures of Amazon and Congo. Earned that C+! NatGeo is now owned by the Mouse.

Forge36 5y ago

As chance would have it, I'm at my parents and we were digging through beanie babies joking about how we could be sitting on a gold mine (sorry reader, we weren't). Even have that price estimate book. We had one "rare" beanie, it last sold on eBay for 15 dollars. I can't image who was selling some for $1000 1 bid this year. If I had to guess: money laundering on eBay.

allturtles 5y ago

I find this argument very strange: > But it is, because in the long run, assets without cash flows cannot increase in value more than the economy as a whole. If something appreciates faster than the whole economy in the long run, it eventually eclipses the whole economy, which is impossible. No one is operating on an infinite time horizon in their investments, so this argument seems moot. You can certainly find collectibles that have grown faster than the economy as a whole over a period of O(decades), which is all any human needs. e.g. a Black Lotus card from magic was about $15 in 1994 and about $11,000 (or more, depending on age and condition) in mid-2021. [0] In that same time period, the S&P 500 has gone up only about 10x. [0]: https://infinite.tcgplayer.com/article/A-History-of-the-Price-of-Black-Lotus/6328d04e-a921-4200-b289-961b1c852ae4/ https://infinite.tcgplayer.com/article/A-History-of-the-Pric...

Waterluvian 5y ago
Tangent: based on my internal perceptions throughout the past decades, I’m positively shocked that a Black Lotus is only worth $11,000.
- ip26 5y ago
  At some point the bidder realizes instead of four lotus, they could buy a late model 911 instead.
- totoglazer 5y ago
  I was as well. Apparently it’s not true though. Here’s a record at half a million. https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/l6lpol/a_black_lotus_just_set_the_record_for_most/ https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/l6lpol/a_black_lo...
  - allturtles 5y ago
    See above, it is (or was) true, for a conservative (not record) price estimate. Most lotuses in existence are not mint alphas.
- allturtles 5y ago

quickthrower2 5y ago

I am sure NFTs perform terribly in the short term too, in aggregate. Most NFTs are not celebrity endorsed and will just languish even in the bull run. (Like most shitcoins). Real estate is in between IMO - kind of a collectable but there is cash flow but it doesn’t have the upside growth of stocks, unless it is some kind of rezoning or redevelopment. Gold is more like a collectable (no revenue stream) as is any other commodity.

edgefield 5y ago
Sorry but real estate is nothing like a collectible. It has tangible value as a form of housing or for some commercial purpose (retail, office, etc.).
- gweinberg 5y ago
  Real estate that isn't being used for anything and won't be for the foreseeable future is sort of kind of like a collectible. But even then presumably there's the idea it will be used for something someday.
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  I mean on a collectable-investment spectrum, it is further towards collectable than stocks.
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    Which I can justify by saying do you know of houses purchased and kept empty for years in high rent demand areas. It is pretty common.

ggm 5y ago

There are highly specific valuable toys and dolls, generally they weren't made to feed a mania like beanie babies. If you have an old mamod steam engine, or hornby 0 gauge clockwork (or more expensive German ones) or some dinky cast model cars made early in their production cycle, they may have appreciated above CPI. Most won't have. That whole "Toy Story" sub-plot about the Japanese market for dolls has a thin edge of truth: Akihabera has/had a man whose entire stock of vintage hifi valves would fit in one suitcase, but a single KT66 valve sells for ¥100,000 Investment in anything this quirky is risky. You'd trivially outperform most purchase with more rational investment. Art investment works, at the medium high end but the cost of certification and ownership is non zero. You need climate control, conservation, insurance. Wine is a bit of a busted flush. Lots of fakes, and substitution in storage, or outright fantasy of existence before purchase even: imaginary wine being sold amongst investors sight unseen, buyer and seller mutually unaware the market facilitator was lying. Pink Diamonds are scarce: the Argyll mine shut down. Hard to know if the whole diamond scam is going to explode or not, it's been on the brink since the 60s. Gold jewellery and diamonds sold for use sell massively below owners inflated expectations. Antique jewellery like collectibles and antiques depends on certification and forgery was rampant right back in the 18th century. I wonder how many stamp and coin collections turn out to be harmless valueless hobbies? I'm holding on to a huge box of pdp8 and pdp11 "flip chip" modules in original DEC cardboard boxes. I doubt they will ever be worth selling, but sentiment plays its part too. Unboxed they list for $5, arguably below cost!

formerkrogemp 5y ago

bruce511 5y ago
Alas sarcasm is rarely appreciated here (and I presume / hope you are being sarcastic?)
- formerkrogemp 5y ago

eyelidlessness 5y ago

I come from a family of collectors, motivated both by personal joy and sometimes potential dollar signs. No one on this side of my family is wealthy, quite a few struggle to make ends meet. To our credit, none of us spend more than trivial sums for any such collecting[1]. It is possible to make money collecting, but it’s very time sensitive and an active hustle. You pretty much only want to do it if also get joy from the collecting itself. Which is the thing. Collectibles are a terrible financial investment. They can be an excellent personal life enriching investment. If you have a good healthy attitude towards it acknowledging it’ll probably yield low financial gain, and high positive emotional response… go nuts. Just don’t let it usurp your long term plans. 1: Except me. Anyone want to buy a really nice acoustic guitar that could use a more attentive home? I have a laughable number of them which I never play! I’m not in need for cash but it’d be nice to reclaim some space, and any proceeds would go to helping out my fam with much tighter budgets.

andygcook 5y ago
What region are you located in?
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  Seattle
dntrkv 5y ago
> You pretty much only want to do it if also get joy from the collecting itself I think this is key. In my experience, the best (and usually most valuable) collections are by those that are very passionate in whatever niche it is. These people usually don’t set out to make money but to acquire pieces that they really want. In my case, I collect vinyl because I love having physical copies of my favorite music. But I also enjoy seeking out rare albums and getting them for a good price, not because I want to resell them, but because I just don’t want to pay more than I can and I’m in no hurry. The interesting thing to me is how much time it takes to develop your taste in these niche topics. It’s not something that you can even accelerate. You just dig deeper and deeper over many years until you find yourself listening to some bizarre album on repeat and then decide you have get the vinyl.

amznbyebyebye 5y ago

I just like little cute miniature things that are all just a little bit different. They all look like they go together like a family but are all unique. But when you put them all together they look complete.

zenlikethat 5y ago
NFTs really have a brain virus to them that it's hard to understand until you buy your first ones and kick around in the communities. Nothing new under the sun so I'm sure there are beanie baby, wine, fine art meetups and communities too but the hyper-charged and Internet nature of NFTs and crypto really creates an interesting phenomenon. Doesn't mean it's a good idea to ape into them, but it's certainly curious.

magicroot75 5y ago

Houses also do not generate income. And many people also feel the urge to consider them an investment.

zenlikethat 5y ago
They do if you rent them out.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  You can rent out other collectibles too
  - zenlikethat 5y ago
    Is the income from that comparable to the income you can get from renting out a house?
    - charcircuit 5y ago
      You may be able to with cars.
- magicroot75 5y ago
  I'm aware. I meant personal homes not intended for rent.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    Not owning a home generates negative income in its own way...
hotpotamus 5y ago
Tell that to my landlord.
bruce511 5y ago
I assume you are talking about a personal home you live in. In this context a house generates income by reducing a non-optional expense. [1] In other words, once paid off, you are living rent free[2]. Since housing is usually a large part of any budget, this is a significant cash-flow gain. While paying it off it also has the effect of "fixing" rent [3] - potentially over a long period of time. This can work as a hedge against inflation - or to put it another way, in inflationary environments it can cause your housing cost to diminish. Ownership also provides a hedge against rampant house price inflation,which drives up rent. Lastly it acts as a store of future value[4]. If the market goes up then "downsizing" on retirement can free up cash. If the market goes down, then you have a place to live rent free. Either way you have a place to live. Whether home ownership is the right option for you depends on your circumstances. It can be a critical investment for some, or a hindrance to others. [1] there are clearly enormous differences in housing costs based on location, size and condition. You may get better returns by simply renting a cheaper house, and investing the difference. [2] while you won't pay rent, or mortgage, you will encounter very real maintainence costs and taxes. These will be less than rent, but still a very real number > 0. [3] if your mortgage interest rate is flexible then inflation will likely drive up interest rates, but this is a secondary effect and applies to the interest portion of loan repayment, not the capital portion. This can change literally overnight, a renter typically is insulated from this for the duration of the lease, but may then see an exaggerated increase on the next lease. [4] assuming you buy a house you can afford. If you reach for something you can't ultimately afford it will likely end badly.

Gamecollector 5y ago

Have to disagree. I would say choosing the right collectibles is an acquired skill that takes a long time to develop and usually applies to a niche market, and that's why it seems like collectibles overall are a bad investment. Not only do you need to be good at estimating future value/demand, you need to be good at acquiring items for a good price + ensuring they're not fakes. If you blindly buy "collectible" items then yes, you will lose money because the "collectible" moniker is usually a cheap marketing tactic to crate the false impression of scarcity/value. I have been buying/selling collectible video games (and related hardware/paraphernalia) for over a decade and many items are still sitting in a storage unit waiting to be listed because they continue to appreciate so quickly. My only regret is usually that I didn't buy more of each item.

rweichler 5y ago
Venture capital is the same thing. Most collectibles/startups are trash. But there's that 1 out of 1000 that outperforms everything else combined.

gpspake 5y ago

I collect toys. I don't think of them as investments. I just enjoy them and think they're cool. I feel like this is the way with collecting. If it's all about the return then you don't really get the full enjoyment out of it and you set yourself up for disappointment when you want to sell and your precious aren't worth as much as you thought.

aksss 5y ago
This is the way. I don’t know about pop culture toys, but I’m a caretaker of items that will outlast me. Preserving them is my responsibility. Cashing them in is only a last, last resort, and when you think about value appreciation over generations, it changes how you think about items - they can be relatively inflation proof items, a way to store wealth, maybe not grow wealth unless your time horizon is at least measured in decades. But I definitely think of my ownership as temporary.

sydthrowaway 5y ago

How about NFTs?

petarb 5y ago

What about collectibles like Magic the Gathering? Some cards have had serious appreciation. Eg Alpha black lotus going for $500k

Gigachad 5y ago
It's almost impossible to predict which trading cards will be worth more in the future. Unlike investing in an index or Apple where there is a very good chance they will be bigger and more successful in the future than they are now.

scode2 5y ago

One way that collectibles can generate dividends is by renting them out to others. For instance, video game items like CS:GO skins. The popularity of a Chinese skins renting site caused increases in the prices of mid-tier items as investors bought them to lend to others.

rufus_foreman 5y ago

The math is off, but they have a point. If you want to invest, buy equities. If you want to collect, collect. Is my promo copy of the Late Great's "Turpentine" ever going to be worth something? Irrelevant, burn it on the funeral pyre along with the rest of that stuff when I die. That album rocks, though.

neilv 5y ago

The math gets even worse when you consider the US tax rates for gains on collectibles. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/061715/how-are-collectibles-taxed.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/06171...

randerson 5y ago
I've heard of people using art to reduce taxes. Something like: Get the art appraised (the higher the appraisal the better), and donate it to a museum or other 503(c)(3) to reduce your taxable income by the appraised value. If you have an actual willing buyer you'd still be better off selling it. But whereas stocks and bonds have an obvious value upon donating them, there's a lot more potential for generous appraisals for this purpose. I'm happy with my stocks and bonds and a clean conscience, but I've heard that a lot of the money among collectors is made this way.
- hackernewds 5y ago
  art is also easy to smuggle in case one's entire country is hit with broad carpeted sanctions, and less likely to be burgled since it has to be sold in the primary markets. not to mention the whole arts appraisals circle is a farce, and driven with just the right bars of subjectivity.
aksss 5y ago
I get the impression that unless you’re going through an auction house or selling super high-profile items, there’s no 1099-Misc or whatever going to the IRS - in other words, cash sales and unreported.
- seanp2k2 5y ago
  The real purpose of crypto is money laundering. Even easier than art.

zenlikethat 5y ago

So funny enough, there _are_ some people looking at ways of generating cash flows with NFTs. For instance, some projects have offered a chunk of their fees from resales to users, or offer a token reward for staking the NFT. Or in Bored Ape Yacht Club's case, they just 'airdropped' a bunch of a new token over to holders, giving them free money essentially. Yes, just about everything out there still feels pyramid-schemey due to its emphasis on increasing price, so I don't disagree with anything written in the article... _but_ it's not impossible that NFTs could generate some cash flow through a smart contract piece. Dealing with regulation is tricky -- since an NFT that can generate cash flow is basically a security. The SEC is likely to shut that down hard, and it's safest to avoid as a builder. But anyway, unlike a beanie baby it's feasible that NFTs could generate cash flow (staking, lending as an item in an in-game economy... etc).

omginternets 5y ago
> For instance, some projects have offered a chunk of their fees from resales to users, or offer a token reward for staking the NFT. Something feels off about that, but I’m not sure what. It seems like a fundamentally different kind of “cash-flow” than what the article is referring to. It’s still capped by the total appreciation of the asset.
giantrobot 5y ago
> lending as an item in an in-game economy... That's never going to happen in a real game because no game developer is going to spend time supporting some "item" bought somewhere else. There's no incentive for them. They can much more readily just sell their own in-game items and make all the money from the sale. This has the positive side effect for the developer that the in game item can't be taken to some other game.
- redisman 5y ago
  It also completely breaks the game economy and experience if you can bring a bunch of random valuable stuff with you when you start.

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kumarvvr 5y ago

Its bold to even call them investments. They are akin to a lottery / market speculation. They are assets with no underlying value, other than the subjective whims of the prospective buyer. A rich mans game, if you will.

bdangubic 5y ago
like cryptocurrencies? ;-)

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ayngg 5y ago

The concept of the Masterworks thing that they are talking about was tried previously with other collectables, notably Mythic Markets with Magic: the Gathering cards. You can do a quick google search to see how that turned out and the controversy that surrounded it.

buildbot 5y ago

In general I completely agree with this article, unless the collectible generates value in itself and is limited. For example film cameras and more rare medium format digital cameras are appreciating now quite a bit, above original MSRP

Gigachad 5y ago
It's extremely difficult to work out which things will be valuable and after the effort and time spent holding the item, you didn't really do that well. Incidental profits from reselling stuff you happened to hold that gained in value. Most stuff never goes up in value. Most technology, even the famous/popular stuff has only gone down in value. With a few exceptions of things which were later seen as iconic but rare. Stuff like the original Nintento gameboy can be bought now for less real value than they were new. Almost certainly because there are so many around. So you have to be a fortune teller to work out what item will be more popular in the future than it is now.
- buildbot 5y ago
  I completely agree - anything mass produced is not going to fall into this category. Also collecting from new is always pretty iffy. But buying used and holding onto gear for a few years is not going to lose you much money. Definitely do not quit your day job but its not particularly hard to make a little money on the side.
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nradov 5y ago
Once the population of photographers who ever used film cameras dies off, the value of most old film cameras as collectibles will drop near zero.
- buildbot 5y ago
  As someone who was born after film was dead and now has quite a lot of film cameras, I don’t think this will be the case.

TedShiller 5y ago

Wrong. As always, it depends. If you’re buying $50 million paintings then none of this article applies

aksss 5y ago
A $50 million painting isn’t considered a “collectible”, is it? I wonder where that boundary is. A part of a collection isn’t necessarily a collectible.
- TedShiller 5y ago
  > A $50 million painting isn’t considered a “collectible”, is it? It is if you're wealthy

WheelsAtLarge 5y ago

Collectibles are a great investment if you're a dealer. Buy the collectible for 50% of it's selling value. Sell it to a collector for 100%. Pretty profitable, if you ask me. If you are a collector, never buy anything less than the ones that are in the highest condition and very rare. Also make sure it's highly wanted by other collectors. Those are the ones that shoot up in value. Anything else tends to not keep up with inflation. I think that's why collectables are thought to be a bad investment.

scyclow 5y ago

As someone who sells and genuinely enjoys collecting NFTs, it always boggles my mind when I find people who genuinely believe that they're good "investments".

WalterBright 5y ago

The only Star Wars action figure worth having: https://www.etsy.com/listing/708113857/aunt-beru-and-uncle-owen-burned-star https://www.etsy.com/listing/708113857/aunt-beru-and-uncle-o...

me_again 5y ago
I wonder if Obvious Plant fake items will one day be valuable. https://www.instagram.com/obviousplant/ https://www.instagram.com/obviousplant/ They seem rare enough...
rsync 5y ago
The only action figure worth having: https://www.hideousplastic.com/?p=5136 https://www.hideousplastic.com/?p=5136

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dqpb 5y ago

NFTs are collectibles to the same extent that CRDTs are literature.

vmception 5y ago

Great article, yes, Masterworks is a joke or their price index is disengenious Yes, past performance is not indicative of future results, its also the best metric we have for future results Not responding to a request for comment means nothing But the Beanie Babies… there was a rational trade there, a supply constriction when a supplier wasnt able to fulfill the beanie baby production contract. The founder resolved this and flooded the market and the prices tanked. Beanie babies arent the best example of irrational exuberance. Yes there were people far removed from active trading that merely believed in price appreciation, do these people matter? They exist in the most rational markets too

poink 5y ago

The exception to the cash flow argument, if you’re willing to stretch the definition of “collectible” a bit, are rare items that can be used to generate revenue by skilled artists/artisans who might be willing to pay a premium to rent the collectible. I’m thinking things like Stradavarius violins. There are NFT projects that are trying to operate in this way. That NFT game that recently got robbed is one example. Players are apparently being staked by investors who are loaning them valuable characters. People trying to license their NFTs for use in media are another. I don’t think any of this will work for NFTs, mind you.

AlbertCory 5y ago

This is your regular statistical reminder: The plural of "anecdote" is not "data"

koonsolo 5y ago

Beanie Babies seemed indeed like a terrible investment. Crypto on the other hand, outperformed everything else. Too bad a lot of you on HN missed out on this.

lalaland1125 5y ago
If you were early enough into Beany Babies, you did make quite a bit of profit
- koonsolo 5y ago
  If you bought and sold at the right time, yes. That is more of a luck factor. Bitcoin is still hitting new highs after 10 years.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    Yes, that’s because the hand-wavy promise of utility is used to onboard new crypto buyers. Beanie babies quickly proved to be utterly useless.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  I was once the world's largest seller of Beanies, back in the 90s. Ty even tried to buy me off. I gambled the fad would last two years. It did. I made a fortune and then pissed it all away.

dirtyid 5y ago

I wadger a lot of collectibles become valuable if they can be preserved for a couple hundred years.

TrackerFF 5y ago

I'm a guitarist, and have been buying / selling guitars for some 20 years now - and while I agree that the vast majority of guitars that are seen as collectibles would lose against the stock market, there are some exceptions. The "holy grail" of guitars would be the 1959 Les Paul Standard, though any from 1958-1960 with high grade of flames (that is, wood figuring on the maple top) is very collectible. And there are some others that will fetch lots of money (Flying V in Korina, from same period, for example). In 1959, said guitar with case would retail $307.5 - that's equivalent to $3038.06 in current money / purchasing power. These days, such a guitar will cost you minimum $200000. That's almost 11% annual ROI. If it's a beautiful "case queen" that's been laying in its case for most of the time, you could easily get $500k. That's almost 12.5%. Or if it's a celebrity owned, the sky is the limit - though your initial investment would have to be much higher, unless the guitar was acquired ages ago. Same goes for Fender Strats and Telecasters from the same period (up to the early 60s) - though these are in much higher abundance. Nice ones can be had for $25k-$50k, which would give you a return right around, or above, the stock market. But of course, few would have known this, back in the day. These guitars didn't become collectible until the 70s, and certain artist playing them helped the hype. With that said, I don't think people that bought these as an investment, are too much into investing. It's a nice alternative/side investment that you can enjoy as you age - if you play guitar. They don't generate rent, they don't generate dividends, but that was never the point either. So far, they've proved to be investments on par with the stock market - even beating the stock market if you have the right item. In fact, some of them have outperformed the stock market by magnitudes for the past 2-3 decades. Those $200k Les Pauls only sold for a fraction back in the 90s, so the majority of appreciation is a more recent thing.

baobabKoodaa 5y ago

This article conflates multiple distinct mechanisms in a way that doesn't make sense. For instance, the author implies that stock returns (in the long run) are comprised of economy-wide growth and dividends. The author provides a hypothetical example of 8% stock return being explained by 5% economy-wide return and 3% dividend return. This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, dividends are a mechanism to transfer wealth from the company to its shareholders. Emphasis on "transfer". Dividends do not magically create new wealth out of thin air. If a company decided that - all else being equal - they will reinvest profits instead of paying dividends this year, the investors' returns would not be affected. Value of the skipped dividend would simply appreciate the stock price instead (when a company pays a $1 dividend, their stock price drops by $1). Secondly, the author implies that without dividends a stock investors's returns would be constrained by economy-wide growth. This is nonsensical. You can own a company within a stagnating economy and that company can still turn a profit. Even if the economy is growing at 0%, a company might still make 10% profits per year. The connection between economic growth and company profits is not what the author believes it to be.

bkyiuuMbF 5y ago
Combining capital growth and yield is quite standard across the industry for measuring total return. Yes the dividend is reflected in the share price (it doesn't grow as much as it might have if reinvested) but that's completely fine. Combine them to get the total return. Pretty normal.
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  > Combining capital growth and yield is quite standard across the industry for measuring total return. Yes it is, but that's not what the author of the article was doing. They were not looking at capital growth of the stock, they were looking at economy-wide growth. Those are entirely different things. As I said, you can have a stagnating economy with 0% year-on-year GDP growth, and at the same time, the average company within that economy will be turning a profit.

pjerem 5y ago

Basically any best selling Lego set will sell pretty high if you can store them in mint condition during 20 years (the time for the kids playing today to become 30). But I guess it’s not that easy to store enough of a high volume toy (when boxed) during 20 years for the operation to be really valuable. (Edit : imagine just having kids and a room full of brand new legos)

RickJWagner 5y ago

I knew a guy who put thousands in baseball cards. To the best of my knowledge, he's still storing them and working to keep them from getting moldy in his garage. I don't think he's ever had an offer to buy that's been close to what he put in.