[USER]

Hello – looking at the future, retirement and savings for my daughter. I am in my mid-30s.
I have about $5500 in collectibles (cards) from my childhood (not recently purchased).

I am aware that the value of these can go up or down drastically.

Does it make sense to sell (assuming a 70% profit margin) and invest in S&P or college fund (529) for my daughter?

Does the rate of return for these accounts make more sense than the gamble of future value on these cards?

Side note – I separately have my own retirement accounts and investments. These cards are in no way a solo investment.

For reference, the top 10 cards I have value $120 average and make up 20% of my collection.

The top 20 cards I own value average $91 and make up 33% of my collection .. so value is distributed and not in a few cards.

The nostalgia piece is great but I am also working towards retirement and establishing generational wealth (high personal values for me), so I will let go of the set if it makes sense!

Advise would be greatly appreciated!

[Josh]

Card values fluctuate considerably.
Where are you getting the values from? Looking at eBay recently sold listings will give you an idea.

Don’t look at the current list prices. Those are worthless.

You need to see what people are actually paying for them (completed sales).

Selling them on eBay comes with fees. Selling on FB marketplace limits your audience.

Best of luck.

[Shawn]

I would not speculate on the future value. These things tend to be cyclical so if they are hot now it’s a good time to sell.

If you want to keep them for nostalgia that is a fine choice.

I would not consider them an investment. The value can always go down.

[Hunter]

Collecting can be fun, but not at all worth the time and brain damage to pretend that they are an investment.
Take the time now to liquidate.

When you need the money it won’t pay off, when you don’t need the money it just sucks your time to try to sell, and if you leave them to your kids, they probably won’t waste more than 15 minutes discovering that they are a pain to unload and they will end up in a dumpster.

[Rawee]

To clarify, are these all PSA 10 graded cards? That for future HoF (or unboxed product for in-demand cards, like 2019 Shohei’s rookie year) is literally the only things that will retain value with the chance to grow, provided the collection features HoF players.

Otherwise, you’re just sitting on a alternative asset hedge that you could unload down the road.

I work in venture, there’s no new money going into the collectible space since 2023, especially with Fantatics owning everything.

There’s no big VC’s investing in SaaS analytics, fractional marketplaces, etc.

It’s over, and assuming another economic boom will take over, it’s competing with other alternative assets, startups, real-estate, the next NFT’s, etc.

If you want a snapshot of how collectibles would do in a 27+ PE multiple stock market economy, it’s now. And it’s not, people are investing in AI startups or public companies, real-estate, etc.

At this point, essentially, the players or prospects is all that will engineer value and they are one tweet, crime, bad seasons, etc. from losing favor even if they went into the HoF.

e.g. Wander Franco, Fernando Tatis, Mike Trout, etc. Mike Trout PSA 10 rookie card was $2000 at one point, it’s $800 now. Heck, PSA itself could no longer be the graded company of record and you’ll risk re-grading to a new company that’s valued more by the community!

I would just treat this as what they are and focus on new money invested into the stock market.

I would rather have a MSFT rookie card (1986 IPO) in 20 years, if you know what I mean!

[Mark]

I probably have 50k cards mainly baseball and hockey no idea what that are worth (probably not much) but going through each one trying to find the value sounds like a nightmare.

I’ve tried to go to a couple card stores 5+ years ago and have them look through them and value them they looked at me like I was crazy and said your about 15 years late lol

[Author]

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