Howard the Duck comics. Issue #1 used to have an Overstreet value of $40-60 (admittedly, these can be inflated, but back in the early 80s, that was a very high price for a recent comic). Then came the movie. Right now, I see someone trying to sell the entire set for $9.99 on eBay. The comics, BTW, as as good as ever, but the disaster of the movie has killed their value.
I have a fairly valuable collection of baseball cards, but 99% of the cards were purchased as packages with the gum. I was lucky: I bought most of my cards in the 60s (I see the Tom Seaver rookie card I paid about a penny for is selling from $99-500 on eBay). Those sets are still the most valuable, mostly because it was still when people didn’t figure they had any value. But I expect the value of the cards to go down as people forget the names of the players.
My mother is an antique dealer. Her mother was an antique dealer. Her parents were antique dealers.
I’d be an antique dealer if I just had a car.
I strongly recommend against antiques and collectibles as investments. Knowing what things are valuable and what’s junk and distinguishing authentic items from fakes takes a lot of study and training. It also takes a good gut instinct.
Knowing what items are likely to increase and how fast takes study, training, and a good gut instinct.
IME the gut is most important and it cannot be taught. Bubby (that’s Yiddish from granma) had it. Mom has it. I have it. In more than thirty years of marriage, dad hasn’t been able to get it. My sister, though blessed to be the only one in the family with fashion sense and a very smart and capable businesswoman, wasn’t born with it. My father and sister will sometimes surprise us by buying (at little cost fortunately) antiques and collectibles they think can be resold for profit. We lose money on these.
JayJay provided some excellent information. I’d like to add that it’s important to remember the difference between Asking Price and Selling Price. Never judge the value of an item by what the seller is asking, but only by what the item actually sells for. EG A phaser target game from the original Star Trek television series can be seen near mint in box at most toy shows and scifi conventions priced from $80-120. I have never actually seen one sold for more than $40.
You also don’t have to worry about standard investments being destroyed by moisture, ultraviolet light, mice, insects, flooding, mildew, or fire.
What several have said: it is much harder to justify collecting things that have no intrinsic value to you the purchaser.
I have no interest in collecting anything. But I’ve been a guitar player most of my life. I have consequently realized some very nice profits on guitars I bought and held on to for twenty years or more.
The upkeep was of no marginal cost to me, since I was playing them every day, often making money in the process.
But if someone whose sole goal was to make a profit had made the same purchases, the upkeep probably wouldn’t have been worth their time.
A friend of mine makes a living selling primarily records (now mainly eBay) but secondarily sports cards. He lucked out once making $30,000 on a Michael Jordan rookie card he bought as part of an unopened pack for 25 cents at a flea market. This was a once in a lifetime turn-around however and even then he was fortunate to know what he had and how to handle selling it for maximized profit; that was a lifetime of buying $1 cards and selling them to the right person for $3 which enabled that (that and the fact Jordan was enjoying renaissance popularity at the time). Obviously a person shouldn’t count on this sort of thing happening, and even when it does you have to wonder if he billed himself for his lifetime of sports card interest how much the 30G breaks down into per hour…
What I know best are records, surprised that hasn’t come up yet. I own a few thousand LPs, none of which I paid more than $30 for (even that one is $10 more than the next most expensive purchase). I’ve seen that LP sell for as much as $100. Thus the best case scenario for any one of the records I’ve been collecting for about 15 years would be $70 profit, assuming I find the right buyer. I probably own a few thousand records that’d fetch the same or less at a used store that I paid, and a few hundred that’d make $1-$5 or so above what I paid. In a few rare thrift store finds of stuff that shockingly became popular (“exotica”) all of a sudden, I could possibly make $10 or so off of a $1 or 50 cent investment. That’s great %-wise, but is $9 worth the time & hours spent digging in dusty boxes if I didn’t love the music and actually play the records all of the time?
As someone posted earlier, loving what you collect for it’s own sake is the key. And if I get hit by lightning tomorrow my girlfriend could sell the lot for a few thousand bucks to some record shop owner scum I’m sure… which is severely undervalued, but who has the time or inclination to get to know the particulars of an esoteric collection they’re not interested in, especially connected to the memory of the recently departed? This is precisely what the big time collectors and shops of all sorts wait for like spiders; the bereaved loved ones who don’t know what they’ve got and just want to get rid of it.
My grandfather had an awesome collection of 78s and radio show memorabilia. He died when I was 11 and no one in the family really knew how to value it. My grandmother sold most of it off for what we’re sure was pennies on the dollar of its worth… in 1983. But it’s a good thing she unloaded what she did at the time. A blues and bluegrass collection of 78s would be worth a FORTUNE now; but my grandfather collected Italian crooners, 30s heartthrobs and opera and none of the ‘roots’ music. The market for his stuff has literally died in the last 20 years; good luck giving it away now!
Irony #1: He ended up with 2 big boxes of late 60s-early 70s jukebox 45s in trade once, which he kept to trade only since he hated that new-fangled junk music. So did all of the collectors who visited my grandmother, and it was left behind. Well, now that’s what’s worth a small fortune, sitting in my apartment. The 78s these men got - they must all be dead themselves now - are pretty much worthless. Irony #2: Since this is the music I collect, I’m not about to sell it. I actually listen to it. Probably have it til I die… then my children (if I have 'em) get it… but will it be worth anything then?!
So to restate the themes of the thread thus far: timing is everything, and you better darn well be in it for the hobby and not the cash to begin with.
A tricky market, as I understand it. Partly because most collectibles have very little intrinsic value outside of that supported by collectors’interest. And an economic downturn can quickly put a damper on that.
I’m not doing any research tonight, so somebody may be along to slaughter me on the details. As I recall, during the early '80s, Japanese investors with money to burn discovered the antique automobile market, and prices soon elevated to levels that drove most of the traditional collectors out of the market. When what had, a few years earlier, been a $100,000 193X Bugatti became a $400,000 car, the historically attentive market dropped out. Even a mundane 1957 Chevy could soar near the $100K mark.
Then the Japanese economy tanked. Million dollar Cords had nowhere to go.
Anybody else up on what happened with that market?
With the exception of the extremely rare or extremely hot items (which ignite bidding wars), the market for collectibles that can be shipped is near death.
Consider a sportscard, a stamp, a coin, a beanie baby, etc. Before ebay, someone in a smaller community would have access to these items at one or two outlets. Even in a larger city, one would have to drive from store to store to compare prices, and run the risk of losing out on a good buy to another customer. Unless you traded with friends, retail stores were the only places to get these items. This kept up the illusion of scarcity on products that were actually mass produced.
With the advent of online auction houses, one could find dozens, even hundreds of the same “collectible” showing up, and with no overhead to support, individuals could afford to undercut the retailers and make a profit. It also shattered the scarcity idea that retailers cultivated so carefully.
I think the decline of the Beanie Baby craze can be directly linked to the rise of ebay.