Suppose I could travel back in time at most 20 years, go into a US retail store, and buy one or more readily available products at standard manufacturer’s price, then bring them back to 2007 and EBay them. How would I maximize my rate of return?
I’m thinking of buying booster packs of the Alpha or Beta edition of Magic: The Gathering, which originally retailed for $2.50 or $3.00 and now sells for around $500. But as I understand it, they sold out almost instantly, so might not really qualify as being “readily available”…
Thoughts?
If you can go back fewer than 20 years, the obvious answer is “lottery tickets”. But it’s not really in the spirit of the question.
Something collectible certainly seems like the right call, but there aren’t many things that fit that. Sports cards were worthless by the 1980s, and while some recent comic books held a little value into the 1990s, the market pretty much bottomed out for anything post-1970 once eBay arrived.
IIRC, all the early Magic sets sold out quickly. The first ones that didn’t are the ones that aren’t really worth anything even now. That said, if you allow specialty shops like comic and card shops, buying single magic cards five or six years ago could get you 500% returns if you knew what to buy.
If you don’t mind going back just a little further, I’ll offer up '60s muscle cars. The value of those has gone berzerk.
A first edition of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, published in the UK in 1997 would fetch around $3500 today, I read somewhere.
I think you mean “… and the Philosopher’s Stone”. The one with “Sorcerer’s” in the title was published in the US.
If you’re going to time travel and buy Magic cards you should buy Edgar. Alpha and Beta pale in comparison to the prices Edgar cards fetch. Plus if you time travel and buy up significant portions of the supply the prices will be even higher when you return. I happen to know a store which received a shipment of a case of Edgar back in '94(I even know a guy who bought, at retail, a half a box of starters, lucky bastard). Nothing like selling a blue Hurricane for $8,000 and it’s a common.
Enjoy,
Steven
Wow…I have shit loads of Magic cards,better go dig them out and do some research.Any good sites I can look at for prices?
But, even less than alpha and beta which sold out instantly, Edgar (I assume you’re referring to what I’ve heard called “summer magic”?) was effectively a misprint, and was never offically for sale. (And from what I hear, the only two really interesting cards in it are the white-bordered serendib efreet WITHOUT the incorrect art and the blue hurricane… is some random white bordered card from it still worth tons of money?)
In the mid 80s I would look for the Star Wars Power of the Force figures…mint, unopened on mint card figures would sell for several hundred dollars and up. They were released beginning in 1985.
I have no knowledge of philately- but if you could count the USPS as a retail store, I would think that postage stamps might be the way to go. Twenty years may not be long enough, but you could fit a heck of a lot of stamps in the space you’d use to store a star wars figure.
I wonder if all of these might suffer from decreased value as you flood the market.
www.findmagiccards.com is decent to look up card prices.
I wouldn’t get your hopes up, though. While a very few cards have gone up a lot, the vast majority of them are worth little or nothing.
Yes, random Summer Magic cards are worth a decent amount (I think that random rares go for around $100), but they were even harder to buy than other old sets.
Well, that’s the beauty of time travel isn’t it? You know where the boxes are going to be, so go back a few weeks early, travel to the destination of the boxes, purchase them, and then return to the present. As to the value of summer magic (edgar) cards, I’ve seen dual lands sell on ebay for well over a thousand dollars each. This ebay store has as good a selection of summer cards as I’ve seen in most places, although I think some of his prices are a bit high. $99 for a Black Ward? Sheesh! Although, now that I do a bit more research, maybe that is the current market value of Edgar cards. They are stupidly rare. Troll and Toad, one of my personal favorite singles shops, has a good amount of Edgar for sale, including a sealed booster pack for, get this, $4,999.00
You wanted opinions on what to buy if you had a time machine(other than lottery tickets of course)? I know what I’d buy, and I think it would be a pretty good return on investment.
Enjoy,
Steven
I must have misremembered about the summer magic the guy I know who had a bunch of it purchased it. It wasn’t available in starters, so I guess he bought half a box of boosters. I’m probably one of the few people in the world to have personally held TWO blue hurricanes in my hand at the same time.
Enjoy,
Steven
For extra freakout value, I could purchase ALL the boxes of them. Then no one would ever have heard of it. Not clear whether that would make it more or less valuable, though.
Still, I don’t think it really fits my initial definition any more than buying a winning lotto ticket, which of course is something easily available at retail.
Britney’s hair. Friday afternoonish it was worth nothing. (I’m sure the gossipists could weigh in more exactly…) Later friday it was worth a million plus.
No – the market is already flooded. You can buy unused US stamps going back to about 50 years old at a discount on their face value (check on eBay). Far too many people thought they were a good investment, and general interest in collecting postage stamps has declined as well.
If you were savvy enough to buy signed, mint-condition first editions of each of the six existing Harry Potter books so far, you could now sell the full set for £40,000, which is about $80,000.
Check it out on Abebooks.com if you don’t believe me.
how about 10,000 shares of (name if stock that has appreciated the most since 1985)
Hrm. You learn something new every day. Thanks!
Ooookay- I’m gonna go with Michael Jordan as a rookie, in 1986-7, the Fleer card. That’s bending the 20-year rules a bit, but I bet you could get a bunch of these even in late '87 for much less than the $600-plus they are valued at now.