Trading cards are cool again • Hacker News Board

Re: Trading cards are cool again

#91

Post by jkhdigital » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 11:51 AM UTC

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #77

jkhdigital wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Borrowing as much fiat as one could take and dumping it into assets was the rational choice This. I had a conversation with my boomer father the other day in which I tried to explain that the availability of cheap consumer debt means that individuals can now operate like mini hedge funds, making highly leveraged bets on everything from stocks to crypto to trading cards. Used to be that housing was the only highly l…

How is there more cheap consumer debt now than 20 years ago?

The answer to this question seems so self-evident that I’m not sure if you’re trolling or really just uninformed.

To be fair, aggregate debt and interest rates don’t really tell the whole story, because credit providers are a lot more creative as well. Anecdotally, I routinely get offers for promotional low- or no-interest balances on unsecured credit (i.e. credit cards) that overlap such that I can fairly easily maintain a condition of “negative working capital” in excess of my annual income for maybe 2% APR.

Re: Trading cards are cool again

#92

Post by iamacyborg » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 12:42 PM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #39

iamacyborg wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collectibles being “cool” is how they become valuable

Neither stamps nor paintings are cool. And yet they are valuable.

Stamps, sure, but paintings from certain artists are definitely considered "cool".

Re: Trading cards are cool again

#93

Post by ProjectArcturis » Mon, Nov 08, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

jkhdigital wrote: post #91

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is there more cheap consumer debt now than 20 years ago?

The answer to this question seems so self-evident that I’m not sure if you’re trolling or really just uninformed. To be fair, aggregate debt and interest rates don’t really tell the whole story, because credit providers are a lot more creative as well. Anecdotally, I routinely get offers for promotional low- or no-interest balances on unsecured credit (i.e. credit cards) that overlap such that I can fairly easily mai…

I'm not the one who's uninformed. Total consumer credit as a share of GDP was 18% in 2001 and is 19% now.

Those offers aren't new either. They were around 20 years ago. And back then you could stick the balance in a savings account to arb a few percent positive interest.

Re: Trading cards are cool again

#94

Post by GoatOfAplomb » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 3:49 AM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #65

GoatOfAplomb wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stocks represent fractional ownership of a future income stream - the profits of the underlying corporation. You can (in principle) buy a stock, never sell it, and get back more money than you put in. So you're not completely dependent on what others are willing to pay for it in the future. Trading cards (and cryptocurrencies) are not like that. You can only make money if someone else is willing to pay more for it.

> Stocks represent fractional ownership of a future income stream - the profits of the underlying corporation. You can (in principle) buy a stock, never sell it, and get back more money than you put in. So you're not completely dependent on what others are willing to pay for it in the future. Correct me if I'm wrong, as I don't know much about stocks, but doesn't that require the company to have/pay out dividends? Ot…

Thank you; I recognize that you're correct regarding cryptocurrency here and I was not.

And yes, a company would have to pay dividends, which is what I was hiding in my "in principle" parenthetical.