Collectibles are terrible investments

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!

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.).

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.

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.

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.