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Collectibles are terrible investments

fullstackeconomics.com

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Re: Collectibles are terrible investments

#151

Post by jonhohle »

nradov wrote: post #146
jonhohle wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regular copies of NHL ‘94 aren’t worth much (because yearly sports releases have a lot of copies and are typically fungible with the year prior or later), but is still a fantastic game and worth the $17 market price. That said, 16-bit games have doubled to quadrupled in market price in the last 3-4 years and are becoming increasingly hard to find. I’m interested in seeing how a recession affects prices, but some rare…

Are there counterfeits being made? Seems like those games would be relatively easy to copy for someone with a little skill. I don't imagine many buyers are able to verify authenticity.

There are counterfeits, but they are easily spotted by inspecting PCBs, packaging, printing, etc. There may be some skill involved in identifying a counterfeit, but that’s true of most collectibles. If you get a copy of Snatcher for less than $1,000 it’s probably a counterfeit, and if you can’t tell, you probably wouldn’t be spending that much to begin with.

Re: Collectibles are terrible investments

#152

Post by allturtles »

d3nj4l wrote: post #28
allturtles wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't exactly the same thing true of stocks? I always wish I had bought Apple or Tesla at the right time, but I didn't.

No, it's not. You can make decisions about buying stock based on fundamentals. You can choose to buy Apple stock based on their products, and on Tesla stock based on their technology. You can't reliably do the same for collectibles.

Nothing about Apple's products in 1995 would have told you to expect returns like you would have gotten over the last 25 years. Tesla's technology over the past couple of years hasn't really changed but their stock price has gone up 10x. There are no fundamentals that justify the current price, AFAICT.

Re: Collectibles are terrible investments

#153

Post by sizzle »

Gortal278 wrote: post #130
raffraffraff wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is why I've given up on investing anything more in stocks or crypto. Everything I invested since before COVID is down. My coinbase account currently has only 34% of the value I put into it 2 years ago, and I spread my investment over the top 5 hot currencies at that time (ethereum, cardano, algorand, sushi, bitcoin). My stock investments are doing better at 65% of what I invested (tech, engineering…

> Unfortunately this is why I've given up on investing anything more in stocks or crypto. Everything I invested since before COVID is down. My coinbase account currently has only 34% of the value I put into it 2 years ago, and I spread my investment over the top 5 hot currencies at that time (ethereum, cardano, algorand, sushi, bitcoin). You may want to reconsider investing in crypto too if you are down %65.

Eth was -$100-300 about 2 years ago and now $3k and Btc ~$8-12k now up ~$40k, exactly how are you down investing in top 5 projects 2 years ago or am I missing something? You should be up significantly and I’m kicking myself for not investing.

Re: Collectibles are terrible investments

#154

Post by [deleted] »

sizzle wrote: post #153
Gortal278 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately this is why I've given up on investing anything more in stocks or crypto. Everything I invested since before COVID is down. My coinbase account currently has only 34% of the value I put into it 2 years ago, and I spread my investment over the top 5 hot currencies at that time (ethereum, cardano, algorand, sushi, bitcoin). You may want to reconsider investing in crypto too if you are down %65.

Eth was -$100-300 about 2 years ago and now $3k and Btc ~$8-12k now up ~$40k, exactly how are you down investing in top 5 projects 2 years ago or am I missing something? You should be up significantly and I’m kicking myself for not investing.

[deleted]

Re: Collectibles are terrible investments

#155

Post by sizzle »

Gortal278 wrote: post #130
raffraffraff wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is why I've given up on investing anything more in stocks or crypto. Everything I invested since before COVID is down. My coinbase account currently has only 34% of the value I put into it 2 years ago, and I spread my investment over the top 5 hot currencies at that time (ethereum, cardano, algorand, sushi, bitcoin). My stock investments are doing better at 65% of what I invested (tech, engineering…

> Unfortunately this is why I've given up on investing anything more in stocks or crypto. Everything I invested since before COVID is down. My coinbase account currently has only 34% of the value I put into it 2 years ago, and I spread my investment over the top 5 hot currencies at that time (ethereum, cardano, algorand, sushi, bitcoin). You may want to reconsider investing in crypto too if you are down %65.

Sorry my reply was meant for @raffraffraff

Re: Collectibles are terrible investments

#156

Post by baobabKoodaa »

bkyiuuMbF wrote: post #136
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #132

This article conflates multiple distinct mechanisms in a way that doesn't make sense. For instance, the author implies that stock returns (in the long run) are comprised of economy-wide growth and dividends. The author provides a hypothetical example of 8% stock return being explained by 5% economy-wide return and 3% dividend return. This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, dividends are a mechanism to transfer…

Combining capital growth and yield is quite standard across the industry for measuring total return. Yes the dividend is reflected in the share price (it doesn't grow as much as it might have if reinvested) but that's completely fine. Combine them to get the total return. Pretty normal.

> Combining capital growth and yield is quite standard across the industry for measuring total return.

Yes it is, but that's not what the author of the article was doing. They were not looking at capital growth of the stock, they were looking at economy-wide growth. Those are entirely different things. As I said, you can have a stagnating economy with 0% year-on-year GDP growth, and at the same time, the average company within that economy will be turning a profit.

Re: Collectibles are terrible investments

#157

Post by nradov »

buildbot wrote: post #49

In general I completely agree with this article, unless the collectible generates value in itself and is limited. For example film cameras and more rare medium format digital cameras are appreciating now quite a bit, above original MSRP

Once the population of photographers who ever used film cameras dies off, the value of most old film cameras as collectibles will drop near zero.

Re: Collectibles are terrible investments

#158

Post by raffraffraff »

sizzle wrote: post #153
Gortal278 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately this is why I've given up on investing anything more in stocks or crypto. Everything I invested since before COVID is down. My coinbase account currently has only 34% of the value I put into it 2 years ago, and I spread my investment over the top 5 hot currencies at that time (ethereum, cardano, algorand, sushi, bitcoin). You may want to reconsider investing in crypto too if you are down %65.

Eth was -$100-300 about 2 years ago and now $3k and Btc ~$8-12k now up ~$40k, exactly how are you down investing in top 5 projects 2 years ago or am I missing something? You should be up significantly and I’m kicking myself for not investing.

What killed my investments was the advice to "diversify your investments" (or as I think of it, "spread your bets"). Look at charts for ADA, SUSHI and ALGO over the past 1.5y and imagine getting in at the wrong point in all of them. Plenty of opportunity for losing most of your investment. On average I've done poorly. If I had only invested in BTC and ETH I would have done great, but that would have been against all good advice.

Re: Collectibles are terrible investments

#159

Post by Ekaros »

linkjuice4all wrote: post #55
majormajor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is arguing that you aren't likely to be able to pick the ones that will grow faster than the economy as a whole over the time frame you intend, because it relies on an extreme amount of right-place-right-time luck. If you were looking for the next Beanie Baby for the last 20 years, do you think you would've found it? I think it's also arguing that the particular appreciation you need to capture largely on…

There’s some predictability in terms of people trying to buy all the things they wanted as a kid when they finally have the adult income to afford it. Some examples include muscle cars, BMX bikes, LEGO sets, and other things that a large population of children were aware of and wanted. If you just stock-pile the big sellers or scoop up the used stuff when it bottoms out in value then you might be able to profit. The…

Cars are an interesting example. They are very generational outside the premium outliers. What is raising in price now are those that people are nostalgic with, but they are different from ones that parents or grand parents were nostalgic about, those in current day are just bad bets.

It is about timing, in both buying and selling. And then in carrying.

Re: Collectibles are terrible investments

#160

Post by Ekaros »

majormajor wrote: post #60
linkjuice4all wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s some predictability in terms of people trying to buy all the things they wanted as a kid when they finally have the adult income to afford it. Some examples include muscle cars, BMX bikes, LEGO sets, and other things that a large population of children were aware of and wanted. If you just stock-pile the big sellers or scoop up the used stuff when it bottoms out in value then you might be able to profit. The…

How are 90s baseball cards, pogs, and yo-yos looking? Or "regular" opened copies of NHL 94 or what have you? I think we often overlook all the shit we were into that hasn't gotten expensive. We'd have to basically index-fund this shit if we had really been trying to invest in it in 2000 or so, and I think the losers would be a big problem for our fund. Maybe you bought a 3000GT instead of a Supra because you didn't s…

Vtuber merchandise? It might actually be decent bet. Start expensive and limited, might go up with right popular groups.

From cars I'm not sure, Teslas? Or will they just die on their own.

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