The economics of collectables.

Today I started cleaning out an old shed at my mom's house, found all sorts of fun things like the only highschool yearbook I remember buying (sophmore year), some broken He-Man toys, some poli sci books from college, and some of my baseball cards (the ones that weren't stolen along with the Camaro stuff).

So some stuff is going to Good Will, or maybe the hospital, battered women's shelter, or any of the variety of good causes, some will be sold, and some stuff I'll keep... even though I haven't missed it in the 7 years of storage.

...but I digress.

I took the 5 boxes of cards, a mix of Topps, Upperdeck, and Fleer baseball cards, a few odd basketball and football cards, some Marvel Superhero cards to the collectable shop, since I am itching to hit the $1k mark. Upon walking into the shop the thing that really struck me is how the vintage video game section dwarfed sports memorabilia, and the comic books.

I go on to chat with the fellow in charge of buying, clearly a sharp, if not particularly charismatic fellow, and he tells me that he isn't particularly interested.  Fortunately I had developed a candid reparte with him before hand, and told him I wasn't that shocked.  By the late 80's and early 90's so many people had convinced themselves buying baseball cards would put their kids through college that a huge glut emerged, and the cards from this era were overproduced, and over-saved.



On the flip-side, many parents, like my own, had given away, or just tossed the Atari 2600s, Nintendos, SNESs, and Sega Genesiss Geniseses Genesis' video games systems, we loved.  Now that the 25-35 year olds have a disposable income, thats the collectable they want.  That's what reminds them of their youth.  That's what wasn't oversaved.

So I'll just parrot what I once heard, by who-knows-who.  Collect what you want to, because you love it, not for the hopes of riches in the future.