quote:
That's the stupid thing about cards. Becket says its worth x amount, but you'll never find someone to pay the price. It's fake market.
You has all these dorks running around hawking cards but they were worthless. Bball cards were the beanie babies of the 90's.
Maybe my girls will have some boys one day and they will find value in those stupid cards sitting in my closet.
First, I will say that I am not a baseball card collector. With that said...
I actually think baseball cards could be a pretty awesome thing to get your kids into. I remember when I was a kid, I learned so much about the market and managing assets and the value of money with these. I would get my Beckett magazine and figure out what the worth of my card collection was and tracked that value over time like my own little portfolio. I would feel so proud of myself when something shot up in price and so disspointed when one I really was excited about never gained the value I expected. (I'm looking at you Mr. autographed Upper Deck Juan Gonzalez rookie card.) I learned how to "negotiate" trades with friends. I learned how to save money in order to buy the cards I really wanted for my collection. Yes, all those cards are pretty worthless now, but the lessons I learned from this was invaluable.
From a financial point of view, I cold see baseball cards not being as bad long term as you all are thinking. The value of the old baseball cards was that all the collections were thrown away because they were deemed worthless once the kids moved out and mom wanted to turn their old bedrooms into sewing rooms. Then those kids became parents and have refused to throw away their kid's collections (from the 80's and 90's) because they can't forget all the valuable cards that they had lost. I know that there are still boxes and boxes of my old cards sitting under the guest bed in my parents house because my dad refuses to throw they away. Because of that, those cards never became rare like the previous generation's had and probably never will for a VERY long time.
Now, the kids from the 80's and 90's are having kids and keeping them out of the baseball card collecting game because they felt so cheated by it from their childhood. This could, possibly, reintroduce scarcity into that market in the next 20 years or so which would be good for long term collectors.
Of course, that is all just hypothetical and could be complete bullsh.
