Confession time! I’m a collector.
My collecting habit started innocently with bottle caps. I may have been 4, 5, or 6 – my mother probably knows better than me. I would go on bottle cap hunts while my older brother was in little league. I had filled up a few tubs that had to have been at least a couple gallons each… or maybe they were smaller. I’ve come to realize that my memory of size at age 4 was different than at age 24.
I was 100% focused on finding new bottle caps that I hadn’t seen before.
At some point, maybe from 7-10, I moved on from bottle caps to coins. Specifically, pennies. I tried to have one from every mint from 1900 to present. That was only 80+ years at the time. My favorite was the 1943 steel pennies. Who ever heard of a steel penny? That’s nuts. In all the searches my loose change, I couldn’t find the rare bronze 1943 penny. I have some nickels and some dimes, but buying pennies at coin dealers fit my 8-year old budget best.
I was 50% focused on collecting every penny and 50% focused on the value that the coins would have some day.
In 1987, age 11, I started to collect baseball cards. I hadn’t thought about it until now, but it surely fueled by watching the 1986 World Series with my father. I remember my father negotiating with my mother some kind of nap schedule so I could cheer on the Red Sox with him.
Back to 1987, my favorite player was this player named McGwire. I had seen his name at the top of the leaderboard with 3 homeruns. It was crazy for a rookie to have that kind of start. For the next 3-4 years, I collected every kind of baseball card imaginable. My birthday and Christmas presents were complete sets from Topps, Donruss, and Fleer. I continued to collect McGwire cards though. It turned out that he was talented. By 1991 when my baseball card collecting phase ended, I had over 200 different Mark McGwire cards. Baseball fans know the highs and lows that followed.
I was 50% focused on the riches that collecting baseball cards would bring and 50% focused on the cards made my passion (following Major League Baseball) even more enjoyable.
I don’t remember collecting much for the rest of high school. In college, I collected CD. Columbia House, BMG, and a young woman, played a large role in that. My collection of Aerosmith bootlegs and demos are second to my Mark McGwire collection. I try to work the phrase, “You’re one step away from walking on Danger Street” into conversation every couple of months.
I don’t think I had any particular focus (other than the woman).
Music CDs are the last thing I can remember collecting.
You must be asking: That’s great, but what’s the point?
I recently came across this article in The Economist about baseball card collecting being a classic financial bubble. It stirred up all those thoughts from 30 years ago about how those baseball cards were going to be worth millions someday.
If you are a baseball fan or an investor of any kind, it’s a great read.
Baseball cards aren’t the only bubble. Here are some examples of similar bubbles from children’s toys: Cabbage Patch Kids, Tickle Me Elmo, Beanie Babies, and Pogs. There are probably a few more that I’m forgetting.
I find it interesting that these things are all consumer-driven bubbles. People may have collected because they thought they’d have a greater value in the future. Also there was some scarcity at the time. The scarcity became unimportant because the companies could simply create more supply to meet demand and put money in their own pockets. With baseball cards, more and more companies popped-up cashing on selling a few cheap cardboard pictures for a buck or more.
I tried to think of what today’s collectible bubble is. I couldn’t come up with anything. I asked my wife and she couldn’t think of anything either. Her thought was that everyone is watching HGTV and trying to have a minimalist lifestyle. I can’t argue against that, but I wonder if that’s just in my social bubble or if it’s a nationwide trend.
Hopefully she’s right. We don’t need people losing their savings over some cardboard or a cheap stuffed animal.
Your Turn
Have you been a collector? Are you still a collector? Have you seen your collection go up in value?
I want to read all the details in the comments.
I have done a few over the years. When I was young and lived in Milwaukee (1982 world series), I got into Topps sticker books for a couple years. When I lived in Singapore, they had a trading card game with animals at the Singapore Zoo. When I got back to the USA, I collected music on cassette, then CD when it became the format of choice in 1991. I have over 2800 CDs now. I also collected movies on DVD and Blu-Ray (and VHS) for things I wanted to see again. I have about 400 movies on various formats.
Do I call them collecting? I don’t know, I would say the last thing I collected was the trading cards from the Singapore Zoo. However I have purchased a lot of things that are now sitting and collecting dust.
While writing the article, I wasn’t sure if buying CDs was collecting either. I felt that it was worth noting.
I have a lot of items collecting dust as well :-(.
I collected baseball cards for years when I was young. Had a bunch of those 1989 Topps cards pictured!
At this point I’m not collecting anything. I bet I will one day, possibly back to baseball cards or coins. Possibly other sports stuff.
Now that I think about it I have a collection of shirts from my favorite football team.
I think I should have explored the costs of collecting further. If you are financially independent or reached some other goal, why not? There’s a doctor near me who has a collection of antique cars. He bought out an office building and turned it into a museum.
My grandfather was a huge coin collector and got me in to it when I was younger (I have several great condition steel pennies). My interest wained, but my daughter likes coins so I got her those collecting books where you put quarters in specific slots. We’re doing States and National Parks (if anyone has an extra Guam or Northern Mariana Islands, you’d be a hero to my kid).
I did collect baseball cards for years until my collection was destroyed when my home flooded. Now, I collect and drink rare whiskies. I also collect pins or brochures from each national park I visit. Other than, can’t think of anything else.
Collecting whisky thing reminded me of something that I meant to put in the article, but I forgot.
Recently, I’ve decided to collect “top steak house experiences.” Open Table puts out a list of top steak houses in the United States every year. I’m sure there’s some churn, but I’m trying to hit as many of them as possible.
I spent a little money (maybe $100?) on magic cards in the 90s. I held on to them for 20 years and then sold the valuable cards I had for $80. When I bought them I actually played games with them , causing wear and reducing their value. So I’m not sure it really counts as “collecting.”
I was going to mention magic cards in my list, but I have a regular reader who is more knowledgeable than I am on the topic.
I don’t know if it counts as collecting either. We can have different reasons for collecting and they don’t need to be for profit (such as my bottle caps or CDs).
I’m the wrong kind of collector. I collect comic books and read them, and care for them, but I have no idea what the value of the books are because I don’t collect them for resale value.
I’m not sure if there’s a right or wrong way to collect. I never collected my McGwire baseball cards or CDs with the idea of reselling them. I did find it fun to track the value of the McGwire cards… until they tanked :-(.
-A short period of collecting Baseball cards, like every kid in the ’60s and ’70s.
-A short period collecting stamps as a kid.
-Records for many years. Sold them to fund a move across the country. They would be worth a good amount of money now. Don’t regret the move, but I miss the records.
Currently?
-Tee shirts. I have around 150.
-Digital collections of certain artists work. I’ve got every release and dozens or more bootlegs by a number of artists including every Johnny Cash, Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa release, only in the highest quality possible.
-I’m attempting to collect Blu-Ray (or DVD when Blu-Ray isn’t available) copies of the entire 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. I’ve seen about 600 of them, I own about 250.
-Projects I’ll never finish. I don’t think I could count them all!
And I just noticed the “1001” is apparently at 1187 at this point…
can we say ‘tulip bulbs, 1637’, children?
i only collect things i am passionate about: books, certain types of craft supplies and baking equipment [which i USE]. my mom collected patchwork quilts. my brother collected fine woodworking tools of the 1800s.
none of us expected these things to appreciate in value [although they have, my brother sold his tool collection and my mom’s quilt collection for about 10X what was paid] but they bring us pleasure and make us smile.
collecting as an investment strategy? it’s too high risk.
This story may not resonate with everyone, as I realize that not too many people think that they can afford to collect automobiles, but that has been part of my life-story since I was 16 years old. All I could pony-up the cash for at that age was a cheap, old car (ironically, I spent more on the stereo-system than I did for the whole car, so it would appear my priorities were all backwards). Turns out, what I bought was already old enough to be somewhat of a collector’s item. The year was 1996, and I picked up a 1962 Ford Fairlane 500 for $225.00. My wife of today was my high school sweetheart at the time, and we went everywhere in that car including an anual Christian rock music festival called Sonshine. With 4 other 16 year-old friends & our luggage in a Sears ExCargo roof-top carrier strapped to the rain-gunnels, our parents let us head off on a 5-hour road-trip up to Wilmar, Minnesota. My old car was reliable, extremely simple to maintain and got decent fuel-economy for the relatively large vehicle that it was (over 20 miles per gallon on the highway). I learned a lot about mechanics & body-work on that car, and had it for 10 years before putting an amature paint-job on it (baby-blue with a white top) and selling it for a handsom $3,200.00! Late-model cars depreciate in value each year, but that got me thinking, perhaps I should keep buying & collecting classic cars as they only appreciate in value. Since selling that ’62 Fairlane, I’ve gone on to buy & sell hundreds more classic cars & trucks. Some sit in the back yard for years waiting for me to get around to restoring them, and others go down the road just as quickly as they came, but I have since quit my day-job, and all I do is “collect” old cars now for re-sale in the future. It’s a way better investment than the stock-market, and in fact I have eleven people who put up the money so I can buy these old relics, and then we split the profit once I sell them. 50% ain’t bad if you ask them! I typically don’t sell them for quite the profit-margin I did on the ’62 Ford, but then again I rarely keep any of them for 10 years, either. I really should, though, because it’s a good savings-plan (if you will). It’s savings because the money’s tied up and can’t be accessed until I liquidate the solid asset. That in-turn is my modivation to do the work needed to spiff-up these cars so that we can cash-out on the investment. I only wish that it hadn’t taken me 10 years to figure out this gig! Had I known then what I know now… I would’ve probably dropped out of high-school and started doing this full-time when I was still a teenager! There have been 4 or 5 times when I ended up losing money on classic-cars, but it was only a few hundred bucks each time. That pales in comparison to the profits I’ve generated on all the others over the years. Granted, you have to know the market well (which I do), but I encourage anyone to do something like this. It could be baseball cards, collectibles, antiques or whatever. Just totally geek out on something that you’re passionate about, and make a living out of it! I don’t make a 6-figure income out of what I do, but I enjoy almost every minute of it, and there’s definitely something to be said for that. I probably could’ve gone to college and gotten some corporate-job climbing the ladder to financial success, but I’ve always marched to the tune of a little different drummer, so the inside-the-box lifestyle just wasn’t for me. I don’t yearn for retirement… I actually hope (Lord willing) that I do this until the day that I die.