I will say it right here. Ben Rice has a high probability of becoming a Yankees legend.  Rice started his career with the Yankees, peaked at the right time and therefore have a solid chance of retiring with the Yankees. He is already quite unique in that he is an Ivy Leaguer who may also become legendary sports wise. That is usually not a high probability combination historically. Game recognizes game. Most typical global top 10 graduates don’t possess the OGidability on the book and on the street end. I worry more about Rice’s mental toughness aka potential Ivy preppiness than his technical skills. If he is perceived soft, his competition who may be hungrier and have far less pre-sports resources and options, may change his whole upward momentum. Even though sports is not a zero sum game, one could argue the competition is not only against contemporaries, not just generationally, not even against all athlete at all times, it is essentially against every living organism at all times in every parallel universe, multiverses, meta verses, data verses and whatever else other than between space and time. 

When you recognize Kobe is a borderline/fringe top 10 NBA player of all time even with his grit, skills and accomplishments, you will realize how hard it is to be a historical great. If Kobe had a hand contusion like that, he may likely return to the game the next play. Momentum and timing are very important in sports and in life, you can’t be considered clutch or can be depended upon if people believe you fade away when things get tough. Rice will likely have extremely high multipliers in card value due to his appeal on many fronts. However, the value the multiples ultimately create will depend on his on-field performance.

One thing that he will likely benefit greatly from is the Yankees now have a historically deep team that will likely add more capable players down the road. With all things considered, I believe the Yankees are better than the Dodgers and the Braves. With the Dodgers it’s more about direction than talent. Unfortunately righting a ship when it is going the wrong way takes time and time is limited in every season. The Braves’ issues are more structural. Albies should have been paid more. The fact his contract is perceived as possibly one of the worst in baseball’s century plus history is telling about what the organization can possibly do to make the situation right. When people feel they are being undervalued, it will not only potentially make them disgruntled or resentful, they may not be motivated or incentivized enough to reach their full potentials. Being magnanimous doesn’t mean being stupid, it could very easily also mean being a global minded strategic thinker.

With many of the Yankees top players on long-term contracts, the combination of Aaron Judge, Ben Rice, Cody Bellinger, Jasson Dominguez,and other great players and the Yankees being an attractive destination for elite players, I believe there is a reasonable likelihood Ben Rice will win a few championships with the Yankees. Yes the Yankees’ farm system is somewhat depleted, however, the Yankees has historically been able to attract marquee players from free agency. I see Rice as a 500 home run, 3000 hits and a Yankees legend with a statue in Monument Park kind of a player. All posted contents are my opinions only which means they should not be taken as advice of any kind.

Let’s talk about my Ben Rice and Jasson Dominguez rookie cards collection.

I have a very large Ben Rice rookie cards collection right now. Most of these I bought very early on in his career. Many of these rookie cards are in the form of chase cards like numbered RPAs. I personally think Rice will likely not be at the same performance level of Aaron Judge whom I believe will probably hit 600-700 home runs in his career, however, I think Rice’s cards will likely exceed that of Aaron Judge’s cards in value on average once they both retire due to Rice’s likely much higher cards multipliers. 

Jasson Dominguez is known to be a five tool player with a powerful offense. Dominguez’s recent defensive efforts are proving his intent to dominant both ends of the game. Yes, like Ben Rice Jasson Dominguez is currently not in the line up due to injuries. However, both players may be back to playing very soon. Dominguez also appears to be adjusting his batting posture which shows he is trying to actively improve his offense. He already been in the leagues for four seasons however limited that is and he is only 23 years old at this moment. I own numerous Dominguez’s rookie cards including his Bowman 1st rookie cards and his rookie chase cards. 

I believe there is a high likelihood Ben Rice will get a decade long plus contract from the Yankees. I also think Jasson Dominguez will be a Yankees for a few more years at the very least. It seems a few weeks ago some people were able to buy certain Jasson Dominguez rookie parallels and autographs cards in the $5 and $30 USD range respectively. Ultimately, at a dollar or two for their base rookie cards, it appears to be excellent deals to me when the right investment disciplines, hedges, diversification and reasonable moderations are in place. With the higher priced cards especially expensive chase cards, my typical strategy is to own a few of them to seek the upside exposure since the multipliers are quite high for GOAT rookie chase cards. 

To better balance my cards portfolio, I typically do not buy cards over $100 USD. I’m in this for the long haul, that means I will likely experience “switch GOAT,” another term I coined to refer to GOATistic perception changes over time due to various new social, societal, technological and other significant changes that causes new GOATs to be named and previous GOATs to no longer be considered GOATs in a given future era. When switch GOAT occurs, I usually see more paper gains in my portfolio. The previous GOAT’s rookie cards will likely still be worth something significant, just probably worth much less than the new GOAT’s rookie cards with much slower CAGR growth than when they were the GOAT. However, the aggregate cards value for both cards markets in my opinion usually is higher after switch GOAT occurs since in my opinion it typically expand the market with an enlarged fan base. If I didn’t have a good rookie cards pipeline, I would most likely have to pay a lot of potentially life changing money for these/those card(s) if I wanted them. Even then the downside risk might be too high and the upside gains may not be worth the potential downside risk and opportunity cost expended.

At end of the day, my alternative assets portfolio is only a small piece of my total investments. The collectibles market will probably start to peak to its full potentials when the tax laws change that will allow collectibles to be treated like mainstream investment vehicles with preferential tax treatments available for investment by various types of investment accounts including retirement accounts. For this to happen, the asset class likely need to be much more liquid, perceived as an economic engine, fungible, fractional and exist in derivative forms. This is another reason why I am developing a long game. I have seen significant increases in the amount of people who know about the hobby and who collect cards over the years. I think when in the future players themselves can form individual “Professional Athlete Corporations (PAC)” or a similar type of entity where their Name, Image, Likeness are incorporated into specialized investment indices with a market capitalization value and the PAC can issue licenses and control quality of the products it produces, that’s when these collectibles can truly become mainstream investments. Even though there is a modest likelihood of this happening, it will likely take years for this to happen. When people start to expect this to happen, likely exponentially more money will flow into this hobby and securing a “subscription” of a share of two at IPO in the PAC will probably be extremely difficult for the regular person. This is precisely why I am in this for the long-haul with a system in place to benefit from the future upsides.

Per what I talked about in my last post, I have a pipeline of rookie cards that I created by focusing on buying a substantial number of rookie cards of approximately 15-30 new players in a given major professional sports league annually. These are indexed long-term investments for me, ones that even if I appear to be wrong on, I typically do not ever intentionally sell unless I am literally needing money to keep me alive. I however will give away my cards to friends, people who are in need of cards or donate them. I have probably given out over a million cards one way or another in my life-time. I do this because it makes me feel good to give back because I have received plenty of free stuff from other people over the years as well and giving it away in my opinion does help grow the hobby by bring people who otherwise would not have known or be interested in the hobby in the first place.

I do sometimes add cards of a given player’s rookie card outside of their rookie year only if it’s within the early years of their career when they have foreseeable additional unrealized potentials and their cards are unnecessarily undervalued due to systematic issues. Typically a player need about five years to show signs of mirage GOATness, a term I coined to reflect seeing glimmers of GOATesqueness that you are almost never too sure about but your instincts tell you something could potentially be up. It will typically require at least eight years to see GOATesqueness in the open consistently. Unless that player starts at 19 years old in the NBA or MLB or 21 year old in NFL, you won’t most likely know the player has high GOATness probabilities until near the end of their competitive sports athletic primes. By that time, if you want to invests in that player’s chase cards, you will probably be spending a lot of money acquiring them. This is probably one of the biggest downsides of the flip culture. People who are not in this for the love of the underlying  art will have a hard time making wise decisions for a sustainable strategy and creating millennium wealth. With my background I could probably do almost anything I want to legally, however, I chose to do what I do because it brings me happiness due to a cocktail of reasons. 

Of course there will be one out of a million chance that a seemingly undeserving person win in the long-term, but hey, it’s a probability game, if you like that kind of odds then maybe go for it. But before you do, you may or may not want to lookup what may have happened to many lottery winners after they win life changing money. I don’t have to wait 20 years, 10 years or even two years to see results, my rookie cards pipeline is decades involving multiple major professional sports. I literally get new hall of famer rookie cards in my collection during each professional sports’ hall of fame induction ceremony just by maintaining my rookie cards pipeline. With modern day financial strategies, my cards “cards investment farm system” is even cheaper to maintain. I invest in what I invest in, I pick up the non-hyped new athletes’ rookie cards I don’t invest in extremely cheaply in bulk. I will let the cocktail investors make all the “big bucks” on rookie cards of players who I believe are overhyped. In my mind, these cards operate in the same vein as new cards on car lots, few rarely become the “vintage” worth the “opportunity cost” to maintain after driving off the lot and after depleting its “functional useful life.” All posted contents are my opinions only which means they should not be taken as advice of any kind.

Let’s talk about my top 10 list of athletes’ rookie sports cards to invest in for May 2026.

I have some criteria I use when I buy rookie cards. I typically buy rookie cards of rookies from the same year and of players who base cards are typically found in dollar boxes. With some exception, that means I do not usually chase the “next biggest thing.” To be clear,  hypes do materialize into GOATential  occasional, however, they frequently end up manifesting into your run of the mill hall of famer (which are great achieves for the player given how hard they likely worked to get there) that typically end up in the inflation adjusted rookie base year dollar boxes. You just have to search for the prices of the non-premium junk era and later sets base rookie cards of your favorite non-GOATesque hall of fame inducted players to get an idea. It’s almost like you got nothing to show for if you held their cards for the long-term. Since I don’t buy for short-term gains or speculate due to volatility and risk, if I bought certain overhyped cards of top draft picks, I will probably on average end up losing the time value of money game due to inflation and compounding affects of good investments. 

Legitimate GOATs’ rookie cards can be 100X or more in value than their regular hall of famer peers. Think about some of the GOATs that have great reputation in some major sports and then compare their rookie cards from whatever set versus their non-GOATesque hall of famer peers. Like what I mentioned in previous posts, I play the long probability game which somewhat resemble the long-tail strategy, another contrarian strategy I frequently rely upon. 

I will discuss why I am collected the below rookie cards of each of these athletes in details in my subsequent posts. The below is a brief summary. Most of their base rookie cards below are around a dollar or two at the moment.

1. Ben Rice (Baseball): Reaching prime with the right statistics while playing for a world-class icon of a team. Higher multipliers due to reasons that I cannot fully disclosed due to social contract reasons.
2. Nick Kurtz (Baseball): Higher elite professional average expectancy remaining. Higher multipliers due to reasons that I cannot fully disclosed due to social contract reasons.
3. Drake Baldwin (Baseball): Hit the right indicators at the right age. Followed up with good second year trends on a good and storied franchise with recent championship. Many GOATs are rookie of the year winners. 
4. Jasson Dominguez (Baseball): Plays for a marquee franchise, still young, been talked about for years, probably just need to learn to field better which is likely not difficult if he becomes a designed hitter.
5. Chet Holgrem (Basketball): His potentially generational beef with Wemby may work out like Bill Russell versus Wilt Chamberlain comparisons. One has too many rings for ten fingered to each wear one and the other is not primarily known as a winner but has significantly more on the personal career statistics and may have lots of stories some of which I don’t think would be appropriate to discuss here. With or without film, historically speaking after both retires many years later, if it were the case, the distinction between a top 40 player versus a top 50 player or whatever will come down to what first comes to mind to people who remember them. Chet’s cards value will likely be pegged to a ratio of whatever Wemby is at whether that’s plus or minus. I don’t waste money on buying Wemby cards just like I don’t buy David Robinson or Tim Duncan’s cards anymore even though many of their rookie cards are around a dollar or two each now.
6. Cade Cunningham (Basketball): Pistons are frequently perceived as a tough team for whatever historical reasons. As a guard, his height alone is relatable for many people. I think he is a regional story who may become a national or international story once he starts to win in the playoffs more consistently. I am not particularly attracted to his playing style or anything else. I just think from a statistical standpoint, his cards are very undervalued right now.
7. Bronny James (Basketbal): If I think as the same way as other people, I wouldn’t be the permanent contrarian. There are really a few intriguing things about him that will resonate with people despite the hate he sometimes may get. His story of perseverance health wise and humbleness for someone who is in his situation is quite rare. He is pretty mentally tough and is quite wise for his age. People will look his stats and say all kinds of things. I don’t need to repeat it here. However, you have to see the forest for its guano not just s*** that one needs to spend money to clean up. This is a liability to asset double swing if one gets this valuation correctly. The father-son due is a combined story not just a singular story. That means stats can also be split among two players as in first father son duo reach xxxxx of points, assists, steals, regular season games, playoff games etc. Lebron is a historical figure of significant importance hence his scions who are part of this story will be as well. It is an inspirational tale about life and not just about sports. Lebron has at least a few more records to chase (tie for playing in most decades in the NBA, 50,000 regular season points, playing with his two sons in the NBA and in an NBA game on the same team). 
8. Dalton Rushing (Baseball): Plays for a marquee team. Higher multipliers due to reasons that I cannot fully disclosed due to social contract reasons.
9. Paolo Blanchero (Basketball): I am not particularly attracted to his playing style or anything else. I just think from a statistical standpoint, his cards are very undervalued right now.
10. James Wood (Baseball) – Higher elite professional average expectancy remaining. Hit the right indicators at the right age. Followed up with good second year trends.

Yes, Wemby and a bunch of other players you probably think should be on my top 10 list for reasons I have mentioned above and below. To be Frank, if it was that high on your list, I would probably not have invested in the cards to begin with. All GOATs are historical figures, not all historical figures are GOATs. That means to become a GOAT, you have to do something historical relevant first as the first step to becoming a GOAT, in essence the historical figure that other historical figures during their life-time talked about. The thing you need to understand about Bronny James is he already made plenty of history and will likely make more history.

Many of the players on my list of rookie cards I have a substantial holdings of are majority baseball and the remaining are basketball with no football or hockey. Obviously this list is only a top 10 list, my actual shortlist of cards of athletes per annum is in the triple digits across all major professional sports. Baseball cards are the oldest types of collectible sports cards with over 150 years of history. Their cards collecting fan base is typically wealthier and the sports has many grail cards that shatters records almost every time they are sold. Yes, baseball is not played everywhere like basketball and soccer are, however, America is the richest country in overall nominal GDP and has extremely high median income that no 10 trillion or more econom(ies) now or in the next century will likely come anywhere near it.  

What the collectors in the biggest markets prefer set the trend and also sets the prices. The issue with football is career longevity. Most position players will play much shorter careers than their major professional sports counter parts. American girdiron football is undoubtedly popular, however, unlike other sports, the roster is huge with 50 plus active players on a team and players typically specialize on the defensive side, the offensive side or the special team. This makes long-term investing in the hobby challenging. The true premium position in football is the quarterback and then the two wide receiver or the two running back and maybe the tight-end. At most, there are only about six premium positions out of 30 plus possible major on the field positions (approximately 11 players on each of the three sides of play). Premium positions are about 15% of all positions in the NFL. In basketball premium positions are about 60% of all positions as the two guards and the small forward are typically more relatable for normal people therefore more popular than the power forward and center. In baseball premium positions are about 70% including the multiple starting pitchers, shortstop, centerfield, pitcher, third base and often sluggers such as designed hitters. Obviously prospecting baseball minor league cards are a completely different field of study that requires much more research.

I love chase cards with the sole exception that I no longer chase them. I probably opened over a million packs in my life, not too hard to do when you are able to open dollar packs and special packs that contains just one or four cards or when you bought thousands of junk era boxes of baseball, basketball, hockey and football cards for like three dollars per a 36 pack box. The real cost is on my hands, arms and personal life which I won’t discuss here. Years ago chase cards use to only mean a certain rookie card, an error card, a massively produced insert or a superstar card. Then parallels became a thing first with puzzles, holograms, gold/silver colors, numbered, acrylic and chrome cards then progressed into memorabilia cards such as on-card/sticker autograph and game/player worn material. 

I think opening packs are a waste of money except as a diversification tool. Your average expected value overtime in opening packs may most likely be a money losing endeavor. Even if a certain player become good propping up your initial investments, the opportunity cost of doing so in my opinion is much higher than a weighted diversified approach. What I do is I take a measured approach of buying an index of rookie cards of maybe 15-30 players depending on the sport each year based on an actuarial calculation framework. I take into account their age, position and skill sets and make a scientific estimate to a player’s cards appreciation potential. At this stage, I don’t care very much about a player’s marketability or intangibles because that’s just a multiplier issue which will be somewhat adjusted by the market anyway when buying their cards. The bottomline is, sports is a merit based endeavor with tangible result driven objective metrics, everything else is just icing on the cake. Good players will likely have value regardless of their other non-on-the-field attributes or conducts, as long as they are socially acceptable attributes. I focus on collecting cards of a certain number of new players because typically hall of fame induction, which many people use as a benchmark for how good a player was at his or her sport(s), will only have about 10 inductees every year. Out of that 10 inductees, some may or may not be former players and some may or may not be inducted due to their on the field sports achievements. Even more so, many hall of famers do not get their jerseys retired, not franchise players and are not part of all-time teams and top whatever lists.

Most junk wax era hall of famers’ rookie cards are only worth a few dollars at the most at retail unless they are one of the GOATs. I am in this sustainably meaning investments has to make fundamental sense in the long-term basis. I don’t waste time trying to catch the right timing with a speculator’s mentality. In my opinion, that is one of the easiest ways to lose everything, fast. As everyone may know, skill sets do not always translate into career success in sports. Unsystematic issues like Injuries, health issues,  differences in mentality and motivation, scandals along with a whole host of problems may derail a player’s career quickly. Systematic issues like lockouts, pandemics, change in amateur sports landscape like NIL that most players can’t control will also impact a player’s professional prospects. Momentum can shift rapidly and is even more pronounced at high levels of competition with higher intensity and faster pace of play. This is why sports cards investing is basically a probability game with underlying factors that determine direction and variation factors which ultimately dictate multipliers. All posted contents are my opinions only which means they should not be taken as advice of any kind.

Let’s talk about my chase cards collection.

I typically never sell rookie cards of a player. Of course you probably know the joke that in some sports due to their numerous levels of minor league systems, a player could literally be a rookie forever and 30 plus year old “rookies” are not that uncommon. However, some people do make a distinction between cards of players in pro uniforms, their “1st” card as labeled by a card brand I shall not name and their “true” rookie cards. Again, that’s just a multiplier issue of how many times that card appreciate when the player becomes the GOAT or possess GOAT features. I don’t typically sell rookie cards unless my life literally depends on it because those are the arguably the most important cards from a historical standpoint of a player. And because time travel doesn’t exist yet and generally most people will say one or two years are a player’s rookie year, rookie cards are relatively more desirable than other base cards, though there may be a distinction between rookie inset cards versus rookie base cards from a valuation standpoint depending on the features and rarity of both types of specific cards. In this day and age, even though the players with the most potential are selected at earlier rounds of the annual major sports drafts, many good players are still drafted at later rounds sometimes in the 6th or 7th rounds in the NFL or near 20th round in baseball or completely not drafted in basketball. 

The 30 or so different new players each year that I focus on buying their rookie cards will not all be hall of famers, GOATS or even semi GOATs. There are only so many players that can fit into a certain “top” something list, it is important to continue a pipeline of investments in order to be successful in this game in the long run. It is important to do so because GOATs may change overtime and current GOATs may be supplanted by new GOATs hence keeping the pipeline of new rookie card investments help build a formidable moat against trend changes. Eventually someone is going to sit on the top of the GOAT pyramid, ultimately it’s just a matter of who. You won’t always be right or wrong, second guess yourself doesn’t help either. You invest into what you invested in for a reason. I typically don’t change my mind on investments but I do protect myself through diversification and hedging. 

I still open backs once in a while, I just see opening packs as another way to diversify based on the will from the above whatever cards that brings me. I also don’t frequently say no to inexpensive rookie cards in bulk when it makes financial sense from the most recent years as that is another way to own rookie cards of players not on my annual rookie card short list in order to better distribute my risks.

I equate a card collector selling their short listed newer rookie cards in large bulk to a farmer serving breeder seeds on the dinner table. Most of these cards have some kind of historical value, at least a portion of these cards may need to be preserved for sustainability and historical reasons. Never mind everything and everyone takes time to grow and develop, I just think prospecting rookie cards is the bread and butter of those who are able to make serious money in this hobby sustainably. There were a lot of numbered cards from earlier eras that were numbered to the thousands or tens of thousands. More recent numbered cards may be numbered to less, however, there are also numerous “color” or “pattern” variations of these that when you add them all together as a similar asset class, it’s probably in the low to mid thousands.

Wait, if you never sell rookie cards, what do you do with the tens of thousands of “worthless” rookie cards of non-hall of fame players over time? I typically give these away to friends or people I know or just donate them to help grow the hobby. As for the hundreds or thousands of base rookies of players that become hall of famers or on a hall of famers trajectory, I typically reevaluate their GOATistics periodically to determine whether they will become GOATesque or not. I frequently study the GOAT list of the sheep or their bellwether to arbitrage between goat s*** and milk balls. Selling cards because you want to typically means you will lose money regardless for what cause. People who truly collect cards in the first place love cards that have signs of becoming heirlooms and will most likely not even consider parting with these cards until they reach some ridiculous certain 1952 card value level.

One of the wise moves when transacting rookie cards is the modified collar strategy or an alternative asset alpha-beta strategy. I will continue to hold the cards of a player, I just want to diversify my portfolio of cards of that player by various attributes like trading for one or a few grail card with many non-grail rookie cards of the same player and holding certain amount of non-grail rookie cards of that player. This is just an internal diversification to balance between liquidity, upside and downside risks. I typically like my grail cards to be some sort of a low numbered specific type of RPA (rookie card of the player their pro uniform, game used patch/laundry tag, fancy autograph with a general but bold statement next to hand-numbered serial numbers) from an established card company.  And yes, some collectors also collect second or third years card of a player, I typically do not for all the above mentioned reasons.

Some people put a date or a range of card sets that they consider vintage in their definition of vintage sets. In my decades of collecting, I typically define vintage as something that is old enough to be considered a popular classic by the masses (the older the better because time travel into the past is physically impossible at the moment) and in decent condition that people would enjoy viewing. Ever wonder why multi-trillion dollar companies split their shares or issue millions of shares for a price regular people can afford? Like in life, there is no such thing as absolute-absolutes, only relative comparisons. Not all good stories starts with happily ever after, in fact, some begin with an evil step mother or a destitution. I look at an investment first at the systemic level. That means I typically have already identified an asset class as viable investment options for me before I do additional research. A high tide lifts all boats regardless whether the high tide is caused by nature like gravity or by humans like dumping a large number of cards into the ocean. After observing the tide movement, the savvy investors try to look under the waters to study what happens when the tide ebbs and that is typically when causality may be explored. 

As I live with a futurist mindset, I do not feel comfortable paying anything that the sheep flock cannot afford. To put it bluntly, unlike in certain societies abroad, the economic vitality in much of the American aligned western world depends on these people to work and spend, frequently in advance of actual outputs. That is why I typically spend a penny to below five hundred to invest in various items that I enjoy and that ultimately will yield a better outcome for me. In reality, it’s usually the cheapest things that end up being most expensive anyway because most people take these things for granted and therefore never true appreciated its value until they miss the boat.

Most people don’t realize some of the biggest portions of investment expenditure is actually time and opportunity cost not the initial financial expenditure. Everything that is worth something now all derived from something that initially was near free. Like natural resources such as land and knowledge that ultimately become innovation and technology. All these things became expensive overtime because of economics. Nominally free things are never truly free because nothing is ever free. Free things take me too much time to figure out its real cost. You may be able to homestead land centuries ago, however，you still had to defend it with whatever methods you had to do it based on your level of morality, adherence to the law and the social contract kind of like with everything today for example reputation, intellectual property and pretty much everything. You can’t tell me there is no cost associate with all of that. I was going to write a whole paragraph detailing my elite background that you probably don’t have and are even considered rare on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley or K Street but after further thoughts, I decided to channel my energy to getting rich from “husbandry.” For these reasons, there is absolutely no where else I want to be at now than in America. All posted contents are my opinions only which means they should not be taken as advice of any kind.

Let’s talk about my vintage cards collection.

If you followed the markets, you know many collectibles rise because of popularity of certain themes but what is  equally important is its affordability to its target market. I am skeptical of large transaction amounts with only few bids. The potential for manipulation on these are high. With collectibles, you could probably securitize the underlying assets through creating derives like equity products such as REITs making these assets fungible, however, the underlying assets themselves are non-fungible and not as liquid as publicly traded equities. Not understanding this concept is kind of like earrings chicken nuggets and not thinking about the chicken.* Investing in fungible goods frequently involve benchmarking against some type of parameter and also having to rely on one’s judgment because of the uniqueness of each item.

Certain assets are just a popular social media influencer or two’s endorsement away from becoming big time. If a certain card from a not to be named 1952 card set is so valuable because of reason x, why isn’t the same happening to the rest of the cards in the set at various justifiable multipliers? If the vintage Pokemon card boom is any indication of a high tide lifts all boats in that harbor, it certainly appears there is a reasonable probability of the effect possibly happening elsewhere within similar asset classes.

If you are one of the historical GOAT contenders of the hobby, you probably know how hard it is to buy certain vintage stuff offline. I am consciously making a trust factor distinction between offline transactions regardless whether it is on card or sticker autographs issued by known card companies versus its online equivalents. When dealers have a desire to buy certain items as an indicator of market demand and they can not easily obtain these items from the supply side of the market, that typical is a clue that either collectors may be conspicuously and non-violently boycotting current market valuation mechanism for the assets they possess or there truly are not that many left of those item to sell to begin with. The distinction definitely matters in pricing valuations which is basically just a multiplier issue, however for all intents and purposes, I will likely start buying those assets immediately by paying around asking price. In this regard, dealers in realpolitik terms may just be pawns of the capitalism game for that marketplace.

I will start off by saying I have never graded anything in my life for reasons I described below. However, I been through the process before, owns many graded card and know how it all works. Basically grading encompass mainly two services combined into one: authenticating if the item is real then identify what it is and grading the condition of the item based on certain criteria. Note, grading companies also don’t grade everything even within their own grading collectible asset class specialt(ies) making their service(s) not anywhere close to omnipotent. Their reputation is also a big variable as most if not all are not global Fortune 500 companies with other aspects that I won’t say here but clearly annoys me. When the certification from certain grading compan(ies) is/are reported, it can create a permanent issue for those who may be involved in a transaction, at minimum, potential privacy related issues. 

In my opinion, the people investing certain alternative asset classes may not be ready to handle Wall Street type money. It is not too difficult to review someone’s resume and within 10 seconds know that is not the drop down of 10 or so schools, elite internship, extracurricular activities, patents and trademarks, national competition awards, entrepreneurship experiences and being the president of whatever club your firm is looking for. And that’s just credentials. Never mind what a background check that includes a check on potential criminal records, federal agency hiring process friends and family check and credit scores may find. With all due respect, some of these people should never be in this hobby in the first place. Obviously, many already left, but there is probably still many more who should not be in this hobby. I am quite annoyed by the grading services for opening the floodgate making it easy for these people to come in and disrupt the market. On the other hand, I am also a greedy capitalists like many others who is extremely thankful for these people coming in and making the hobby much bigger than before. Obviously the whole collecting scene had changed significantly a few years before the pandemic but much of the growth in the large inflow of people came during and after the pandemic. The field is still in some sense a Wild West for most collectibles asset classes except for the coins and banknotes scene for reasons I discussed in previous post(s). All posted contents are my opinions only which means they should not be taken as advice of any kind.

Why do people value grading in the first place? 

It is true standardization for certain things can be reasonable in the modern era. Some people who clearly know their craft grade just because they know the buyer need to see a grade provided by an “expert” in order to make a decent profit. Grading wasn’t even a thing, with some exceptions, for the thousands of years people have been collecting. The earliest form of grading services of any kind, not related to cards grading, may have been around for close to 60 years yet just baseball cards alone have been around for over 150 years. Card grading may not have been a very prevalent service most people utilized until the last decade or so.

Why don’t I grade things or precisely, why don’t I grade things right now? First of all, I think grading is very subjective within a somewhat objectively framework. Most of the grading services employ different human beings to grade the condition of cards from corner sharpness and surface conditions to centering and etc. I think there are just way too much standard deviation between the grade provided by one grader vs that provided by another grader which frequently result in collector’s arbitrage opportunities where they crack the slab/plastic package open and send collectibles to get graded again, frequently to the same grading company and may often get a different grade. There may be grading companies that use AI for grading, but then again, AI probably can’t escape the potential human bias either because most of the time it’s about machine learning things humans want it to learn based on the criteria set by the human. My biggest issue regarding the grading is transparency. I don’t trust these companies enough to leave anything with them for even one millisecond, or actually, I don’t even want them to know I have it. 

The other issue is indicators. Right now most grading services give out scores on point systems which seem to be a good standardization measure. However, many collectors believe grading companies were less stringent on their grading in earlier years than now resulting in collectors rigorously review the certification length to determine which era the grading came from and assigning premium or discounts on the value of the graded collectible during negotiations based on that. That is why I believe the grading services’ core competency is actually their ability to authenticate an item. However, historically there have been mistakes made on that front as well by grading companies in certain collectible fields. 

So if I don’t grade collectibles, how do I know if a collectible is real or not and it’s condition? To me, if you are going to be in this field for a long time with a lot of stake in the game, you will likely become an expert yourself. In my opinion, the ones who do well in this field in the long terms are likely already naturally selected and vetted by the hobby market forces. And to be frank, I wouldn’t trust anyone who may be paid a near minimum wage with incentives that may or may not be in contrary to my best interest to handle my stuff without me being involved from start to finish and every second during the process. I am not going to allow a carefully curated collection powered by raw American capitalistic prowess potentially get sabotaged like that. 

In my opinion, privacy is probably going to be more valuable as time goes on. If you are an investor, you may have a higher propensity to want anonymity for perfectly valid reasons. People who prefer precious metals and cash may probably wouldn’t like their information freely being associated with a graded piece of collectible that is bought and sold over time.

Yes, people can know your information if they work really hard and expend resources to do so. You may want to create as high of legally compliant deterrent cost as possible for people to not potentially violate your rights. Having your information all over a certification number kept online likely forever is probably not the best way to protect your information. It could get worse if you ask a store or a third party to submit to a grading service. To put it simply, getting your things graded may exposes you to an economic class that may not be within your normal economic circles. Collecting is no longer about sophistication since the influx came in. Savvy collectors and investors may be wise to come up with innovative and social contract acceptable /non-taboo ways to legally insulate themselves from a different crowd that they may not want to associate due to higher potential negative risk yet at the same time taking advantage of the larger market size and liquidity.

Don’t get me started on the grading cost which can frequently exceed the value of the item submitted for grading depending on the grade that is received, turnaround time which can frequently take half year or more and the “up charge” fees because your collectible is now worth more because of getting certain grade. To get faster turnaround time, one may have to pay premium prices to the grading companies which frequently cost exponentially more. I believe grading for condition is most desirable when you have something of high value that you want to sell as soon as possible, you are willing to pay premium prices for fast turnaround and if you can feel assured that your assets are safeguard in all phases of the grading process preferably same day service. Above all of the mentioned above, I am looking for something to hold long term which is typically how you become old money. Grading services and its industry “GOATs” may be too young to have any multi-century brand equity trust factor premiums and don’t have the sophisticated backgrounds which means it may add no long term value in most of my life-time. Considering there is almost zero barrier cost of entry meaning there are a lot of these companies and we are in the AI, I personally don’t even waste time grading anything. If I have to grade something, I probably don’t know what I am doing and in that case, I should have no business in being in the field. Everything else is just transactional cost like day trading.

Like in the stock markets, there are cocktail collectors and there are Wall Street institutional investors with elite backgrounds. I only listen to cocktail collectors to arbitrage better. Their collecting tendencies are frequently more sentimental than what is required to get paid big but they are the biggest herd with mass. Then again I don’t listen to the Wall Street ones either. Many of these type of investors are bandwagon people and some may be in this hobby for the wrong reasons. Normally I would recommend a website for you to learn more about the topic if you want to, however in this case, I won’t even bother because I could not in good conscience do so.

My first loves in collectibles are banknotes and coins. I use to go to many shows just for fun and I was frequently the only youngster in the room looking to buy stuff. Many of my investing principles derive from my days of buying paper money and coins. Sure, I also collected many other things at the time, however, the coin and banknotes community was at the time the most vibrant and largest in terms of market size for a consistent class of mainstream, investible collectibles assets by far out of all of the collectibles at the time. Obviously one of the major factors that made coins and banknotes so valuable is because they are each 1/1 collectibles with their own serial numbers that is unique making them essentially non-fungible products issued by authoritative sources that have incentives to keep their currencies trustworthy and actually had a real function since they are a medium of exchange. When they are in circulation, they may even come with a “life-time warranty” since damaged ones can be exchanged for functional ones at almost any bank within the jurisdiction territories where the currency is created. Basically, these items as a collectibles is just a byproduct of something much larger. Other people have more incentives to make this work more than you do. All posted contents are my opinions only which means they should not be taken as advice of any kind.

Now, let’s talk about my coins and banknotes collection. 

Money supplies are typically controlled by the governments of the issuing countries and territories. Running sustainable economies require active fiscal and monetary policies like M1-M4 measurement monitoring to ensure fiat, coins and credits are managed at a level that create liquidity, curb unnecessary inflation, stray away from deflationary pressure, create employment opportunities, encourage reasonable and sustainable investments that create more jobs and spur invention etc.  Money as a core financial instrument follows opportunity cost principles. Time is a valuable resource. You can’t easily buy time, at least right now, you can likely only better manage time. With current technology, it is technically plausible to time travel forward but likely very difficult to travel in time backward. A reality that likely make time value of money and opportunity cost principles work, at least at this moment. This is why when I get a chance, given all things and elements are equal or near equal, I like to buy older/vintage investable item(s) from earlier periods, before my time. I am able to do this, frequently at no premium, because not everyone hold the same view on this topic.

There are some truth to some people stating it is difficult to lose monetary face/nominal value of the coin and banknote when collecting currency because even if the currency is no longer legal tender, Western governments usually offers some type of redemption for new currency at whatever the new exchange ratio is. Of course, real value of money could and frequently do get impacted by purchasing power changes due to economic reasons like inflation or deflation, though that can also be mitigated through diversification, arbitrage, hedging and other potential methods. 

Sovereign entities though sometimes do issue solely commemorative currencies,  most governments issue and circulate currencies to provide liquidity in the market which they often do so through the services provided by banks at the retail and wholesale levels. In simple terms, if you are a collector, you could legally get near uncirculated or even uncirculated coins and banknotes from banks at face value via simple banking transactions. And in most cases throughout history, if you simply just hold these for long period of time, with the power of inflation and human nature, you could literally see these assets increase over time without doing anything else accept storing them properly. Obviously there are things that make certain coins and banknotes more rare than others like lower estimated circulation rate, certain desirable year of issuance, place of mint that rarely make these, error that may have been accidentally created but we’re widespread etc.

With many collectibles now being viewed as legitimate alternative assets, I believe coins and banknotes collectors will likely be some of the biggest beneficiaries of this trend long term, generationally speaking. With potentially significantly more digital transactions happening on Zelle, Venmo, PayPal, Google Pay and Apple Pay in the US, in the West and overseas, coins and paper money’s market share of total money supply may decrease overtime that potentially could make paper money and especially coins that increasingly cost more and more to make due to inflation on raw materials like metal, more valuable. One thing about physical money that rarely get discussed is the relative freedom it holds for people. Barring a national collapse or other catastrophic collapses which are unlikely to happen in large scale for the next 100 years in the Western world given the entire financial system is riding on its strength and well-being, physical currency protect people’s privacy, a feature that is called out prominently in cryptocurrency. If you do not want people or perhaps just certain person to know what you transacted historically, keep your financial information secure and want to keep your anonymity for all kinds of valid and legally permissible reasons, you probably want to pay in cash. Cash is literally more freedom for those who simply want more privacy when used in compliance with the law. Yes, there are serial numbers on banknotes, however, in almost 99.99% of the cases, no entity will spend vast amount of time and resources just to track it down when it is not worth it. 

Many older coins that were made from gold or silver had significant intrinsic value that were themselves kind of act like inflation protected assets.  Investing in coins and banknotes are wonderful isn’t it? Perhaps, however, most investments are inherently subject to the risk-reward tradeoff. Also, one needs to remember not all investments work for everyone. For example, if you are looking to sell an item that is worth one million USD quick and due to its cost, there will be very limited amount of potential buyers hence you as a seller have little leverage in this situation and may need to wait a long while before selling the item and possibly not sold at the optimal price. Conversely, you may have a large number of items you want to sell for one million USD. Yes, many can buy pieces from the collection but the time it takes to sell them all and presumably to various buyers will also mean it will take a long time to sell all the items you want to sell and possibly not sold at the optimal prices. You can learn about coins and banknotes by visiting The American Numismatic Association’s website.

Last time I talked about Pokemon cards as a potentially high growth alternative asset, especially Wizards of the Coast era vintage cards. What I didn’t provide were benchmarks serving as indicators to its  probable meteoric rise in value. I like winners and I value my time. I will only own or spend time on things that I believe will make me either better off directly or as a medium to become better off. I owned a large number of cards from the Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon cards and cards from almost every popular set and franchise you can name. Not only are some cards from certain entities hard to sell, in the case of Yu-Gi-Oh!, I lost interest even keeping them “pennies on the opportunity cost dollar for similar era optimal investments” due to a myriad of reasons, most notably because of Yu-Gi-Oh! reprints, whatever logic for these are. One of my core tenets investing in assets is that they must have stakeholders, even the peripheral ones, with a sense of fiduciary responsibility to my well-being as an investor, regardless of motivation, form or substance. All posted contents are my opinions only which means they should not be taken as advice of any kind. 

Now, let’s talk about my sports cards collection.

To better understand why Pokemon cards have high potentials, you just have to look at the coin and banknotes and the sports cards markets, more specifically, baseball cards market. If you ever attended a coin and banknotes show, scanned the room for who most of the attendees attending these shows are, you will probably understand what I am talking about. This is even more pronounced before the pandemic. It all make sense since these types of investments require high levels of disposal income, extensive knowledge about the subject matter, in the field experience and strategic patience to buy cards for often large sums of money, hold them for years then sell these assets when they want to. With that, they can dictate which attributes in these assets are the most desirable traits such as a specific originating locale or era and those who want to make money from the market will simply have to tailor to these people’s needs. 

The average age of Pokemon card collectors are still quite young, completely reasonable given the age of the franchise and its initial likely target audience’s ages. Demographic groups of stakeholders matters in almost everything including in investing. Yes, one Pokemon card owned by a very famous person with a large social media presence did break sales record(s) recently, however, if you read articles about the highest valued cards ever sold, you probably already know most of these are sports cards. Like generational wealth, baseball cards are frequently passed down from generation to generation. I believe one of the biggest issues with sports cards is its volatility, more so with cards of currently active athletes than retired athletes. The problem is athletes are human-beings who live in real life unlike Pokemon characters. That means will most likely create volatility in card is one of the greatest-of-all-times (GOAT or at the very minimum a once in a generation talent and/or there is something special about the card itself that was later discovered that had nothing to do with the behaviors of the athlete. As mentioned earlier, I prefer to invest in lower valued versions of alternative assets that have all the right attributes because it allows me to free up cash by diversifying my risk into numerous smaller investments while keeping my portfolio liquid at the same time aiming for a higher expected value. 

At the end of the day, rational people will benchmark assets one way or another. Metrics like multipliers and ratios will likely be employed. If I am significantly above average in identifying value than others and presuming multipliers are relatively within ballpark, why would I want to tie up that much cash in one single high value asset that will take time to sell when I can spread the risk among my portfolio and possibly get a higher premium due to the card’s lower cost of acquisition and higher liquidity. For purchases on cards of athletes I invest in, I tend to stick to rookie cards, cards in good condition because of the lower price differential on lower valued cards at the time of acquisition, numbered cards, autographed cards, patch cards, and/or all of the above like numbered RPA cards. As long as the prices are properly adjusted, I am typically okay with differences among similar cards such as on card vs sticker autographs and professional vs. amateur level uniforms. After all, these differences do not change the core essence of the investment’s attributes, only its desirability of the baseline value which will affect the multiplier. All of the abovementioned attributes make a card more rare and scarce provided you have reasonable trust in the issuing entity and the industry and the world have not fundamentally changed at the macro level.

Wait, investing in sports cards sounds like a lot of work, why don’t I just stick with Pokemon cards since they are way more stable and also grows pretty fast! There is a reason why investors prefer to diversify their portfolios. Sports cards have higher alphas but also have higher betas, translation, higher risk and higher returns. With Pokemon cards, you mostly only have to worry about systemic or market risk once you come up with a prudent collecting strategy. In some sense, the cards of desirable Pokemon characters like Pikachu and Charizard, mostly introduced in the mid to late 1990s and the early 2000 during the Wizards of the Coast era are kind of fungible in that you mostly can’t go wrong buying them because the storylines are already fundamentally set and its future storyline is not too difficult to predict ballpark wise. Hence regardless of the cards of the sets you buy for some of these Pokemon characters, the baseline values will likely be perceived as the same by bellwether investors, attribute differences like artworks are just multipliers to the equation. 

With sports cards, because there are millions of athletes in all different kinds of sports who played in different eras, in different leagues and who played with different levels of completion, investing in these is more like buying a house with each having distinct characteristics like its location, neighborhood median income level, local economy etc and all these things constant evolve over time.  This is precisely why English Pokemon holographic cards, especially the vintage ones cost more. Not just because of the language or potential market size difference, but mostly due to pull rate of holographic cards where the Japanese vintage packs essentially guaranteed one holo card per pack whereas the English version packs did not. Hence because the GOAT of a sport is literally just one person or a handful of people at the most, a title that take frequently decades of work to achieve and is often only publicly recognized and granted with consensus years later. 

One would argue identifying a potential GOAT who likely had to be benchmarked against hundreds of thousands of contemporaries and predecessors in the few popular sports that actually have a large sports cards collecting fan base, the premium for the massive amount of effort and resources that are poured into this search is akin to finding a specific atom with just the right amount of electrons, protons and neutrons in whatever its required final form be it ionization, fusion or whatever else in a forest in the dark racing against time and with a copious amount of other hunters now that they smelled the money from  a potentially $100 billion dollar future industry,  have to be huge for all this expenditure to be worth it. Most people like winners and matters with certain desirable attributes, some people are actually willing to pay for these features. 

The animation and TCG aspect of the Pokemon franchise will likely prevent it from issuing true rookie cards, numbered cards, memorabilia cards including autographed cards any time soon, things that are highly valued in sports cards collecting. One thing that could be a Pokemon card trend in the future is collecting the cards of a Pokemon’s first introduction or appearance in the TCG. This concept is currently not valued in the Pokemon TCG world with the first edition labels on certain Wizards of the Coast sets being the closest concept. This concept could take off some time in the future, however, given most of the super popular Pokemon’s were introduced during the WOTC era and they had 1st edition labels back then, the ceiling on this concept taking off is probably mild at best. Yes, timing is more important in sports cards investing and it requires up to date information and data to make the most optimal decisions, kind of like what a short term investor or a day trader need to do to be successful in their craft. 

Determining what cards to invest in is a complicated process involving doing a ton of research and analysis on on the athletes featured on the cards themselves including their current and future on the field performance and off the field marketability as celebrities. My goal is to buy future GOATs cards before they evolve into their final form of greatness. This means I need to know what are the important aspects of their roles as professionals, what their personal career and life goals are and do they have what it takes to get there. Winning is not really about luck or having some type of super natural abilities, while both will probably help immensely, for the common person it basically comes down to do you understand the groups who will be in some way transacting with these assets. It’s mostly about understanding the group think strategy dictated in various ways by the opinion leader(s) now and potential ones in the future in a timely and relevant manner frequently requires predicting or forecasting. To move the market, pure independent and critical thinking alone will not work. What will work is movement by the masses based on some type of a robustly or even widely believed plausible built logic that at least initially makes sense and the concepts can be refined in the future if necessary, and a call for action from the bellweathers will lead to action. There is a reason why the term bellwether is frequently referred to in investing, a sheep that is both empowered and emasculated, an interesting dichotomy that makes you wonder if things really appear as it seems. You can visit Topps Official Website to learn more about the sports cards industry.

This is my first post as The Permanent Contrarian, TPC for short. I am a hardened US based professional with elite/GOAT level, world-class FU credentials and street notoriety. I understand most of the issues in the world and keeps abreast of all the latest technology developments, in most cases, as a direct participant. I am also an intersectionalist and a conceptual expansionist who is credited for creating numerous brands and intersectional concepts from multiple disciplines. 

Through conducting a series of impactful, on the field actions in geographical locations, situations and against opponents you will probably never be able to even famoth, I have earned the privilege to not give one quark-f*** about what anybody thinks when I don’t have to. In other words, I believe the world only exist when my eyes are open and my brain is functional, all forms of life ceases to exist when they are not. Hope my points and views come across concise and clear. On my site, I write about topics from a permanent contrarian’s perspective, which is often not popular, frequently different from the mainstream narratives. I couldn’t care less about what sheeps think except for arbitrage purposes. All posted contents are my opinions only which means they should not be taken as advice of any kind.  

Now, let’s talk about my Pokemon cards collection. 

Pokemon cards are works of art to some and the fastest growing, stock market returns beating alternative assets investments to others. Having a collection of over a million cards with an accumulated life time ownership of many more, I probably had billions of dollars worth of collectible assets pass through my hands at one point or another, a terminology I coined as the touch rate. Most of these were identified and purchased by me, along with grouping my other assets like emerging market stocks listed on Pink Sheet, virtual assets including social media websites and domain names, among other things most people at that time did not touch altogether mostly because they did not understand how to create a personal alternative investment index decades ago, when none of these things were even on people’s radars.

I sold or given away things people valued, which mostly are things that will not generate the most optimal returns. To put it bluntly, desirability often accompany rarity and scarcity. When everyone have them, care for them, acquire and sell them, value them then they will most likely not be the most optimal investments. I have a whole balance score card of demands for my assets not just its periodic returns and appreciation potentials but a wide range of attributes that make other people when they are educated about them would eventually want them too. Such attributes include good eye appeal with sentimental values and emotional support, prestige, liquidity to even the lowest pedestrian level common denominator, ease of concealment for transnational or intergalactic transfers, low maintenance and storage costs, etc. Wealth is just a medium resource that can help one acquire other tangible, intangible and hybrid assets. When you have assets to protect, you may have to protect them kinetically, morally and politically.

When you are accumulating assets, you will likely need adequate cash flow to finance it properly and not be forced to make financial decisions on other people’s terms. When you have assets for sale, you need to find ways to sell it optimally. When you have ideas, you need garner trust from the community to propagate and evangelize them. Every action requires specific methods and resources to execute these actions successfully. Pokemon cards check a lot of the boxes above. Obviously nothing probably last forever, with Pokemon cards however, in my opinion, the intrinsic unsystematic risk is much lower than sports cards.

Having dealt with millions of sports cards, I can say with certainty the peak and trough for these assets are almost unpredictable with certainty, regression and conjoint analysis and all. After all, Pikachu is probably not going to get into a scandal of any kind. As long as the systemic risk is reasonable and the franchise is managed well, the volatility of these assets could be a lot less than seemingly similar asset classes. Nostalgic value for you on certain sets obviously depends on when you got into the hobby, however, from a print run, rarity and intangible standpoint, the Wizards of the Coast time era official Pokemon cards will probably be relatively better investments due to the “first factor” even if future generations never bother to watch the first episodes of the animation, though if they are fans, they will probably do watch a clip or two at the very least anyway because they can and most if not all of these episodes are televised, accessible, recorded in a relatively permanent medium. You can visit The Official Pokemon Website to learn more about the franchise.