Yeap, I’m doing just that. Granted I have a large collection, I am keeping a very small percentage of these numbered in the thousands just for show and tell. Not trying to quiet flex or anything, it was kind of crazy keeping hundreds of 5,000 card count boxes of just Jordans, Bonds, Brady and Gretzky at one point though in my defense, they were like less than 50 dollars a box at some point when people frowned upon individuals taking collecting cards seriously like investments. I said this a few times before and I don’t mind saying it a few times more. The most valuable thing in life is not the thing you hold in your hand, it’s the time that it took you to hold a certain high potential thing in your hand while letting time naturally pass by. Most things appreciate overtime because most things cost more nominal value to make/discover over time except for industrial goods at scale though one can easily argue it’s not the same thing in sentimental value nor in quality or holistic value.
Actually, almost everything you see today will likely significantly increase in value someday in the future, in most cases it’s just a matter of when and by how much. Back to the fundamentals regarding the FU reserve, why is that even a thing or important? Because there are clearly intangible factors that dictate your financial orientation whether you like it or not. If a dealer see you in a rush to sell, a real American would tell you point blank “look buddy, I don’t want to give you a bad deal but I’m not looking to buy that many at that price.” Can you really spend tens of thousands driving a 16 wheeler across the country or fly around the world carrying hundreds of 5,000 card count boxes? If your house’s window is broken and it’s near night, are you going to spend a lot of money you don’t have for urgent overnight repairs or are you going to quickly clear out the glasses, board up the opening, rest up and fix it tomorrow? According to the G-Word ratio, GOAT cards are beyond expensive. Even the cards of legends who are non-GOAT are going up crazily.
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G-Word ratio indicate dump GOAT cards and buy basketball/baseball/football rookie chase cards of underrated 23 and under players for dollar or less each.
Don’t get me wrong, the rich and the dealers will still be rich without dumping their GOAT chase cards. The people who are the most financially vulnerable probably don’t have many chances like this with such low risk when the GOAT card market is hot. I’m more worried about the downside risk than the upside risk. If you only have a limited amount of money for cards, this opportunity probably may mean the world to you. Let’s be honest, you probably also don’t have a private jet nor a trillion dollar empire to worry about time wise. If you are decently stable, you just might be able to build up a card portfolio you normally wouldn’t get the chance to build as people are dumping their non-gradable low dollar value cards left and right in a fire sale type of cycle. If I were you, this is how I would do this. Transact the cards that are hot right now. If your goal is to use the fund to buy more card, try trading rather than selling outright to lower transaction fees. The person trading a lot of cheaper cards typically gives a huge discount to those who sell an expensive card the person desire to trade for. Since we are talking about trading down here, it makes a lot more sense to trade than outright buy.
Obviously the logistics and transactional convenience of securing a variety of different type of wanted cards are less with trade than getting cash, but it’s not that difficult you just need to plan a little better. I don’t chase the cards of biggest stars from the draft. Yes, most GOATs come in as highly touted. There is only one issue with this. There are also significant number of GOATs like Brady who came into the league not highly touted and their chase cards initially were nearly worthless. Wait, but that’s a low probably event isn’t it? Yes, but just not low enough for me to ignore. A huge box of recent yard prospects cards 5,000 count box might cost $50 or even free. Many breakers wouldn’t even bat an eye to donate all the “fillers” they and their “team”pulled from the hundreds of boxes they open in a day. Storing these cards over time might cost more than acquiring these cards. My strategy is to platoon boxes. A player’s development takes time and the card market won’t recognize such development via high valuation until the player achieve a clear path to greatness.
What does all this mean? I only keep 8 years of sports cards rookie pipeline boxes and every year I harvest boxes of cards that already reached its ripeness and either transact or giveaway the ones I don’t want to keep from those boxes. When a player play in a major sports league for 8 years, from a career actuarial standpoint it becomes clear if the player has potential or not because many players will by then have already experience at least a small part of their professional sports career prime and are likely around 30 years old. By then, there is really no time to significantly improve their probability of achieving greatness if they aren’t on that greatness path already. If you have little to no disposal purchasing power to spare, use diligence and time to expand your collection. Get all the current year’s bulk rookie cards that no one wants from all three sports for less than $50 dollars. When your gambling urge or impulses rise, find dollar boxes in your local LCS to fulfill your urge. Look through your collection once in a while to feed your habit.
I rarely look through my vast collection when the 8 years timeline is not met except when a player experience a meteoric rise that prompts me to immediately evaluate the situation and transaction accordingly. Otherwise I don’t even think about those cards as my extensive multiple decade rookie card pipeline allow me to sort through many boxes every year that can be somewhat consuming if you don’t enough doing that or your sorting wasn’t great or if you don’t possess elite ball knowledge to recognize value in every aspect. For cards like these, I personally would keep these cards in a room that’s not too cold not hot with no pollution of any kind, no bugs or organism of any type that could harm the cards and a place and location that’s safe in all aspects. Just let it sit. You are not wealthy, you just have to let your brains do all the buying and time do all the passing. If you are wise and patient, in a few years you would have built a pipeline of rookie cards, some of which may be valuable, for years to come for maybe a few hundred dollars. You know why I love America, President Trump and the Republican pro-business/pro-human rights/pro-freedom/pro-America first/pro-freedom of speech party sponsored candidate like Texas’ future senator Ken Paxton? I couldn’t do anything like this anywhere else in the world without being harassed, questioned, targeted, negatively surprised and probably may experience much worse things than that.