Repeat after me, CSR exists but I am not in a position to change the world. You do enough by donating lots of cards, educating people about the hobby, generating taxable income for many and staying off the streets as you are one of those who is too busy earning money working to feed your semi-gambling, card collecting addiction while attending card shows during the weekend and taking good care of your cards. In fact, you probably already reached carbon neutral at this point of your life. The biggest issue in this hobby and in vast majority of the alternative assets world is not boy-girl math due to lack of education and real high-class world experience nor is it not having discipline. Those are major issues problems in this space that likely will be addressed when this hobby becomes more institutionalized with rule-based regulatory guidelines. The number one problem that plague this industry is expectation arbitrage. Like almost everything else the common person touches, many of these things eventually becomes worthless unless there are regulatory or wealthy/talented people’s involvement. If I see suspected scalpers buying a lot of items of that alternative asset product, I immediately disengage from potentially buying those products.
Why? Because the targeted product’s growth, regardless how great it is, will be stunted. The card companies out of their “altruism” and concerns for the collectors not being able to buy some will just end up printing a billion more. The initial creaming at the top will increase prices so much that put these products out of reach for many collectors, from the economic perspective and the emotional perspective. A product being associated with unsavory scalpers of certain widely-held mental imagery of certain low-purchasing power/disproportionally vocal demographic groups will utterly destroy the hobby chronically and eventually. Worse yet, most people don’t realize keeping sealed products is absolutely the worst of worst ideas from an investment perspective. When everyone participates in this behavior, the bubble builds up and gets popped very quick because there won’t be enough actual perceived consumption and attrition to speak of. It also means there are no exposure to the excitement from the buzz of finding that magical card, no economic effect from grading to investing to transaction fees hence no incentives from industry links to actually keep the value up. Worse yet, the cards will likely just get degradated inside of the box due to heat, moisture, smoke, germs, bugs, pollution, sunlight, oxidation, physical handling of the box, being farted on by your other half or your dogs and/or cats and you name it. The idea that people actually think putting something into a box and assigning value to it is not gambling with a gambler’s premium is nuts. It’s as crazy as a subpar hood-like NBA player push a real five time MVP of a different foreign complexion to the ground, then turns his back around and believe no retaliation will occur.
I live in America which means I have the rights to exercise reasonable free speech as permitted by the law. All posted content(s) on this website are my opinions only which means they should not be taken as advice of any kind. I am a non-celebrity, non-public figure posting anonymously for my own entertainment on a website that is not affiliated with any individual(s), organization(s) and/or any entity/entities.
How to beat the alternative assets collectible cards market and win against scalpers, cocktail collectors, baby hustlers, basement dwellers, dealers, auction houses, online sellers, grading companies, Wall Street juniors, the entire industrial complex and all their baby/hood/grand mamas.
Collectibles and pretty much anything in life that are worth money must be accessible in some form or way to everyone at a certain time, even if it’s not in a tangible way. This is the ONLY way value gets built. If you stranglehold such real or imaginary access to a large mass of people, that bubble will burst faster than losing number one superpower status and still thinking your fiat is going to be a reserve currency. It’s not even about losing something, it’s the perception of possibly losing something that changes the behavior/alters the shot for all parties involved, this is how the stock market, how the economy and how relationships and how everything in the world works. Either the junk people gets offloaded or the offloading will happen due to all the junk in society. This is a zero-sum game, whether you like it or not. It means nothing to the aliens who are drooling over your “welcome to xxxxxx, how may I help you” $20 an hour wage standard of living while they slave their own giants lizard people to impotency. If you are going to spend tens of thousands on this hobby, you probably should at least understand its economics including your own economics such as your cost of time spent ratio versus hobbyist averages. The out of the pocket tangible cost is not the only cost and the increase in card/asset value is not the only gains.
Factors lowering the risk of you being accosted by the undesirables at night while participating in activities like playing basketball at a park with extremely strong competition, altercation due to mating another primate, engaging in stupid behavior like spending all your money and energy having and raising children and pleasing your partner and not getting paid for it who will all end up being capitalistically or communistically exploited anyway because you are poor and Ivy-less uneducated, or getting your car jacked or getting robbed is probably a gain in the grand scheme of things. It’s the risk aversion effects that many boy-girl mathematicians don’t calculate into their proprietary quality of life expectancy actuarial formulas. Card places are now worth a lot of money which means they have great security and are relatively low physical risk locales to visit. Of course, if you are a sucker, your financial hoodwinked probability will likely increase as you meet many of these shadylites in this industry filled to the brim with pre-industry consolidation substandard people, organizations, entities and organism. Now repeat after me. If I see a bunch of shady people/organizations/entities/organisms, I will disassociate in every possible way as soon as I am able to safely do so. Good investments by definition are not significantly and irreversibly tainted by their handlers/stewards.
If I see too much hype over anything, it’s probably not the best time to be long or bullish. Anyone who who tries to unjustifiably separate me and my money without delivering the required values that I need are likely my world’s scam artists in various degrees. The Wall Street juniors who can’t even afford to money launder double-digit million dollar cards like a real Bavarian old money G millennial who don’t arts or replaceable bananas are probably not what this industry needs. In fact, this industry at its current iteration shouldn’t and probabilistically doesn’t have any real Wall Street old money investing in it. Most of these crypto wankstas Wall Street want to bes are more tokenized Cuban lucky for the masses to consume in an aquarium than Harvard Bavarian old money smart. And finally, I wishes to potentially buy collectibles that may makes economic sense to me and everyone else, has mass popularity potentials, very few people know about it due to some alternative hype elsewhere distracting people from the real value, and I will never ever openly and unethically hype over something I think will be almost worthless from a comparative CAGR growth standpoint unless it’s not effectively and enforceably illegal to do so.