I bought every single Obama commemorative plate I could find. I will be set for life in a few years. But if that does not work I will at least have targets for trap practice.

so the shelf full of MTG cards I no longer touch because I spend too much time with the kids isn't going to play for their college education?

Wow. Lots of people have bad taste.

smells_like_meat: Wife just bought 200 Bennie Babies from Craig's list at 15 cents each. We give them out for Halloween.

Sheer, effing genius. I'll do it next next.

Did someone say "Precious Moments?" (new window)

I wonder how many people chucked out the first appearance of Superman as a "worthless collectible".

Or how many people junked out their '57 Chevy in the 1960's and 1970's as "worthless".

"Worthless" is a really fungible term that depends far too much on time for its definition. What is worthless today may be tomorrow's "classic" and "priceless".

1macgeek: I wonder how many people chucked out the first appearance of Superman as a "worthless collectible".

Or how many people junked out their '57 Chevy in the 1960's and 1970's as "worthless".

"Worthless" is a really fungible term that depends far too much on time for its definition. What is worthless today may be tomorrow's "classic" and "priceless".

It's always dumb to stake your entire future on collectibles. Things go in and out of style so quickly. It's fine to collect shiat, just do it because you actually enjoy it, if it makes money cool, if it loses you've enjoyed it.

And I think the lesson from TFA is that you should especially beware of things that hit an incredible level of popularity so early. That's the main thing that separates the stuff in TFA from your examples.

csb time...

Several years ago, I found my old collection of Topps NFL trading cards from the early 1970s. I have the Roger Staubach and OJ Simpson rookie cards - several of each and in pretty good condition. I am so glad my parents didn't throw it away. I might sell a few of them later, but I'm keeping most of them.

I also found several books of stamps that I had received from my grandpa. They were postmarked and removed from the envelopes, and placed in placed into small containers with the years written on them, starting from the early 1950s to the late 1960s. I know nothing about stamp collecting, but I love the art work on some of them. I'm a little curious about the value, but I guess it's a moot point because I plan to save these and pass them on to my daughter one day.

Collectibles are fun. I like collecting rocks now, but I only have a small collection at the moment. Hoping to add a few more nice pieces when I have some time to look around. Most people who collect to make money end up getting burned. I'll only collect things that I enjoy owning and I would never collect anything expecting the value to increase (though if it does, that's nice too).

Beanie Babies have to be the greatest marketing gimmicks of my life time.

Atomic Spunk: Collectibles are fun. I like collecting rocks now, but I only have a small collection at the moment. Hoping to add a few more nice pieces when I have some time to look around.



Minerals!

I think old 2010 web articles have value. Sit on them for a year and them post them as new on Fark for an instant greenlight!

I sold a few worthless programs from the grammys for 20 bucks each on ebay. Worked out ok for me

10. 80's and 90's overproduction-era baseball cards.

/recently just began throwing away the commons by the garbage bag full.

Lemme guess without RTFA-

NES or Atari games (except NWC and a few others)
Those Franklin Mint Coins
Beanie Babies
Obama Plates
LLadros and/or Hummels
(Insert Hot Christmas toy here) that was only worth 2-3 times its value before Dec. 24th on the year it was released.

Actually, some of the Franklin Mint stuff still brings decent money; with the run-up in precious metals prices, their silver coins have been selling at well over melt, and there are some things they had made by well-known luxury goods manufacturers (St Louis paperweights, Baccarat crystal, Wedgwood, etc) that bring good money from people who collect in those fields.

/Antiques dealer
//Inherited my grandfather's collection of Franklin Mint cars
///was surprised to find out that many of them are sterling silver.

Britney Spear's Speculum: Lemme guess without RTFA-

NES or Atari games (except NWC and a few others) Not mentioned
Those Franklin Mint Coins Yes
Beanie Babies Yes
Obama Plates Not mentioned
LLadros and/or Hummels Yes and Yes
(Insert Hot Christmas toy here) that was only worth 2-3 times its value before Dec. 24th on the year it was released. Not mentioned, but hells yes.

Not too bad. I'll give you a B+

How to tell something isn't "collectible": when it's marketed as "collectible."

All of the stuff in the article was made to be collected - and is therefore a bad idea.

If you want to make money off of collectible items, find an upcoming trend, find the items that clearly predate the trend, and buy them on the cheap. Then sell them when things start to heat up, not at the top of the frenzy.

/sold my X-Men #84-200 at a good time
//didn't do that with the rest of my comics, but got more for them than I paid at retail
///lost my beat up copy of Fantastic Four #1 with the missing pages

hp6sa: (Insert Hot Christmas toy here) that was only worth 2-3 times its value before Dec. 24th on the year it was released. Not mentioned, but hells yes.

Not too bad. I'll give you a B+

But then there's this:

By 1983, demand for Cabbage Patch Kids was high enough to incite riots among eager parents trying to fulfill Christmas wish lists. While the dolls cost $25, many were resold for $100 or more.

Not specific enough.

Has anyone mentioned the absence of Pokemon cards on the list?

/no your first generation foil Charizard isn't worth $100.

shower_in_my_socks: Comic books and cars have value because the first entertains and the second gets you around - there are other reasons to own them besides their potential value later.

They have value now because "everybody" knew they were "worthless" then. If everyone had prized Action Comics #1 *THEN*, the value would be a fraction of what it is *NOW*. There was no way to tell Superman was going to be the breakout character. 99.999% of humanity forgets that Action Comics #1 also had Zatara and Tex Thomson. Have you seen the movies based on those characters? No? I rest my case. Same goes for the Chevy. In the 70's they were rusted out junk nobody wanted.

Will Spawn #1 be worth anything in 30 years? 100? Who knows? But there will be at least one anal-retentive soul out there who got ahold of a pristine copy and hermetically sealed that bad boy, put it in a plain-brown wrapper, locked it in a water-proof case and housed it in a humidity controlled room - just in case. The fact is most of the world has never even heard of Spawn, let alone considered it to be something worth collecting... yet. All it will take is a taste maker to stumble on it sometime in the future and boom! Everything Spawn will skyrocket in value. Right now, junk. Tomorrow? Gold in bank.

InmanRoshi: Beanie Babies have to be the greatest marketing gimmicks of my life time.

No, that would be Pogs. Anyone who can get kids to shell out their entire allowance for pieces of cardboard* is a marketing genius.

(* See also: Baseball cards.)

I had a "spirited discussion" with my MIL years ago, when she started collecting commemorative plates. She was adamant that these would be worth a fortune in the years to come; I voiced a dissenting opinion. Fast forward 35 years: we're emptying out her house after her death, and we end up with boxes of said plates. My wife spent months trying to unload them...I'm thinking about using them to teach the visually impaired to shoot trap.

I don't know much about baseball cards. To tell you the truth, It's going to take a long time to move a '51 Mantle rookie card... I'll give you 8 dollars. Best I can do.

You mean to tell me that cheap, mass produced commodities don't rise in value over time?

Luckily for us, my wife got around the problem of supply and demand by buying up the entire world's stock of Ikora glass, which was apparently made in Germany for about 20 years starting in the 1930's. It usually has a very distinctive pattern because of the hand-blown technique and recipe and most of their work looks like this:



It also cures cancer and invented the female orgasm, to hear women who collect this glass speak of it.

Still, she was paying about $20-30 an item in the 1990's and she eventually bought more than 800 pieces, and when we started selling them off they were going for one to several hundred dollars for each piece. I farking told her when she started selling it off that if she dumped a bunch of them on eBay she was going to drive the price down, and sure as fark that's exactly what happened.

Compared to investing in the stock market, I'd say we're doing a little better, but that's assuming that she doesn't tank the whole market by the time she sells off all of the stock. Plus, my basement was full of farking glass for 20 years.

Actually, now that I think about it, collecting shiat for money is what stupid people do. Either collect because you like whatever you are collecting, or don't do it. But don't pretend it's a sound investment strategy.