Wall Street and Collectibles
cameonut2011
Posts: 10,181 ✭✭✭✭✭
Do you think there is any chance this could spill over into the rare coin market?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/12/investing/baseball-cards-markets/index.html
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It has happened before and could happen again.
Wall Street should consider investing in vintage beer steins... so when the bubble burst, they will have an alternative use. Perhaps an extension of that alternative use may prevent them from choking at the trough.
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
No, not really, not where it will last anymore than the late 80's TPG bubble did. The article is describing "widget" trading, not collecting and only collectors have any utility for collectibles.
No
Only if they discovered Lincoln,Jefferson,Washington,Roosevelt all played baseball at some point.
Nothing that I would get into at this point, jmo
Not something I would be interested in.... IMO it would be purely speculative - but that applies to a lot of the stock market. Cheers, RickO
Well, the more interesting development is that our host got purchased and is no longer a public company trading on the Nasdaq. Collectors Universe is now a private company 🤔
The stock and bond markets have been overvalued for years. (by all historical valuations)
Silver is always manipulated and the entire gold/silver ETF market is the size of a small/mid cap company.
High end material... yes a possibility. Investors as opposed to a concerted WS cabal.
There is always a chase for returns.
Widgits... I think not
BST: KindaNewish (3/21/21), WQuarterFreddie (3/30/21), Meltdown (4/6/21), DBSTrader2 (5/5/21) AKA- unclemonkey on Blow Out
With most speculators greed rules and when greed rules bad decisions are often made. Widgets make for excellent "investment" pitches because they are so easily available. Think of what happened to common date MS Morgan dollars during the late 1980's coin "investment" craze.
I love the Americana of early comics. There is something historic about early Charlie Brown, spider man, Superman, or Ninja turtles even. I have a few of those framed and hung as art in my one room in the house that I have decoration authority. They have done well since all this too but they are just paper and I don’t view them quite the same as coins that will be here 400 years from now. But they are way more common then anybody really wants to talk about in the resale community save for action 1 and a very few pre-war issues.
Cards are a bubble always have been
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
To be fair, the only "investment market" for collectibles would have to be widgets. You can't build a market around things like 1913 Liberty nickels that rarely trade and have very limited supply.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, evn when irrefutably accurate.
If cards (or anything else) have always been a bubble, how can that be a bubble?
Mark Feld* of Heritage Auctions*Unless otherwise noted, my posts here represent my personal opinions.
There is a ton of Pump and Dump going on right now.
The markets are at a fever pitch.
Wall Street is excellent at promotion, we saw that in the rare coin market when investors gobbled up MS65 Morgans for $500 each...then the market for these crashed.
I'm not saying the same will happen with all sports cards, but some will drop that were lifted by the rising tide.
I don't foresee investors buying shares of a specific rare coin on an exchange.
Fair question due to my inarticulate wording based I was only on my first morning cup.
I grew up doing coins/gems/comics but my earliest foray into retail was renting tables at the Silver Spring armory (across the street from Julians B&M) doing comics. There was considerable overlap in the early 90s of the comic and card boom.
Causal observations from the uneducated, save for the pre-WW1 stuff. Was cards were always in an exponential expansion or devastating contraction mode aligned to the greater fool/profit expectation of the resellers with the cards simply being the chum to the collectors to draw them in the compounding transaction trap.
With comics and cards differing from coins two fold. In periods of growth they get made in unpublished and increasing numbers to meet speculative demand with the intent to always be collectible. Brand new stuff that cost pennies to make ends up being declared priceless and rare a week later. Collectors would buy 100 copies and think that the value going up was natural. Supply and demand gets corrupt when the supply side is artificially manipulated or unlimited. Maybe bubble isn’t the right term but a game of musical chairs for sure.
Coins at least had caps on production due to their utilitarian mission and were used up by means other than neglect.
I personally don’t think markets that are pumped/hyped from both the production and the resale side are ever sustainable off the back of one set of cash cows (collectors). The makers and the dealers inevitably will always start trying to over milk the same udders. That goes for almost anything made to be collectible.... Modern mint & first strike guys
It happens in stocks too when the game gets disconnected form the businesses
11.5$ Southern Dollars, The little “Big Easy” set
It's worth repeating what @291fifth said: "It has happened before and could happen again."
There are quite a few issues that are hard to overcome when trying to securitize collectibles. The most basic, perhaps, is simply the size of the market. The coin market is not negligible, but it is small. If you could calculate a US coin "market cap", it would be smaller than that of most well known single companies.
As people have pointed out above, are we talked about "widgets" or rarer items or even one of a kind items? To the extent that your fund acquires truly rare coins, valuation becomes at bit of a problem, as does liquidation.
I also suspect that most people buying tangible assets want the to be tangible. We want to be able to hold them in our mitts. (encased in plastic, of course)
Masterworks has done it with art — https://www.masterworks.io
Nothing is as expensive as free money.
It's not impossible to create such a mutual fund. But it is really hard to be liquid.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, evn when irrefutably accurate.
You are correct. As I recall it didn't go well for the "investors." People without much knowledge buying overpriced widgets during a price inflated period in the coin market. It didn't end well. I think that's what happened.
P.S. I haven't carefully read all the other posts here so if I'm wrong or repetitive...... Oh, well.....
Broaden the trading base and volume exponentially and it can be done. Good luck.
We should totally start that rumor. Who's game?
If they read it on the internet they will know it is true!
@jmlanzaf
@P0CKETCHANGE
Otis currently does the same with sports cards and other collectibles, fractional ownership. they call it the stock market of culture.
You can do it, but redemptions are difficult to manage if the "fund" holds thinly traded material. You would have to restrict selling of the fund other than ownership transfer.
You also have the problem of valuing the fund if it isn't made up of more widget-like items. What is the current value of a 1913 Liberty nickel? If I assign it a value greater than the last auction result, it is pure speculation. A Brasher doubloon?
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, evn when irrefutably accurate.
The real money is in RUNNING the fund:
"Similar to a hedge fund, our fees are equal to a 1.5% annual management fee (paid in the form of equity) plus 20% of the profit, after all fees and expenses, if the painting increases in value. Please read the offering circular on each specific offering to fully understand the methodology for calculating the annual management fee and potential future profit. Additional expenses and fees associated with acquiring, sourcing, securitizing or selling the painting may be assessed."
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, evn when irrefutably accurate.
'It's worth repeating what @291fifth said: "It has happened before and could happen again."
Yeah, where all the Gen zer's and millennials to promote coins on snapchat and tiktok?
I give away money. I collect money.
I don’t love money . I do love the Lord God.
I could see higher grade coins like Morgan’s, Saints, ASE and AGE going bubble-like. I’m not sure if old circulated type like Seated coins and the like will. Just my 2¢ worth.
Just be careful what you wish for...
Experience the World through Numismatics...it's more than you can imagine.
They are there. You'd have to be there to see them.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, evn when irrefutably accurate.