[dbpsooner]

Originally Posted by Chryghst

I’ve been following this thread and I genuinely believe this is the best piece of advice in it. The individual with the fancy car feels important because of his car. The individual with an old car feels important because of a large number in a checking or brokerage account. Amassing wealth and fortune is great and all, and I also believe there is moral or spiritual value in sacrifice (living below your means, curtailing indulgence), but your list of 7 speaks nothing of happiness, of doing things for others, or of luck. Every intelligent person who has amassed wealth will tell you those 7 things give you a chance at wealth, but luck plays a major role as well—health, opportunity, support and advancement from others etc. I have known many individuals who have lived according to your 7 pillars and been absolutely miserable as a result—everything is viewed as an investment, they are unwilling to expend anything (time or money) on their own happiness or others, and it potentially creates a very distanced and unhappy family dynamic (see 4-5). Orange jello is spot on; knowing these principles is good, but knowing when to abandon them (if momentarily) is equally as important.

Also, two points. 1. To elaborate on GeechQuest’s point, liquidity is one thing and scale is another. If you’re messing around with 10k or 100k even, cards could be interesting, but difficult to scale up on them once you get to higher figures as you can in the stock market. If you wanted to put 20 million into Trae Young, for example, would there even be enough cards of his to purchase this amount? This is why I find it extremely unlikely hedge funds are lining up to enter the space as everyone says they are. The market (even valued optimistically at $7-8 billion, is just too small. Wealth management firms getting involved I can absolutely believe and endorse. 2. Cards are worth so much now in part because they were worth so little before. Imagine if every Fleer Jordan was immediately sent for grading and stored/preserved perfectly right out of the box? How much would they be worth today? It is the same reason why a sealed 2012 prizm hobby box is worth so much today—because the overwhelming majority of them were opened (because they were dirt cheap), the cards were not preserved so there aren’t many of them today. Jordan Fleer are the perfect market dynamic of scarcity (few remaining in good condition) and accessibility (there used to be a ton so everyone is familiar with them). We won’t see this again. The fact that cards are worth so much today (so there is an incentive to take care of them, and a disincentive to open the product to begin with) could potentially cut into their future value and growth.

Plenty of stocks you can’t put $20 million in either. Using the Fleer Jordan example, at recent sales, the PSA 10 market alone is close to $200 million in that 1 card. There are plenty of ways to invest large amounts of money into the sports card market across the multiple sports.