The Perils of Collecting
It's never going to be worth what you think.
The Perils of Collecting
I’ve got a problem. I like to collect stuff.
Collecting comes naturally to me. I suppose a youth spent obsessing over junk wax era baseball cards taught me how to do it.
I can vividly remember wishing and hoping that I would somehow stumble across a really old unopened baseball card pack — or, even better, a gem like the unopened 1954 Topps box described below:
The habit stayed with me for a long time. While I was in Germany as a missionary, I spent far too much of my extra money buying 19th century Luther bibles. While we lived in China, I got into the habit of buying up academic version of classical Chinese texts — even though I knew I would never have the time to read them. And I also collected baseball hats all the while, at one time wearing a different hat to work every single day for a month.
In other words — I get collecting.
But it’s not worth it.
Value
I don’t care what it is that you collect. Chances are that it’s not worth what you think.
I thought about this after reading this blog post the other day. A cynic posted it on the Magic The Gathering Finance Reddit forum.
I think I’ve mentioned Magic: The Gathering before. I played a lot back when I was in middle school. I spent more money than I should have, sold my cards for $80 (and I still think I got the better end of that deal), and swore to myself that I’d never go back.
Anyway — the article is actually quite fascinating. The fact that there are some goods out there that are extremely rare means that people conclude that their common goods might also be worth a lot of money.
This used to be a uniquely American problem, though I think it’s gone global. We all like buying stuff, of course. However, there’s this idea that many of us have, this insidious concept that random old things that we probably should get rid of might somehow be worth something to somebody at some point in time in the future.
You’ve got to keep in mind that things are only “worth” the amount that somebody else is actually willing to pay for it. Plus, keeping something in its original, unopened condition for 70 years (like that 1954 Topps box) means that you won’t be able to enjoy the thing you bought. It just sits there on your shelf, or in your closet, waiting for the day when it might be worth a little bit more than it is now.
It’s ridiculous when you think about it.
Stop Collecting!
So what does this have to do with this blog?
Well, I blame it on Dave Terry:
Ever wonder why your original APBA card sets from the 1960s and 1970s aren’t worth anything? Well, it’s probably because Terry bought a dozen sets for every one that you bought, in hopes that they would increase in value.
In fact, the whole concept of collecting seems silly when you realize that Terry wasn’t the only one doing this.
I’ve sworn off collecting. I try to stay away from establishing collections of anything. Decades from now, when my number is called and I go to that great ballpark in the sky, I hope that the legacy I leave is measured in my impact on others, not in the number of goods I collected.
I guess you could call that the Marie Kondo effect.