Big Scissors

💡Stop Chasing Expensive Cards. Do This Instead! I think there’s a really interesting lesson in a collection I just purchased (in North Carolina) The collector had spent nearly a decade building it, but he had one rule that I found fascinating: His budget was up to $1,500 per card (but tried to sit around $300). That didn’t mean he was buying cheap cards. Quite the opposite. He specifically hunted for great players, incredible-looking inserts and SPs, and the highest grades he could reasonably afford. Cards that felt special. Cards you’d actually want to pull out and show someone. (This was his main goal for his office) His thesis was pretty simple: if he consistently bought great looking cards of players people cared about, eventually the market would catch up. He wasn’t trying to flip them next month. He wasn’t chasing every new release. And he wasn’t stretching to buy the $10,000 or $20,000 card because everyone else said it was a "grail." He just kept buying really good stuff under $1,500. Then he gave it time. 👈 This is the key. Over the last five years, his collection appreciated roughly 140%. Eventually, I bought the collection from him for more than $120,000...and he's taking money and restarting! It got me thinking about how I approach cards. Everyone would love to go back and buy Nvidia, Apple or Tesla before the rest of the world understood what they could become. The opportunity wasn’t necessarily that nobody knew those companies existed. The opportunity was recognizing quality before the market fully priced it in. I think collectibles can occasionally work the same way. There are cards sitting at $300, $700 or $1,500 today that five or ten years from now people may look at and say, “How was that ever that cheap?” Obviously, figuring out WHICH cards those are is the hard part. And there are no guarantees that a card appreciates simply because you hold it long enough. But I love the philosophy. Instead of constantly asking: “What card is about to go up?” Maybe ask: “What can I buy today that I think collectors are going to appreciate MORE five years from now than they do today?” Great player. Great card. Great eye appeal. Strong grade. A price you can live with. Then stop staring at the comp every 48 hours. 🤫 Sometimes the best thing you can do for a great collectible is give the rest of the market time to figure out what you already saw. Can't wait for you to see this episode in a few months!