Barbie Dolls and Baseball Cards - Profitable Collecting

1. 79

   GmaGoldieposted 10 years ago

   The art and profit of collecting baseball cards and Barbie dolls has seen its share of highs and lows. As I view the available inventory and watch the generational shifts from Baby Boomer (1945-1960)  to Generation Y (1981-1995) and now Generation Z (born after 1995), I am wondering what the future might hold for for these collections. Your thoughts?
   

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   1. 85

      NateB11posted 10 years agoin reply to this

      That is a fascinating chart and I have a fascination for the difference in generations. I don't know much about this subject matter, but I would speculate that because of the economy, and the generation growing up in this economy, people might not engage in hobbies that take a bit of money; like collecting baseball cards and Barbie dolls.
      
      I guess that might just apply to the current generation and not the older generations. Of course, the population is getting older too. That might be a factor. There are more older people than younger people, which, by the way, accounts for the reduction in crime.

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2. 60

   FatFreddysCatposted 10 years ago

   Every "collectible" craze has collapsed at one time or another. It happened with sports cards, it happened with comic books, and it happened with Beanie Babies too.  Every time a collectible becomes "hot," lots of people jump on the bandwagon hoping to make a buck off of it without really knowing the ins and outs of the hobby, which inflates prices and invariably ends up ruining it for everyone else.
   
   I can use my own experience with comic books as an example. Comics were a hot collectible in the 80s and early 90s, which meant that everybody and their dog wanted a piece of it. People who knew nothing about comics started buying up 100 copies each of every piece of crap "hot" comic that hit the racks at their local store, took them home, wrapped them in bullet proof Mylar bags and said "ten years from now I'm gonna be RICH!"
   
   (I should note here that I was never much for the "speculation" end of the hobby, I didn't buy certain comics thinking that they were going to be worth tons of money some day; I was one of those rare weirdos who actually READ the comics he bought.)
   
   ...so what happened? After about a decade, all of those thousands of "speculators" wanted to get out so they all started dumping their "valuable" collections at the same time, which flooded the market with thousands of copies of the same crap, and soon the bottom fell out.
   
   I finally decided to get out of comic collecting in the late 1990s, which was a couple of years after the "crash." It took forever to unload my collection, and I got far less for them than I would've if I had sold them only a few years earlier. I bought low but I didn't sell high. Oh well, live and learn.

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3. 75

   Lionrhodposted 10 years ago

   No offense meant, but I've never been able to understand "collecting."
   
   The objects I gather around me are chosen for their usefulness in my life. The things I collect tend to be 1) Tools of all sorts, whether it's a drill or a sewing machine or a kitchen mixer. 2) Items of beauty--artworks that are meaningful to me, whether it's the paintings I hang on my walls or the ostrich-egg chalice that commissioned from an artist some years back (and which horrifically died in a house fire). 3) Meaningful gifts from friends.
   
   I used to have many antiques, but I collected them not for their intrinsic value, but for their beauty, grace and utility. They ranged from claw-foot Century Oak tables to antique spatulas--that work so much better than the stuff you can buy today.
   
   Yes, at one point I was forced to sell a majority of my antiques, just to survive. And it was with a heavy heart that I let them go.
   
   I have never collected anything based on it's potential resale value.
   
   As a kid I had a small coin collection, but those were mostly items that I found and that had interest to me because I researched their history.
   
   I did, up till the fire have a large crystal and mineral collection, but this was because I am drawn to the stones themselves, and used each in magickal work. I could not ever consider putting that collection up for sale.

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