I'd love everyone's thoughts. Here's what happened.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by Mark70Z

I'm sure if you've been in the hobby Long enough you've experienced what you referred to in your original post. I learned my lessons early on in the collecting venue so now I no longer bid in the same fashion. I think my philosophy on things has changed as well and only bid what I believe its worth. If I come up on the short end it just wasn't meant to be; you can't have everything.

This.

Unless your collection is incredibly niche (and for some people it is, and that's what drives prices up sometimes, when two or more people have the same niche.), there's always something else out there to spend your money on if you're not comfortable overpaying on something you're looking at right now.



As an extreme example for niche collecting, I use something from personal experience I've dubbed "The Lily Langtry Effect".

Lily Langtry was a popular Turn of the Century actress. I ran across her because around the late 90's to early 2000's I was collecting another turn of the century actress named Lillian Russell.

Langtry did not have as much material made of her as Russell, but I noticed anything of the era with her name on it had skyrocketed in price on Ebay, so I started to look for Langtry stuff at local Antique shops and shows, while also discovering her name was often misspelled in Ebay listings, which caused opportunistic pickups for myself.

For a short while the same 3 or 4 collectors were competing with each other for Langtry stuff and anything on a tobacco card, pin, vintage photograph or cabinet would consistently land at anywhere from $150-$250 each.

Flash forward to today, the competition has disappeared and those same type of items can be had for between $5-$35 each, if you look at completed Ebay auctions.