Why It Pays To Invest InHigh Grade Pre-War Cards

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Posted By: Al C.risafulli

"It certainly appears that a well managed ultra high grade card portfolio
will provide a very satisfactory return, even for the discriminating investor."

I would never knowingly disparage anyone publicly here, and so I hope the person who consigned the card that was "stolen" at Mastro is not a board member.

But what about the person who was the consignor? Was he/she a savvy investor, too? Was he/she the same person who paid $1,160 for a PSA 8 Peckinpaugh in the Mile High auction in November of 2005? Because if he/she was, then they bought the card for $1160 and sold it for $630, right? Savvy?

You can sell 100 shares of GE tomorrow, and before you sell it, you know what you're going to net. You can consign a baseball card to an auction house, and you have no idea what it will sell for. It all depends on how many people feel like bidding on your card, and how much money they're willing to spend.

Case in point: from what I can see, if the person who bid $1358 happened to get caught in traffic on the way home, or was watching television, or just didn't feel like bidding, the underbidder would have won the card for about $780. And if the underbidder didn't feel like bidding, the second underbidder would have gotten it for $667, and the seller then would have taken a loss on the card, once you factor in shipping.

So, Bruce, where you guys see a wildly successful, well-managed portfolio, I see dramatic swings in prices, where the "value" of a card is subject to fluctuations of up to 100% and a market that's so thin that just three people can break it. To me, that's about as wise an investment as multi-level marketing.

Buy cards for whatever reason you like, but I'm pretty comfortable with my decision to buy them because, well, I LIKE them.

-Al