Sports memorabilia as investments

Sports memorabilia is way way too risky for little reward. It goes up and down, rinse, repeat. Bad investment.

This might sound crazy, but I would only collect dead guys.

Too much risk in someone ruining their legacy

Resale on that stuff is terrible.

My dad has closet full of stuff he collected from the late 70's- late 90's. It's pretty well organized. A ton of cards. Crazy stuff, like EVERYTHING Shaq related when he came out of LSU. He's never got everything appraised, but I'd say in all its upwards of $10k. Hard to tell how much he spent, but he was never the type to go out and drop a lot of money on single items.

quote:

---

sports memorabilia as investments.

---

Objects that can be collected should be considered "speculative"; not as investments.

Currently so many stamp, coin, and comic book collectors are trying to cash in, but the market is not what they hoped.

Read about beanie babies and some of the other manias. The Tulip mania is very entertaining reading.

After you pay off all debt, after you have millions saved for retirement, after you have provided for your family, consider collecting objects for your own amusement. If you make a buck on collecting, great. If you don't, at least you are just doing it for entertainment purposes.

Do this more as a hobby. You'd really need to go big money to get something that generates huge interest. That or something that doesn't hit the market much. I've got jackets, buttons, and hats from the first Tyson vs Holyfield fight that never happened. Most of was destroyed and there isn't much of a way to find value for it. That being said, any store I've walked in with it gets excited and says I should put some on auction. I'll hold on to it for a lot longer though.

I bought my dad Astrodome seats for Father's day. it was a little more than I wanted to spend, but I thought that the value of the gift holding up over time was too good to pass up.

I bought a pair of seats for $200. There were about 50,000 seats in the astrodome. That means there are just 25,000 of these things(astrodome seats are sold as pairs) in existence. Astrodome carries a lot of history both in Houston and around the country.

It should easily hold the $200 value. Over years they should continue to appreciate value to collectors.

But jerseys and signed balls can be done many times over. I know the industry tries to regulate how many items are on the market. But I just feel as if you wont see you value shoot up until the player dies.

I have the B1G banner from the B1G hospitality room at the inaugural college football playoff. There's only one of those AFAIK. Wouldn't even entertain selling it.

You will be lucky to find a Lebron or Jordan jersey with Upper Deck COA's (only co. they sign for) for under $800 & $1200 each. As far as frames, I use a lady in Houston who frames jerseys for the Astros and various items for the Bush's and she charges $290 for a full-size frame (10x better than say Michael's & cheaper).

I collect memorabilia but not as an investment. Now I still treat it as an investment in that I only by the "best" COA's if I don't get items signed personally. But as suggested above, it typically only gains value for top athletes and when they're dead. As sad as this is, when I heard Tony Gwynn passed, I immediately bought a ball on eBay for $120 from a distributer. I always wanted to get him in person so I didn't have any thing of his......2 hours later, the distributor I bought ball from marked the remaining bulk inventory he had of same ball up to $220 and sold all of them that afternoon.

Sports memorabilia as an investment would require the sample size to be small, look at items that pre date World War II.