Is hobby card collecting worth it right now?

It is gambling of you rip sealed product. If you wsnt to collect buy single cards of what you enjoy

Pretty much all card collecting is broken at the moment.

Hobbies like that have become a haven for scalping.

It is gambling. Especially buying sealed boxes. Even buying singles there's no guarantee, the "value" these cards hold isn't real, they're just pieces of paper, so the prices really depend on what the people with the money to spend decide are the "best." There's research you can do to try to make informed decisions when purchasing, but if you're looking to make a lot of money, it's a ton of time to put into something that may not work out. If you're looking for a hobby and not an investment, buying cheap cards that are undervalued and flipping it can be profitable. But really only if you go through COMC, flipping cheap raw cards and trying to ship them is too much effort.

I’ve got a mint Rick Camp to start you off on the right foot.

I would get into TCG if I were you, that hobby is blowing up.

It has not been worth it for me since 1989-90. There was some chase card i cant recall but it had foil on it. Im in my local shop and the owner is at the end of the counter with a metal detector. He's scanning every pack in the box for the chase card. Im like WTF? Then a month or so later he has an unopened box of 87 Donruss he selling for like $6 a pack. I decide to gamble and grab one. I rip open and pull a Mcgwire and a Bobby Bonilla. He takes the box off the shelf and puts it under the counter.

When score launched in 1988 they came in loose filled baggies that were see through at the top and bottom. You walk into walmarx and there are adults cherry picking each pack. You could dump cards to the top of the package then use your fingernail to individually slide them apart to see the names at the bottom of each card through the clear strip of packaging.

I put all my stuff in boxes and its safely stored away like a time capsule. Adult investors with money to burn totaly fricked the market. They started doing the same thing to comics around the same time. I quit collecting them as well.

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Thinking about deep diving but it comes across more as gambling than a real investment.

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I have sentimental cards from when I was growing up but don’t understand speculative purchasing for collectibles.

To me if you want to speculate spend your time doing it in things you have great knowledge of or that will provide the greatest long term chance at ROI.

I don’t gamble so maybe that’s why the whole thing doesn’t make sense to me but there are much worse ways to spend your time I guess?

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People are going nuts over Pokemon cards right now

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Celebrations in a few mo ths is going to be absolutely nuts and a solid investment. Collectr values my collection at around $60k and ill probably unload when I turn 50

I collected back in the 70s and 80s when cards were a quarter a pack and it was fun, but I was a kid. My house burned in ‘92 and nothing survived. If I look at prices of those cards today I just get sick. That being said today’s “hobby” is more expensive than what I want to invest I prefer comic books these days.