Cardboard Soccer, Part 2: Collectors vs. Investors
Nothing here is ever legal or investing advice... but I can tell you what I think you should do.
I don't remember the first time I found out that sports cards could be worth something. I always knew they cost something - back in my childhood, that was often less than fifty cents for a pack - and it couldn't have been long before I was acquainted with the idea that cards could be valuable.
All it would have taken was one stop at a card shop. One glimpse of "Beckett" magazine, then as ever the cardboard equivalent of the stock-market listings. (This wasn't a 1980s phenomenon; The American Card Catalog, the ur-version of Beckett, was first published in 1939.) One overheard lament from a grown-up, talking about the cards his mom threw out that might now be worth a fortune.
There's no use pretending that this isn't a feature, perhaps today the main point, of the sports-card world. But it's also true that you don't have to buy in, either.
