Alternative Investments

[jeffrey]

I had an interesting email discussion with one of my customers over the last few days. He buys a lot of medals from me and I assumed he was a collector or a dealer since those are who mainly purchase from me. I was surprised when he told me that he is an investor.

He has developed a system where he looks at the dates that wars took place and starts buying medals from those wars about 50 years after they end. His reasoning? That is when the soldiers begin to die making the medals from that war plentiful and cheap. He then holds onto them and they consistently rise in price from there as they become more scarce. He said he's beeen doing this for about 20 years and finds it safer than playing the stock market with consistently large returns on his investment.

When I was a kid, I amassed a fairly large collection of baseball cards. While I didn't think of them as an investment at the time, they helped to pay a good portion of my college expenses and I came out of college debt free. I happened to collect before 1980 when cards began to be massed produced and sold when card collecting was at its prime (I probably even still have a few cards tucked away in boxes somewhere at my parent's house).

Obviuosly, to make these investments work, you need to know a lot about the area you're collecting and investing in, but I bet there are a lot of "alternative investments" like this out there.

Has anyone else here invested in something like the above or is currently putting a portion of their savings into a collection hobby they have with the thought that the collectibles will rise in value?

[PrincessPerky]

Dh always wants to do that with toys, (big boys expensive toys!) I tell him toys were ment to be played with and the realestate of my house is worth more to me, but the ones he conned me into are still here, hope he is right about the price.

[jmjj215]

I'm hanging on to my hockey cards with just that hope. Of course, if we never see the NHL again...who knows where that will go.

[terry1156]

I think the approach is the key on if you can be successful. I don't think many people can be both collectors and investors because the collector part of them never wants to let the items go. The collector has a vested interest and can't let go when he/she should.

[PrincessPerky]

Yeah, we got them hockey cards too, doubt he will ever let go of them!

[dealsaver]

My favorite alternate investment is timber. When prices are low, your investment is still growing. When prices are high, make money and plant some more. Not quite a hobby, but definetly an alternative investment.