QotD: Does the knowing the specific value of your collection make it more or less enjoyable?

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Welcome to the next Question of the Day!

The Question of the Day is a way to facilitate community discussion to help members ponder the unanswered questions of the world that are somehow relating to the hobby. Questionsj are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like.

Helpful Considerations may or may not help some people focus their answer, these are blurred to not bother those who have their own ideas.

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Today’s Question:
QotD: Does the knowing the specific value of your collection make it more or less enjoyable?

Helpful Considerations: Every item down to the penny.

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Makes it scary. Like should I be displaying this? What if there’s a plumbing issues!

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0 effect

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Less enjoyable, since you’re always scared to display, retrieve slabs from vault, or simply keep the entirety of your collection in a single place. Knowing that it would be so hard starting again, after a dramatic event, it’s the worst.

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Less.

Particularly since I make a conscious choice to keep and even expand it. That money could otherwise be put towards much more fulfilling real-world endeavours that enrich me as a person, or invested in the people I care about. I frequently struggle with the moral conundrum of harbouring “wealth” in Pokemon cards when it could be used for many subjectively better purposes. If I had kids, I would with 100% certainty no longer have a p3rSonaL c0lleCtiOn worth more than £1000, but that’s relative to my own financial situation; that number could move up or down depending on circumstance. However, the underlying notion is that greater personal responsibilities increase the inherent selfishness of maintaining capital in childrens cardboard.

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More enjoyable. Because it means I can afford to make more collecting mistakes and still feel like I am ahead overall. Like if a card dips after I buy it, at least I am up on many others.

I also view it as an emergency fund that could be tapped into as a last resort. So that further reinforces it as a safety buffer of sorts, against real life catastrophes.

The only thing that makes it less enjoyable to me is that it means I am financially incentivized to keep most higher value cards in vaults. Both for avoiding risk of damage/loss, and also to eliminate sales tax when I purchase them (which is completely legitimate and legal if the items stay vaulted from day of purchase).

I don’t enjoy having what feel like NFTs in my vaults, but it is what it is for now… I guess for me it’s the biggest downside to all these cards having so much value.

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I’ll be able to answer that if I ever know the value of my collection, which I doubt will ever happen. :person_shrugging: Based on the value of my five most valuable cards, I know that my collection is worth above X, but whether it’s closer to X or 2X, I honestly don’t know.

But hypothetically, it doesn’t make too much difference. Fire (or water) damage is already one of my biggest fears since I collect so many things. But that fear is mostly because of emotional reasons for those material damages, and the lost value is of lesser importance. I would still be devastated if my collection would get destroyed if it would barely be worth anything.

Then again, ngl, now that my bank account is fairly low on money, the value of certain cards and the fear of something happening to them has increased slightly. I’ve also been debating for a few cards whether I should downgrade them (e.g. my Japanese PSA-10 The Masked Royal to an ungraded S.Chinese copy, like I did with my EBD trio). But for now, I’ll try the different route of just making WTB-lists for new releases and slowly adding towards my collections, instead of immediately buying them. And I’m gonna try to focus more on actually selling my 10k+ duplicated cards (95%+ bulk), that I want to sell anyway.

Still, I’ve always seen my collections as just that: a collection. Now that I have a house and car, apart from the devastating emotional damage, I would financially still be fine if I loose my entire collection tomorrow. Given that my current bank accounts are pretty low, the first few months might be tough if something would happen (e.g. a car accident), but apart from that, I could slowly save over the months. And ngl, saving would likely be going faster anyway :sweat_smile: , since I doubt I’d continue collecting the same things if I truly would have lost everything. I’ll likely get back to collecting eventually after a few years in that case, but it won’t be anytime soon after such a loss.

But again, that’s all hypothetical, and I hope it’ll never happen.

Also, should I ever marry and have kids, the value of my collection and potential to sell certain parts for my kid(s)'s future(s) becomes a lot more important. Although I doubt knowing or not knowing the value makes it more or less enjoyable. Imo those are two different things.

Greetz,
Quuador

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No idea I haven’t checked the value of cards I own in forever I just enjoy the cards for what they are

I’d assume it’d make it less enjoyable though I personally don’t want to know the value of my cardboard I’d start seeing dollar signs instead of energy signs

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Definitely less. It makes it more nerve wracking just having it around and it is harder to acquire cards without spending a lot.

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This is the kind of reason I think people should know the value whether they want to or not. Insurance is going to want to know and you’re going to wish you had an up to date figure if that happens.

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I don’t know the specific value of my collection because it’s not yet been appraised by the curators at Burger King.

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Although correct, imo the market change WAY too quickly to keep up with accurate values for everything, even if I wanted to.
Also, insurance is mostly perfect for things that lose value over time, like furniture. But for things that increase in value over time (like our collections), you definitely need a separated specialized insurance. Which gets us back to: how do I even determine the value of everything, and keep it up-to-date in such a fluid market.
Multiplied by the fact I own over 25k+ cards, haha. :melting_face:

Greetz,
Quuador

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I find it makes it less enjoyable, as I then start to weigh selling X cards when I see how inflated the prices have become vs when I bought it. Even if its not necessarily a card I want to let go. At times I want to sell so I can use that money towards a larger card purchase. But then the other part makes want to sell just to sell, because it feels silly to hold onto them when I’ve learned how much they are going for.

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A few months ago, when I looked up the value of some of the binders I have sitting on my shelf… it made me sick. I need to separate the business side from the PC side. Sometimes hard to do when you’re focused on valuations

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It doesn’t make collecting less enjoyable but makes for a unique dynamic. Like I know if I lose my whole collection tomorrow in a natural disaster or its stolen, realistically I’m unaffected in terms how I live my day-to-day life, but I’d be extremely depressed.

Now if my collection value halfed in value, I’d probably be more happy that I can buy what I like cheap again.

My biggest change when it came to my personal enjoyment of my collection is I don’t keep my collection all in one place anymore.

Even though my collection is low six figures, I feel the same as I did 10 years ago collecting when it was worth probably 2% of what I have now. I’m sure my perspective will stay the same even when I hit my late 20s, 30s, and beyond.

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Its normal to have a feel for what you have, but people checking their collector app every day/week adds no value.

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Curious what the value of my binders are since everyone else looks at them as Bulk…:face_with_monocle:

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I never check the value of any cards in my PC, not sure why really. I guess it’s because I wouldn’t sell them anyways unless it’s ridiculously high, so there’s not really much point in checking current prices.

Doing so would also would mean less time to look for cards that I still want, which takes up enough time as it is :pikasweat:

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Much less enjoyable. I don’t enjoy people always talking about the value of cards rather than the cards themselves, and I do not check the prices of my own cards aside from occasionally seeing prices while reading the market threads on this forum.

Value is just another thing to worry about/ obsess over. I’m here bc I like the cards and collecting in general, not for value-based status or profit. As long as overspending doesn’t happen relative to what’s actually important, there’s no reason to think about the value of my collection.

A small caveat is that I invest heavily in the day to day and longterm protection of my collection so that I do not have to worry about handling/displaying more expensive items.

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I cant really give my opinion since Ill never know the value.

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