Let’s face it, a lot of us have gone full-retard and made some bad “investments” over the years. By a lot of us, I mean you guys, not me of course. But I can admire someone having the balls to open up 2 major credit cards, apply for a second mortgage, or just send their life’s savings in a full prolapse blow-out on the wrong card or a blurry lot gamble in hopes to make some flipper gains.
In a format asimilar to wall street bets where people could snapshot photos of their portfolios earlier in the year when they made purchases, followed by what the value of their portfolio is worth now in real time (some with records of over 100k in the hole), I figured we could start a thread full of our lessons-learned or perhaps things we might even double down on while speculating in the future.
Did you blow 30 grand on a 1st edition base set bulbasaur? $400 on a raw special delivery pikachu with awful centering and holo print lines? $6,000 on a web-magikarp that you mistook for a university karp because you don’t know what the hell you’re looking for and are new to collecting but didn’t want to miss out to someone else on the japanese market and pulled the trigger only to find out how dumb you were after the fact???
SHARE WITH US HERE!!! Would love to see images of your purchase/price along with what the card(s) are valued with in today’s market.
Also acceptable but not quite as fun: Showing us cards you sold much too cheap that are now worth a metric-fuckton. We all definitely have those regret-sales but to be honest, they just aren’t quite as fun because at the end of the day, you still made out like a bandit for what you actually paid for the card previously.
I have nothing that fits the first description, but TONS that fits this description. I went back into my eBay feedback history (if you don’t believe any of these, I’m happy to give you my eBay username and you can go see for yourself lol):
$179 for a Base Unlimited booster box
Now it’s worth 126x more than that (!!!).
$14 for a foil ROE Kozilek
Now it’s worth 12x more than that.
$399 for a MP Beta Volcanic Island
Now it’s worth 15x more than that.
$240 for 4x MP/SP Revised Scrubland
Now they’re worth 5x more than that (not that bad I guess lol).
These are just the first several I noticed. I’m sure I have a gazillion more lol. These sales are from somewhere in the 2011-2012 range, I believe.
EDIT: my funniest ones are my purchases, though lol. Alpha Sol Ring for $56 (that’s not a typo) among a gazillion more like that. Man, I love 2011 prices!
LOL @chrisbalestra was waiting for this thread when I saw your earlier post…
Inspired by @zorloth I’m just gonna dump a few of my 2011-2012 eBay sales (UK). University-me earning about £100/week profit from Pokemon cards, mostly through US booster box imports (£150 skyridge boxes, £80 legendary collection boxes anyone?). Didn’t think it was sustainable, too risky, bailed and sold everything by end of 2012, RIP.
Sold a forum member a mint dark dragonite TRR reverse holo, would probably grade a 9 or a 10 for like $40 in the last year. Now graded it’s easily 10x+ that. They did need it as the second to last card for their mint reverse TRR binder though so I was happy to help ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ll go with the less fun option #2. I sold a PSA 8 Crystal Golem for $180 on 12/24/19. Someone got a great deal for Christmas, right before the 2020 price explosion. All in all, I’m not really upset as those funds enabled me to get a PSA 9 Crystal Golem for about $110…
I took a chance on a Pikachu M Lv.X from Japan that I thought was NM. Turns out it was not NM and I spent over $150 on it. It’s a PSA 5-6 at best.
I also feel like not being able to get in 50+ cards at PSA before shutdown because I was waiting to send them in with my friend is loss-porn. I have a feeling its gonna be $50 minimum to grade with PSA when it comes back.
I got major FOMO late last year after leaving the Zard as the last card to get in the set (worst decision ever) so I paid $11k for a BGS 6. Wouldn’t be THAT bad if I left it there, but that card is still yet to be delivered, since November (FF low declaration, so yeah serves me right!).
(FF low declaration, so yeah serves me right!).