Collecting Baseball Cards: Investing and Profiting From Valuables

In the last article, we covered two of the four reasons behind getting involved in sports collectibles: collecting for enjoyment or entertainment reasons (or as I refer to it, "for the hell of it"), and collecting for a short-term investment. In this segment, I'm going to discuss the other two topics: collecting for the long-term investment and accumulating product for retail purposes.

Before I get into the aspect of long term investing, I want to point out critical factors that influence the value of a player's cards both positively and negatively. There are so many variables that can drive the value up or down, but the following factors have constantly been the primary ones.

Negative factors include:

· A mediocre performance right from the beginning (sometimes you can just tell when they won't amount to anything significant).

· A career ending injury that occurs unexpectedly when their values are climbing during their earlier years in pro sports (usually this happens within the first 5 or 6 years of their career).

· A one-time injury that good or above average players never recover from mentally, and are never the same the rest of their careers.

· Image issues off the field despite above average performance on the field. This area includes substance abuse issues as well as "run-ins" with law enforcement (does Pacman Jones of the Tennessee Titans in the NFL ring a bell?).

· A banner rookie year followed by 2 or 3 seasons of sub standard performance (in the last article, I did advise you to sell a player's rookie cards if the value went through the roof after only one season in the pros).

· The media --- if they don't like a player, they will go out of their way to crucify them, regardless of how well they perform. If the player caves in to media pressure, it likely destroys them and their card values.

· A sudden selling (or dumping) of a player's cards prematurely for no apparent reason other than taking the money and running.