Originally posted by: joneboneOriginally posted by: startyde
Originally posted by: jonebone
Cliffs for those of us interested but not willing to invest hours of time into watching?
TLDR: Guy's entire career is in antiques and collectables, and gives good distinctions between speculating and investing. Having bought coins, currency, comics, cards, toys, games and legos since the mid 90's, gives advice on the few things actuallly worth investing in, as most everything else is generational and will inevitably be a loss.
I watched the one video that was the shortest and most relevant to my interests, VGA vs Wata scale. He did okay but I certainly wasn't impressed enough to think that he's some miraculous gifted collecting expert. Pros and Cons:
Pros - He knows a lot about a lot. Well rounded. He was able to break down the scales pretty well.
Cons - He's clearly not an expert in games. He says he graded DWIV and Snow Brothers because they were both "uncommon". A DWIV cart worthy of grading? Eh. Then he says he can't tell why one is a 8.0 and one is a 9.0. Granted, Wata does grade carts brutally and he's not saying he's a grader, but he's basing his expert Wata assessment off having touched 2 graded items. He also cites the Heritage auction sale of a "$26k complete DK Jr" which is wrong on all 3 fronts, $28.8k, sealed, and DK3. Sure he's shooting from the hip but if you're citing stuff where you don't even know the details then clearly it wasn't that important to you and you don't have much of an expert opinion on it.
End of day, investing in video games has paid off extremely well for many of us if you know what you're doing. He strikes me as the guy who has a set amount every month, say $1,000 and he just grabs a bunch of collectibles off eBay with it. That's not how you do it. You do it by hunting down deals and buying things below their market rate. You put in time and effort that pays you handsomely when you flip finds at a profit and you continually reinvest those profits all along the way. You treat it as a hobby that you enjoy, not some savings account where you set it and forget it.
Neat video but I don't think I'd watch anymore.
Having watched almost all of his videos, he is more of an actual investor/speculator in many collectibles markets. I also don't believe his "specialty" is video games, as he often cites making tons of money in his career from coins, comics, and toys. Albeit, he was an eBay seller in like '99 flipping rare Atari games, so he knows a vast amount, but not intricate nuances of factory sealed 1st prints, for example.
The channel is more geared to discussing macro economic trends that have or may affect collecting niches, as well as looking at how specific collectible markets have sustained, grown, fell over the years, and how you might be able to avoid losing money of you want to enter collectibles as a legit asset class. It's not often someone gives such a frank look into different collectible markets, and talks about the speculative nature from the perspective of seeing people make a lot of money, and also lose a lot of money. I found them interesting to slap on at 1.75x and listen haha.
