MTG thread

Treating MTG cards as some kind of viable investment vehicles is complete lunacy imo.

The value of them is tied to the whim of a company and the (relatively low) availability of high-end buyers for a niche collectors item. I just cannot see how someone could be comfortable having a non-insignificant amount of cash "invested" in them.

I don't think of it that way. It isn't an investment in the sense that I'm counting on it for anything, but it's like any other collectible. At this point I don't even care if the reserve list goes away. All it does is provide leverage in a trade, and old cards will remain collectible no matter what they reprint.

It is effectively a sunk cost hobby that I can exit at any time. Not really all that different from a classic car or a well equipped wood shop. There's always a buyer out there, and I have no need to recoup what I have put in even though I can (and it's far less than it appears on paper for insurance).

I think if you can pay off a 15+ year mortgage with proceeds from the time you've spent playing a children's card game you pay off the mortgage.

That makes sense, sure. Assuming that your children's card game isn't appreciating at a rate faster than your mortgage APR + inflation. It's dumb, but there's a market for this stuff.

It's also a question of how you spend your time. People don't live at maximum fiscal efficiency. If you're making your payment, saving for retirement, and not shirking your responsibilities as an adult / husband / father / whatever, then fuck it. Go play cards.

The value of your assets are tied directly to the actions of the Hasbro Corporation and as such deserve an extra level of skepticism.

People in this country used to throw parties when they paid off their homes. People prided themselves on not owing anyone. There's absolutely nothing about playing cards that requires you to sit on 75k worth of aging cardboard. I'm perfectly happy to be on the side that advocates getting out of debt and staying out of debt versus the side that wants to tell itself a bunch of horseshit to justify bad financial decisions. If you've got student loans, credit card debt, a mortgage, a car payment, and six figures worth of cardboard under the bed you're just a dairy cow getting milked by the financial industry while the media and advertising industries condition you to regard your assets differently than the financiers regard their assets.

I'm paid up except for the house that's currently on the market, which we'll make money on. I save or reinvest nearly a quarter of what I make after taxes, and max all my retirement contributions. My mortgage is currently 10% of my net. Pretty sure I can afford my silly hobby.

More to the point, you do realize that wealthy people borrow against assets all the time, right? If you have a thing that is appreciating faster than the interest on the loan you used to buy it, you're making money. That's literally what the bank does with all of us. I'm not advocating cashing out to go buy power, but there's no harm in sitting on some kind of collectible. It's a calculated risk like anything else.

I never bought cards as an investment, they are for a game I love to play. I am lucky enough to have played long enough that I have pieces of cardboard worth 3k that I paid 2.50 for the pack the card came out of 20+ years ago.

I'm sure if I sold all my games/computer equipment/audio equipment/etc I could make a huge dent on the mortgage but why would I do that? I am at a point where i'm frustrated that the format I like the most is getting snuffed out, maybe its time to sell off, but I remember the time long ago when I sold off and I regret it every day.

Heylel said:

More to the point, you do realize that wealthy people borrow against assets all the time, right? If you have a thing that is appreciating faster than the interest on the loan you used to buy it, you're making money. That's literally what the bank does with all of us. I'm not advocating cashing out to go buy power, but there's no harm in sitting on some kind of collectible. It's a calculated risk like anything else.

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Wealthy people do not take out loans to invest in magic cards.

Sure they do, now more then ever. Do you think when Martin Shekel did a buy out on Beta Lotus' he used his own money?

It's 'Magic': Accused pharma fraudster Martin Shkreli covets rare game cards

Arbitrary said:

Wealthy people do not take out loans to invest in magic cards.

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They take out loans to invest in anything that will make them money. It can be boxed up dogshit and people will buy it if it earns them a percentage.

Ratina said:

I'm sure if I sold all my games/computer equipment/audio equipment/etc I could make a huge dent on the mortgage but why would I do that? I am at a point where i'm frustrated that the format I like the most is getting snuffed out, maybe its time to sell off, but I remember the time long ago when I sold off and I regret it every day.

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It won't get snuffed out. It's just becoming more community driven, and TOs are already moving in to fill the vacuum. Tales of Adventure just announced a nationwide invitational series for Eternal Extravaganza. At least two shops local to me are already signing up for our weekly events to award points for byes etc.

Ratina said:

Sure they do, now more then ever. Do you think when Martin Shekel did a buy out on Beta Lotus' he used his own money?

It's 'Magic': Accused pharma fraudster Martin Shkreli covets rare game cards

Click to expand...

If I recall correctly that came about after there were multiple targeted buyouts of certain cards. The goal of that behavior was to drive up prices and then sell at a profit. I have no objections with buying something you feel is undervalued and then selling it and making money in the process. Buy and hold (forever it sounds like) shares nothing with that.

On that we agree. The value doesn't mean a thing if it's never getting sold at all.

Part of why I don't really see it as an investment. I don't have plans to sell, so it's all notional value.

So can we revise your statement to: Wealthy people do not take out loans to buy cards they never intend to sell (aka Investment)?

If you had twenty years left on your mortgage would you sell the bulk of your collection to pay that off? That is the situation that Ratina said he was in. Multiple decades is what he said. I think you gotta pay it off in that situation.

Ratina said:

So can we revise your statement to: Wealthy people do not take out loans to buy cards they never intend to sell (aka Investment)?

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I want to go back and separate wealthy people from the financial elite. I said financial elite, Heylel said wealthy people, and I quoted him. I've been at home of many a person with more money than I'll ever dream of that made terrible fucking decisions and is now inviting a scrounger like me to come in and pick over the corpse of the estate.

I'm talking about the financial elite and how they see their money. How Warren Buffet and Jamie Dimon see their money and their investments. I'm talking about the big institutional players.

But I don't need to, I am financially sound. If they weren't worth that much I would be content on boxing them up and sticking them back in the closet knowing I had more enjoyment then the money I've spent on them.

What if I get the bug again in 3 years and I just can't rebuy into what I had?

I was being a schmuck with the wealthy people comment, i know what you meant. =)

Do this. Get out the terms of your mortgage and run through a mortgage calculator how much money you're going to be saving on interest if you paid off the loan today. If you've got more than one decade left as you said, depending on the size of the loan, this could be six figure territory over the life of the loan.

Even if you had twenty years left and were just paying off 50k the total interest you'd have paid in that time would be like 20k. Fuck all that noise. I'd be thrilled to turn in 50k worth of cardboard today to not having a mortgage payment and then not pay out 20000 in interest over the next two decades. That's a ton of resources you can put somewhere else.

I know you have good points (otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation) and a mortgage is a much better use of the money then weed so the bad feels would be mitigated. I am just ascared of the memberberries

The happiest magic players are the ones with no idea what their collection is worth.