Hacker News Reader

Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

If I was going to buy art as an investment I would only buy the absolute best - old master, Picasso, ancient artifacts with absolutely no question to their authenticity or provenance that would restrict its resale.

Collectibles are very tricky. You want to buy something that isn't a fad. Like a movie prop, you'd want to buy the 100% most legendary movie that is timeless, like something from Casablanca, that has been appreciated decade-after-decade as worthwhile and valuable across many generations and fads. I wouldn't buy an expensive sports or trading card. Something related to Western culture is much safer, like the Magna Carta, or a founding US-related historical document. It's very hard to predict what will remain valuable decades or centuries out, so if something is still valuable now after centuries, it is likely to remain valuable

View on HN

The problem with your strategy is that the items you listed have very little upside; yes, the prices won't collapse, but they also wont go up a ton. Their prices have reached somewhat of an equilibrium.

A lot of collectors are trying to find something they can buy for cheap and then sell when it goes up in price by a lot. If you want that, you have to pick something that hasn't had its price hit an equilibrium yet. You need to take a risk on something new.

Collectors are different from speculators or investors. Collectors want something for personal reasons, whatever they are.

Speculators are just trying to buy low and sell high. Investing has overlap with speculating, but it's generally more long term.

I think this is important to understand when considering buying collectables. You have to know the different types of people you're bidding against, whether it's an out of print magic the gathering card or a painting.

Here's a rembrandt for sale: https://www.masterworksfineart.com/artists/rembrandt/etching...

No idea the price, but I would much prefer this to a Charizard pokemon card!

When buying etchings, beware of fakes. Since Rembrandt is very popular, people have found ways to make additional prints, by using the same copper plates in or after his lifetime.

The Rembrandt House in Amsterdam sells new prints that are made with copies of the original plates. They do add a big sign on the paper, but they are genuine prints, and look very pretty indeed. But the original works are made by the master himself and once you get into etching you get to see very minor nuances in the print that you may grow to like.

One thing to look for is whether the paper is original, but even here people use old paper from his period, for instance by ripping the first empty page from an old book.

Another interesting thing is that Rembrandt often reworked his plates, so there are multiple "states" of his etchings. If you ever find a non-final state of some print, you can be fairly sure that he or a student of his printed it. Which adds to the value :)

This is such a beautiful piece. How did you learn about it? How does one get further into this world?

Collectibles have a lot of friction, and being physical they have a lot of middlemen and questions. If I want to speculate on an investment, even property would be far more liquid, let alone something disambiguated like company stock. I think investing in physical collectibles for a quick flip is pretty dumb. Why not buy domains related to the same subject? Far easier

Ok, then I guess I don't understand your point in your first comment. You seemed to be explaining what approach you would take to invest in collectible in your first comment, by saying you would only buy something that has established value.

I agree that trying to make money from collectibles is not the best way to make money. But then if you aren't buying collectibles for money, your first comment doesn't follow; you should collect things you want to collect yourself, which means it shouldn't matter their ability to hold value.

I'm saying as an investor, collectibles are very difficult and highly speculative, and the friction makes them even less attractive. I disagree that buying old, consistent collectibles cannot themselves be speculative - if you wait for the right moment they can make significant returns. But the downside is significantly reduced if you restrict your investments to something that has been consistently valuable across the longterm.

If you are into something, buy all means buy it. I just mean if you are a dispassionate investor looking for a return it is a pretty poor area to invest in. But if you like something - art, pokemon, whatever - just do what you love

Labubu

When I had that level of friends the ones that collected art very much wanted to be part of a fad with some of their collection. It was the intro to getting to show the rest of their collection off to people. It was the piece that guests would know the artist of, or were able to get excited about when giving the current story.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com