You Can't Invest In Everybody...
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Rate of return is very important when it comes to investing. I learned this early on the hard way. I loved my picks, but so many of them were months to years away from really making an impact within the market. Days felt like weeks, weeks felt like months and months, well they just went by so slow.
I remember telling myself, you’ll be able to sell these, just be patient, don’t fold too early. This was hard for me to do because week in and week out I’d just watch cards go up in price… it seemed as if every card was going up except the ones I owned. What made me more upset was that some of these cards were on my “to-get list” once I moved the cards I was holding.
I kept thinking to myself, ugh, I could have made money had I grabbed those guys. And yeah, I could have… I could’ve sold my cards, bought those cards, flipped them, took a bath in profits and then took my initial investment and picked up the same cards that I was holding at a lesser price.
Yeah, I like that above paragraph, it sounds like the perfect winning strategy… and that’s because it is, it’s a bulletproof strategy because it already happened! Every time we see a card go up we think to ourselves, I should have bought that card. Every time! We beat ourselves up and then we think about selling our stash and buying someone else’s.
Look, let me tell you something… You’re not going to win every hand, you’re just not. When you go left, others may go right, but that doesn’t mean they won’t go left at some point.
You invested what you invested in because it checked your boxes or at least it should have. If player X didn’t check your boxes and his prices increased then that was just a player you couldn’t have. It’s important to not step outside of your investment strategy (assuming it’s a positive one). If you find yourself doing this then you’re no longer investing, you’re gambling.
For every Player X that went up, there are 10 of them that don’t make it at all. Take Michael Jordan for example, a lot of people reached out to me and asked if they should buy Michael Jordan cards due to his upcoming documentary. I told them there’s a chance they could go up, but I’m staying away. Well, one particular card in which we were discussing has 3x, since that time, going from $48 to about $150… I’m talking about his 1989 Hoops PSA 10.
There’s a lot to like about this card, it’s graded PSA 10, it’s Micahel Jordan and it’s from a 1st-year set. That checks a lot of my boxes, but I don’t invest in retired players… It’s just something I told myself I would stay away from. I don’t know the market and while I’m interested in learning it, I just haven’t yet. Had I had picked these up it would have been because of FOMO and while I would have profited, I would have also picked up a bad habit.
Buying based on FOMO alone is never a good idea, eventually, the rug will be pulled from underneath you and your luck will run out.
At the end of the day, everyone can make you money, given the right situation. But if you try to buy everyone then you’ll end up losing more then you do winning. You have to stick to your strategy if you want to win long term. That doesn’t mean you can’t change your strategy up every now and then, but try to stay off the unbeaten path as often as possible.
One trick that I use to stay focused is I think about trades. Let’s say I have a Ben Simmons Prizm Silver BGS 9.5, great card to own, as it's highly sought after. Let’s also say Coby White is catching on, he’s having a great scoring stretch and people are starting to buy his cards up. I see the price of his Prizm Silver PSA 10 is $400, a similar price point to my Simmons. I’m thinking about selling my Simmons at a slight profit and buying into Coby White.
How do I determine if this is a good idea? Well if someone reached out to me and see “Hey, I’ll trade you my Coby White Prizm Silver PSA 10 for your Ben Simmons Prizm Silver BGS 9.5” would I do the deal… the answer is no, HELL NO! This little way of thinking has helped me steer clear of so many bad decisions.
Another way to get past this is to have a diverse portfolio. Hedge, hedge, hedge, I can’t stress this enough. Maybe you make a rule, for every Coby White I buy I’ll buy 2 Simmons cards, or vice versa, whatever you decide on, stick to it. I see so many people with 40 card investment LOTS and it’s like is this a good idea? Maybe, but is it fun waiting for one player to pop… not really.
Mix it up a little bit, I try to grab a few young guys that can bubble purely on a few good games and then I also try to invest in vets that have a good chance to make a playoff run.
Investing in younger players helps me be apart of the fast past sports cards market, which is fun and tends to yield a solid rate of return, but it also allows me to have some sound investments on the back end in case those young players don't pop off.
So yeah guys, that’s really it, hopefully, this helped someone of you, I know seeing other cards win can suck, as you often feel like you have to lose in order for this to happen, but eventually, it gets around to everyone, you just have to patiently wait for your turn. Happy investing!
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