Future Values

Good morning! I have acquired, of all things, a Spongebob Squarepants Bowling Ball and Nickelodeon Bag. I got this in a bowling league with my daughter. These items are not being offered to the general public, only through those bowling in the kids leagues. I see these things selling on eBay for 4 times the cost we paid.

Ok, here is my question,,,,,,,,,,,, How do you foretell value of items? Is it better to sell the item now, since Spongebob is so popular,,,,,,,,,,,,,, or put it up in the closet for 20 years? I go to these collectible places and they have these toys like Starwars etc., in their original packaging, and they are going for numerous times their original value.

Any thoughts?

Future Values Ok, here is my question,,,,,,,,,,,, How do you foretell value of items? Is it better to sell the item now, since Spongebob is so popular,,,,,,,,,,,,,, or put it up in the closet for 20 years? I go to these collectible places and they have these toys like Starwars etc., in their original packaging, and they are going for numerous times their original value. Any thoughts? Dave

(*<~ By all means, pack it away. Pack it where the temperature won't fluctuate between extreme hot & extreme cold. Pack it where bugs (moths, roaches, etc.) can't get to it. Pack it with mothballs. Don't pack it away for 20 years, pack it away for 50 years and then take it out and ask us what it's worth. We'll be happy to give you an answer then.

NEXT,

Doug ~>*(((>< Big fish eat Little fish ><))*<~

Sell it now.

What's valuable today ? It's a question of suply and demand; 1st series Star Wars figures are valuable, Empire Strikes Back aren't. Why? Because demand was much under-estimated on this unknown new movie, but was later compensated for. To make an item valuable you need some combination of factors; quality, appreciation, demand.

Quality usually sells a piece. It may not be an astronomical price, but it will gain a 'good' price.

Appreciation, or lack of it, devalues an unfashionable piece. Stickley furniture was ignored for much of the century, and the non-Craftsman Stickley still is. There must be something to appreciate though.

Demand is what drives the collectibles market. The Luke Skywalker your kid sister pulled the arm off, the Matchbox Alvis Stalwart you lost playing on the sandy beach (thankyou eBay !). It's by and large an attempt to recapture childhood. Maybe you missed the boat and didn't get the first Transformer. Maybe your family couldn't afford Mickey Mouse in the '30s depression, but now you can find and afford one (I sold an unboxed Muffin the Mule for >£100 recently). These items need to have generated unsatisfied desire though - there's no market for collecting the common items, because generally we already had them when we were kids.

Now lets be blunt here, your 'Spongebob' (whatever that is) is some piece of inherently worthless crap banged out by the containerload in a Chinese factory. You're hoping to sting some schmuck for it, who already has more money than sense, and you're planning to make it even more so.

IMHO, we're seeing the end of collectible toys. The real collectibles are pre-war, when affluent kids got one present for Christmas and thought they were lucky. Nowadays they're delivered by the truckload and carted away in the trash at much the same rate. We're all far too rich ! We're so rich that we're impoverished by it, in this excess of everything, nothing has worth any longer. I think there's the odd toy that's going to make it; Star Wars, Simpsons or The Matrix (the unexpected major successes), but anything that's predicted to shift millions will always be simply too common to have any demand. Spongebob ? Never heard of it. Give it a year and no-one else will remember it.

Sure, there are 'collectors'. That sad, unwashed bunch of blokes who desperately need to go for a walk out in the blue room. I pity these people, nearly as much as the comic fanboys.

So shift it while there's a buck to be made, and be grateful. If you want something to put in the cupboard for 20 years, get a 1st model Aibo or even a WebTV.

OK, I'll be blunt also. I am not looking to sting anyone. I got the item, I paid for it, and I am thinking of making a profit on it. I do not think I will use it. My wife and daughter however are going to use theirs. The people that sold me the item made a profit. Why would I be stinging someone if I made a profit on the item? I am a capitalist, not a non-profit organization.

Secondly, the item evidently is not worthless, it has great value,,,,,,,, today,,,,,,,,,, as evident on what people are willing to pay for it. As far as it being a piece of crap, well I suppose crap is subjective.

My intent was to learn something, that is why I asked the question.

Thanks for your response,

Andy Dingley dangled: If you want something to put in the cupboard for 20 years, get a 1st model Aibo or even a WebTV.

(*<~ Yeehaaaaaaaaa !

I'm rich, I'm rich, rich,rich,rich, I tell you,

Doug ~>*(((>< Big fish eat Little fish ><))*<~

I am truly pleased that you guys think there will be another 20 years... from where I'm sitting the next 20 days seem questionable. 'And we are here as on a darkling plain Where chased by alarms of confusion and fright Ignorant armies clash by night.'

Janice Cabin fever and depression

Right on Janice. I know a Janis but not an Ian.

JHall.

All right. Thank you, especially regarding that collectibles hinge on 'desire' not 'need' oh and that we are being improvished by our own greed [we, the human race, have already proven how stupid we are, heck we repeat our mistakes constantly].

JHall. for your amusement - www.celebsoncels.com -

A lot of people look at relatively cheap, common items from the past that are now valued for their age and wonder if it wounldn't be a good idea to start packing away stuff today to sell in the future. I personally don't see anything much to gain.

There are some things that may become significantly more valuable in a few years, but it's hard to guess which things those will be. There are anynumber of things that you can be reasonably sure won't be made or won't be made as they are today. But I think you would have to keep them for a good number of years, and you could make far more money over that time, just buying and selling things with known value today.

Think about Star Wars stuff, for instance. The original film released in 1977, along with the oldes action figures. Say you paid $5 in 1977. Now, you've held it for 25 years. Maybe you just happened to have picked out something that turned out to be very rare, but more likely you figure might being $100. That's not much of a return on $5 held for 25 years. And you have to keep the stuff around in storage, safe and dry, for all that time.

Maybe you picked up an Altair computer back in 1975. Paid $450 as a kit or $625 or so factory-built. Recognized as the first personal computer and definitely collectible. Worth about $1,200 today. Oops! $1,200 will buy you less than the original purchase price.

And then there are all the new 'COLLECTIBLE' items offered today. You had better want to collect them, because they're made and kept in such quantities that they won't be worth much of anything in your lifetime.

I think it's obvious that, if something is easily recognized as otherwise being worth keeping for its future value, too many of them will be kept for them to have much future value. It think that's true of anything that's made or can be had in quantity. Of course, you might be in a position to acquire something for cheap that will one day be quite valuable because of it's rarity, but how often are you going to get something like that?

Well, I suppose you did something like that. You got the bowling stuff, and it has some value, because (1) the theme is collectible and (2) they weren't commonly available. Sit down and figure how much you could get today and how many times you could turn that money over the next 20 years and how much that would make. They're not going to be worth anything like that amount.

If you want to speculate, figure out what is old, say 50+ years, that isn't being collected but that you suspect will be desirable in the future. Some years ago, you might have correctly guessed old wooden advertizing coathangers. We just liked them and often had to buy a 10-cent shirt at a yard sale to get a 1940's or 1950's or older wooden hanger with a neat ad. Today, you pay for them on eBay.

Or you can try to spot antiques that have some real value today but are commonly available and that you suspect will be in short supply in a few years. It's more for fun than sure profit, since you can't be sure anyone will care about them, even when the supply becomes short. Mostly, it's not worth doing, unless you actually like to collect something today and don't mind if it doesn't bring in a lot of profit one day.

Thank you very much! You response was what I was looking for, to learn,,,,,,,, and I did.

The other side of the coin (from your suggestions) is all the stuff you can buy on eBay. We collect depression glass. Lord knows there was tons of that stuff manufactured, and considered junk by many. Lots of it commands high prices today, even though it was mass produced.

Nonetheless, Spongebob is hitting the auction block in the very near future!



Thanks again.

Mmmm... Not a great fan of Spongy meself, but he certainly is everywhere you turn (and has been for some time). He will be around for a good many years to come, I expect. If there *are* a good many years to come, as someone (Janice?) said in another post.