Lessons from Beckett Monthly Magazine

I was lucky enough to have a pretty cool childhood. My parents opened a sporting goods store when I was around 8 years old. I witnessed what owning a business looks like at an early age. One thing I did was build a trading card business. This was a glass case underneath the cash register.  Yes, we had a cash register back then. We even had the journals showing money in and money out. I just came across them again, and it is an interesting story.

Beckett Monthly Magazine was a collectors guide that you had to have if you collected cards in the late 80s and 90s. I still have several of them, mostly for nostalgia, but a few that might be valuable to someone. It's interesting to see the card values from then until now. Most of us collectors were caught up in the mania, thinking this was going to fund our retirement. Even our parents were buying in. What we didn't know is that behind the scenes, these cards were being mass produced. Fast forward to today, and all of those cards I had saved are basically worth less than the gas it would take to sell them.

It's interesting how manias work. It's tough to recognize them while they are happening, but when you step away they become obvious. Cutting out the noise is something I think you learn from experience and discipline. Getting caught up in a mania can be fun, I wouldn't trade my card collecting days for anything, but keeping expectations realistic is important. The experience had real value.

I feel this way about a lot of shiny new objects. IPOs, crypto, the newest collectibles — anyone remember NFTs from COVID? The story always sounds compelling in the moment and some things do turn out.  

Sometimes though, it really is just a piece of cardboard.