How do you know what will be valuable some day

This image is of a bored family in 1984 inspecting their mailbox which was bashed in by the rock the patriarch is holding. It turns out that he is holding the evidence of the only mailbox in recorded history to be destroyed by a meteorite.

The mailbox recently sold for $83K. It is proudly on display in a museum, and it looks like a bashed in mailbox.

Have you ever tossed out something that later proved to be valuable? I'm still annoyed at my mother for throwing away boxes of comics from the early 1960's when Marvel was just creating it's characters. She couldn't have anticipated the day when Marvel would be the most reliable source of movie material.

Given all this "collectible" nonsense about Pez containers, dolls, coke machines, obsolete gas pumps and other junk, its hard to ever say some item is immune from being excessively valued by some nutcase somewhere. I wonder what the meteorite is worth?

You don't. Otherwise everyone will hold on to it and it will never become valuable.

But I would say a good rule of thumb is that what's valuable today is what's likely to become valuable some day. It doesn't have to be monetary value: despite some claims to the contrary, money isn't the ultimate measure of value.

As kids, you would value certain issues of comic books. Not all, some. 99% of the comics she's thrown away are probably still worthless, though should gain marginal value when comics are no longer commonly printed on paper.
// I'm not really a comic book aficionado, I only read a few that are important for completing other media (Jericho's story is completed in comic books, obviously everything Joss Whedon did, etc), but I find them to often look better on a display, thanks to backlighting providing some images the contrast they require. It's probably not just me, and there's the whole convenience argument, so comics are going to move to e-books soon.

Of course, kids didn't have the money to express the value of these comics. Now they've grown up and can put a price on it. And there are fewer of those comics left, but that's secondary.

The modern "fine" art market is a shining example of the opposite: too much money and too little value to go around. With its roots in the upper classes of Renaissance society and the social pressure to pretend to belong to them, the idea of high monetary worth persists. But the exclusivity started to erode with printmaking. Today most every artist worth their salt works on a computer, because it's to oil paint what oil is to pencil sketching, and that doesn't even leave the plate as exclusive. So the "fine" art money is now split between chasing antiquities, celebrity memorabilia and meatspace memes, completely decoupled from the appreciation of art itself.

So, in general, what can become expensive is either what has a good chance of entering a high money:value market, or what already has high relative value in a market that has a good chance of experiencing an influx of money.


No guarantees though. Internet domains once were thought as having high relative value in a low money:value market about to explode. Some domains are considered by their owners to be worth hundreds of millions, like business.com, internet.com or poker.com. In reality they proved worthless except for scamming another IT-clueless investor into buying one.
The market did expand, it's just that search engines meant people didn't blindly type in "something.com" anymore.

I collect paper currency and almost everything what is old and in uncirculated condition is valuable. Especially notes of the us dollar. In general the higher the denomination the more added collectors value it will get. Star notes (replacement notes) and misprints are very desirable (especially with new 100 coming up, it had some printing issues and it is more than likely that some misprints will manage to escape the factory). So go to your bank and get some brand new notes, then leave them alone for 50 years and voilà, they are collectors items.

Quote: pacomartin

Have you ever tossed out something that later proved to be valuable? I'm still annoyed at my mother for throwing away boxes of comics from the early 1960's when Marvel was just creating it's characters. She couldn't have anticipated the day when Marvel would be the most reliable source of movie material.

If countless mothers had not thrown away countless comic books, they wouldn't be valuable today. Ditto old Star Wars toys. But it's not limited to that. Some antiques are valuable because most were thrown away as they wore out or became old-fashioned.

You can add my mother to the group. She had a garage sale one day, back in the late 70's, and without my permission sold my collection of 45rpm records for 10 cents. Not 10 cents each, mind you, but a shoebox full of 'em for a single dime. I was livid because half of them were Beatles singles that were kind of rare by that time, including one with Pete Best playing drums.

My worst regret is a Drilling rifle/shotgun that my father brought home from Germany after the War. It's dated 1918, has mother-of-pearl inserts and intricate etchings on the steel plates just above the triggers. After my father died, as I was taking the gun down from the rafters in the basement were he had kept it, it slipped out of my hands and fell on the concrete floor, and the stock broke into several pieces.

I still have the gun and all the broken pieces and have given it to a consignment shop that specializes in antique and estate guns. They've called every gunsmith they know and nobody wants to attempt repairing the stock and the wood to replace it is hard to find. What should have been a $3,000 rifle is now worth about 300 bucks , IF I can find someone to buy it.

I still wince every time I think about how clumsy I was.

Quote: tsmith

I was livid because half of them were Beatles singles that were kind of rare by that time, including one with Pete Best playing drums.

Ouch! I'd have been livid, too.

My older brother owns, or at least he owned, a record of the Beatles playing "My Bonnie" with Tony Sheridan. I hope he still has it, as it's bound to be rare.

But you never know. Lots of people threw away their records when they got a CD player...

Its because your mother tossd the comic books that their worth
money today. If every mother had kept them, they wouldn't be
scarce.

I'll tell you what will be valuable in the future. In the 60's I had
a friends dad who worked for Ma Bell and when push button
phones came in they started getting rid of all the dial phones.
Bell had warehouses of phones and parts that went back to 40's
when they still had candlestick phones. In the 60's they had no
value and Bell was hauling them to landfills. My friends dad
filled up a pole barn with old phones and made a killing 30 years
later.

Buy all the old 80's computer stuff you can get. Buy old cell
phones from the 90's. Software in the original boxes, anything
computer or cell phone related in the original boxes. This stuff
will be very collectible 25 years from now, believe it.


In the 60's Bell was throwing these phones away.

I am like every boy who was a kid in the 1950's. Put them baseball cards in the spokes of my bicycles to make a loud noise. DUMB>

Quote: EvenBob

Buy all the old 80's computer stuff you can get. Buy old cell
phones from the 90's. Software in the original boxes, anything
computer or cell phone related in the original boxes. This stuff
will be very collectible 25 years from now, believe it.

Most of it won't be. Age alone is not enough! Rarity and historical significance is what matters.
No one's going to want a random 90s cell phone. Just old electronics. But Nokia 3310? It's already past the "worthless" stage and is worth a few bucks because if you collect cell phones, it's a must have. And that one titanium Nokia, even if newer, is also worth some money today, for its uniqueness.

Same with 80's computer stuff. Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum? Great. IBM PC original? Even better. Random PC clone? Recycle if possible. It has to be both important and rare, or rare enough for the demand to outpace the supply.

If you don't believe me, take a look at classic cars. Volkswagen Beetle comes from early 1940s... but forget the Beetle. Take Ford Model T. Classic? Definitely, it's from 1900s! Important? Like damn few cars. Valuable?
http://motors.shop.ebay.com/Cars-Trucks-/6001/i.html?Model=Model%2520T&Make=Ford
Goes for an average of 10 grand.

I've done a good bit of digging into the classic car market, there are a few cars I really wanted to have, and some of them, I thought, are of special interest just to me. Turns out not. A seemingly insignificant GTX will go for 50k+ and they don't even feel good at that - which is too much for me to drop on eye candy. I have restored a totaled race car largely on my own, so thought I'd buy a beaten up example and turn it upside down (I just want the body), but you can't even find that on the cheap, and when you can, there's going to be too little of the original left.

It's about so much more than age.

At one time I thought collecting cameras might be worthwhile. Not true.

If you go in a pawn shop with a camera that needs FILM, they just laugh at you. Rare exceptions I am sure, but still ?

Quote: buzzpaff

At one time I thought collecting cameras might be worthwhile. Not true.

A modern, sort of, Nikon or Fuji or Pentax film camera with electronic settings, auto focus and an integrated flash, for now, is just obsolete. It's the same as today's cameras, only it requires film. Can you even get film developed anymore?

But if you have a really ancient Kodak Brownie or one of the first models of Polaroid's instant cameras, you may get something for them.

One camera that could become very valuable, because it flopped badly, is Polaroid's instant movie camera. If memory serves, these were either 8mm or "Super-8" cameras with a 3 minute reel. You placed the reel cartridge in a tank with a solution, and in a few minutes you took it out and could place it in a film projector. They flopped because video cameras came out around the same time. Sure, you had to lug around a VCR, but you could film for hours and with sound.

Kodak's instant cameras were recalled in the 80s (or early 90s?), when a court decided Kodak was infringing Polaroid's patents. I recall my parents had one, and I did tell them, way back then, to hang on to it. Knowing them, however, they probably threw it away.

Kodak told the inventor of the Polaroid camera to go away and quit bothering them. LOL

Then later they infringed on his patent and sold Kodak's at a loss.

Speaking of VCR you can not find new ones here in the states, not even at Walmart.

2 years ago i was making money selling VHS movies on amazon, no more.

Unloading my CD lots as I type this.

Even books are dead.

Still have my supplier of sterling silver jewelry in Thailand, so that's where i am going next.

No. I will not be ordering watches or watchbands. Ask somebody what time it is and they pull out a cellphone.

Quote: buzzpaff

Kodak told the inventor of the Polaroid camera to go away and quit bothering them. LOL

Bonus, who invented the Polaroid camera?

Double bonus: name another famous invention by the same man.

Quote:

Speaking of VCR you can not find new ones here in the states, not even at Walmart.

My mom still has her combination VCR/DVD player for some reason. She also has a DVR, so I fail to see why she sticks with the VCR.

Quote:

Unloading my CD lots as I type this.

You should think of unloading your DVDs, too. Blue Ray players are getting awful cheap.

Quote:

Even books are dead.

Never. I may get a tablet or an e-reader, but books will last as long as humanity. You can read a book without recharging it.

Quote: pacomartin

Have you ever tossed out something that later proved to be valuable?

My ex thought she took back her fathers .32mag in our divorce. She instead took my grandpa's Derringer and gave it back to her mom, who promptly threw it out. I don't think I'll ever get over that.

And it's not necessarily "throwing out", but I also collected paper money and had several "star" bills, blue print, red print...I had over $600 in $5s, $10s and $20s. Then one day, I wanted a 4wheeler...and stupidity reigned supreme.

My biggest miss was when I was about 8. I'm a life long Dolphins fan and had an opportunity to buy a flawless, errored, Dan Marino rookie card for $45. And I had $50, but then I thought with my little kid mind, and realized I could get like 10 packs of cards, soda, and a big ol' bag of candy...or one Marino card. Guess which I did? Last I checked, right around the time he retired, that card was worth well over a grand.

Quote: P90

A seemingly insignificant GTX will go for 50k+ and they don't even feel good at that - which is too much for me to drop on eye candy. I have restored a totaled race car largely on my own, so thought I'd buy a beaten up example and turn it upside down (I just want the body), but you can't even find that on the cheap, and when you can, there's going to be too little of the original left.

It's about so much more than age.

I remember seeing an auction that contained a "burnt" hemi Cuda. My excitement soon waned as I realized "burnt" wasn't the orange color, but rather the condition of the car. Totally burned to the ground and gutted. But it was all original, all numbers matching. It sold for NINETY GRAND.

I had a 69 GTX in 1978-79. 440 with 12.5 to 1 compression, 4 speed auto with a 3000 rpm stall converter. It was fast and got me lots of dates.

Quote: P90

Most of it won't be.
.

You have no idea what will be and won't be. I was
in the business for 20 years and its always a surprise.
The stuff people think will be collectible usually isn't.
So you buy everything and hope for the best.

Don't know how valuable this is, but when people upgrade their games or computer equipment, they tend to toss the old in favor of the new. How many of us have boxes of old Beta tapes, but no Betamax? Would a Betamax even plug into a new Samsung widescreen?...so you might need a squarebox analog TV just for viewing the old tapes. How about old drives to use the stray Zip disks we might have in the back of a desk drawer? Or Bernoulli disks, Jaz disks, Pinnacle disks, DAT tapes, 5.25" floppies? And once we find an old Jaz drive, we'd need the old software to open the files anyway, and an old OS to run the software, so there is a need for some of that old stuff. And think about what's involved in hooking up old SCSI drives to a new iPad, or running an old Macintosh turntable to your iPod.

Quote: EvenBob

You have no idea what will be and won't be.

No, but I can make an informed guess at least as to what won't be.
It's much easier than to predict what will be.

For instance, random PC-compatibles will not become valuable, because they are not originals in the first place.
Toyota Corollas won't become valuable, because of how many have been built and how long they last.
Some things may be collectible but not valuable just due to the enormous supply.
Some things start their life as imitations; it's the originals people seek.

Quote: zippyboy

Would a Betamax even plug into a new Samsung widescreen?...

Probably would. Modern TVs still keep analog inputs.

Quote: zippyboy

How about old drives to use the stray Zip disks we might have in the back of a desk drawer? Or Bernoulli disks, Jaz disks, Pinnacle disks, DAT tapes, 5.25" floppies?

All should be worthwhile, minus the 5.25" floppies. These are just old crap, corporations still have drawers upon drawers of them filled with supposedly important data.

Quote: pacomartin
Have you ever tossed out something that later proved to be valuable?



My ex


That should have answered the question, Face !