[HN Gopher] I need to explain to you just how dire America's Pok...
___________________________________________________________________
I need to explain to you just how dire America's Pokemon card
crisis is
Author : kgwgk
Score : 92 points
Date : 2021-05-01 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| stunt wrote:
| At this point it doesn't take much capital to pump anything up. I
| think the vast majority of early NFT adopters were just colluding
| with one another.
|
| The old product promotion tactics don't work anymore. Creating
| hype via social network is the new model that works much better.
| cs702 wrote:
| We're living through our 21st century version of Dutch
| Tulipmania, it seems.
|
| Like every other asset perceived to be rare, Pokemon cards have
| shot up in price lately. Some cards are now selling for _more
| than the median price of a house_. And yes, you read that right:
| _1 rare Pokemon card > 1 median house_. Naturally, people are
| raiding their closets hoping to find cards they can cash out, and
| the companies that grade and certify cards as authentic are
| overwhelmed with demand.
|
| But holy mackerel, I'm not doing the OP justice:
|
| _> I had a First Edition Charizard, one of the most sought-after
| cards of all time, when I was 10. I sold it on eBay when I was
| 11, for $150. It was a huge sum of money at the time. One of
| these sold for more than $300,000 a few months ago. Like many
| other people, I have spent much of the last few months digging
| through my old cards, identifying which ones are valuable, and
| selling them on eBay._
|
| _> Over the last few months, as people have been raiding their
| closets for their old Pokemon card collections, they've been
| mailing their cards to get graded at one of the three major
| companies that does this. The companies are Professional Sports
| Authenticator (PSA), Certified Guaranty Company (CGC), and
| Beckett Grading Services (BGS).
|
| _ > Under the weight of the resurgent Pokemon card hobby, each
| [of the grading companies] has been completely crushed by demand
| and COVID-related backlogs, to the point that, from the outside,
| it seems as though they are barely functioning (It's not just
| Pokemon cards, there has also been a resurgence in sports card,
| Magic card, and Yu-gi-oh! card collecting).*
|
| Go and read the whole thing.
| carlsborg wrote:
| I don't know if a headline like this is appropriate when parts of
| the world are reeling from a genuine dire crisis.
| aphextron wrote:
| It's a canary in the coalmine for the entire US economy. We're
| going full Zimbabwe at this rate.
| [deleted]
| cung wrote:
| Anybody else get the feeling that this is just pokemon marketing?
|
| I think the biggest clue is that Youtubers who talk about brands
| only for money, such as Logan Paul, are suddenly head over heals
| about Pokemon(tm) trading cards.
| sanqui wrote:
| The Pokemon Company doesn't make any money from 10, 20 years
| old Pokemon cards old on Ebay, the kinds the article is talking
| about. As far as I know trading card game makers even ban older
| cards from tournaments in order to sell a steady flow of new
| cards. So they have no stake in their value.
| ansible wrote:
| Except that a healthy trade in older cards ensures that
| demand will continue for the presently sold ones. The buyers
| hope the cards they buy today will appreciate in value.
| itronitron wrote:
| It's more of a guilty pleasure for some and an easy gift.
| They're fairly high quality and easy to store so they
| accumulate over time.
|
| Three years ago, one of my online gamer friends was sorting and
| organizing their older brother's pokemon card collection and
| the final count was well over 5,000 cards. They were in the
| process of building a website to sell them off but I think the
| brother got back from college and shut it down. Hopefully they
| are getting them graded.
| ageitgey wrote:
| It's not a fake craze totally pumped up by marketing, if that's
| what you mean. Pokemon cards are definitely at a fever pitch
| right now. Just go to your local Walmart and watch people
| camping out for them every week.
|
| My theory is that people like Logan Paul are involved with them
| because they are currently hot and zooming up in price, not the
| reverse. But I guess them being involved amplifies the hype and
| keeps the hype train rolling, so who knows where it begins and
| ends.
| theklub wrote:
| Could be funded by someone, but really many collectible markets
| are insane right now, MTG, even basketball cards are going for
| insane prices.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Unless there is a central exchange showing it's a deep,
| liquid market, I assume this is irrational exuberance for a
| small number of people which makes for good clickbait.
| [deleted]
| vageli wrote:
| The article mentions that card grading services themselves
| have stated that demand for their services is
| unprecedented.
|
| > At the time of this writing, PSA was receiving more cards
| every five days (over 500,000 per business week) than what
| we used to receive every three months.
|
| Of course, the number of cards submitted for grading is not
| an indicator of market depth, but clearly something is
| going on.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| I wonder if people are counterfeiting the cards. If they
| stay away from the high value cards and stick with middle
| of the road they could probably make a fortune before
| anyone notices.
| cehrlich wrote:
| In Europe there is cardmarket.com which exposes a lot of
| transaction data. However sales of the most high end MtG
| stuff are usually done elsewhere to save on transaction
| fees etc.
| dageshi wrote:
| https://youtu.be/VIgcpbN7xfM?t=4597
|
| I don't think it's marketing. It seems like the people who were
| scalping sneakers/graphics cards/ps5's have added to the
| already existing lunatics who are into Pokemon.
| vsskanth wrote:
| Could somebody link me to a resource that explains the economics
| behind these collectibles ? (NFTs, trading cards etc. not art or
| rare items of historical significance)
|
| Whatever I read either concludes scam or a store of value, but
| doesn't seem to explain the large amounts of money sloshing
| around in these.
| Ekaros wrote:
| FOMO is a big thing. They have appreciated so everyone thinks
| they keep doing that. Nostalgia is factor too and people who
| were interested in these in childhood now have extra cash.
|
| Now I wonder pull of some of these for current and next
| generation and how will that affect the prices in long term,
| probably there won't be enough pressure to keep thing going at
| some point. I should probably check some graphs of low to
| medium end classic car pricing by decade... Just to see how
| future might look like.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| People do think these cards are art and they are of historical
| interest to them.
| vsskanth wrote:
| Fair enough
| jointpdf wrote:
| Being a chronic procrastinator and lazy gift planner, a few years
| ago I was searching for a last-minute Christmas gift for my
| nephews. I retrieved my old Pokemon card collection from the
| closet, wrapped it up, and called it a day.
|
| I felt mildly bad for not being more thoughtful at the time, but
| now it appears that I gifted them tens of thousands of dollars in
| value. Many of them were the rare 1st edition / shadowless
| versions.
|
| Someone please tell me where to pick up my Uncle of the Year
| award.
| goldenkey wrote:
| You don't become Uncle of the Year until you send the article
| to your nephews.../withholds award
| egypturnash wrote:
| Lately I have been feeling like the economy just _broke_ on a
| fundamental level over the past year. The vast amount of money
| sloshing around NFTs are a symptom. And this? This is another
| symptom.
|
| The niche industry of "grading trading cards for collectible
| value" is _completely overflowing_. Prices for this service are
| skyrocketing because the demand far outstrips the availability.
|
| Meanwhile we _still_ don 't have a minimum wage that is anything
| like livable. $15/h was proposed as a sensible raise _ten years
| ago_ from the current federal minimum of $7 and inflation has not
| stopped in the intervening time - online inflation calculators
| say the modern number would be $18.22.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Lately I have been feeling like the economy just broke on a
| fundamental level over the past year.
|
| There is something seriously broken for _years_ now:
| unsustainably low interest rates drive a _lot_ of money in
| desperate search for the most minuscule interest rates.
|
| Venture capital in institutional form beyond former founders
| who got rich and want to return the favor would not exist -
| certainly not millions of dollars for a company called Yo. Real
| estate prices both for buy and rent worldwide are only
| affordable for those who are mega-rich as investors are the
| only ones who can put up the cash, and it's beginning to go the
| same way in agricultural land. Stock prices, despite a
| disastrous raging pandemic, are at all-time highs.
|
| It's madness.
| clairity wrote:
| minimum wage is a crutch to keep the system largely the way it
| is and trickle some crumbs down to the lower classes to stay a
| revolt. instead, we need to realign incentives so that labor is
| on equal footing with capital (e.g., enforce transparency on
| the labor market). in addition, the tax and regulatory system
| should be overhauled to actively promote a broader distribution
| of capital to encourage creativity, wider risk-taking,
| resiliency, robustness, and fairness.
|
| we need to stop looking at simplistic crutches like the minimum
| wage (ubi too) as wins, as they further entrench systemic
| biases rather than alleviate them. don't let moneyed interests
| buy us off in favor of these biases for pennies on the dollar.
| opo wrote:
| >...$15/h was proposed as a sensible raise ten years ago
|
| Sensible? Different states and different parts of states have
| vastly different costs of living. The average wage in San
| Francisco is going to be different than rural Alabama. The non
| partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the
| proposed 2021 increase to $15 would have caused a loss of 1.4
| million jobs. (And obviously would have been even a bigger
| effect 10 years ago.)
|
| >...online inflation calculators say the modern number would be
| $18.22.
|
| No, that is wrong.
|
| The minimum wage started at .25 in 1938. If it had followed
| inflation it would be at $4.70.
|
| The last time it was adjusted was 2009. If it had been adjusted
| for inflation since then, it would be about $8.95.
| opheliate wrote:
| > No, that is wrong. [...] The last time it was adjusted was
| 2009. If it had been adjusted for inflation since then, it
| would be about $8.95.
|
| I think you've misunderstood egypturnash's comment here.
| They're saying that if the $15 dollar minimum wage proposed
| in 2010 had been adjusted for inflation since then, it would
| now be equivalent to $18.22. If you check an inflation
| calculator, $15 in 2010 is equivalent in purchasing power to
| $18.22 in 2021. The argument is not that the actual minimum
| wage of 2010 would now be equivalent to $18.22 today.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This conversation about what minimum wage should be always
| devolves into useless bickering about location and which
| inflation statistic to use.
|
| A more productive conversation would be to define the minimum
| quality of life that one should have, then calculate the cost
| of it, then divide by how many hours one "should" work to
| achieve that quality of life.
|
| Should a person be able to own land in a tier 1/2/3
| urban/suburban area? Should a person be entitled to
| healthcare with a certain out of pocket
| maximums(gold/silver/bronze)? Should someone be able to
| afford daycare for infants? How much should one have saved up
| by retirement date (which brings up its own cost calculation
| for expenses during retirement)?
| djbebs wrote:
| >A more productive conversation would be to define the
| minimum quality of life that one should have, then
| calculate the cost of it, then divide by how many hours one
| "should" work to achieve that quality of life.
|
| That's not productive at all for the simple fact that you
| cannot legislate people into wealth.
|
| The real minimum wage is and will always be zero, because
| that is how much workers who are less productive than the
| legal minimum will get.
|
| Let's be clear as to what a minimum wage actually is, it's
| simply and exclusively making employing unproductive people
| illegal.
|
| It does not, and can not ever help low value added workers
| for the simple reason that all it does is prohibit them
| from working.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > Let's be clear as to what a minimum wage actually is,
| it's simply and exclusively making employing unproductive
| people illegal.
|
| It also gives raises to those whose productivity exceeds
| their negotiating power.
| djbebs wrote:
| At the expense of equal losses of employment from people
| competing for those jobs.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| I don't understand what you mean, can you elaborate?
| faitswulff wrote:
| Eh. Were you around for the Beanie Baby craze? Or Tickle Me
| Elmo? These things come and go.
| echelon wrote:
| Pokemon cards have been around since the 90's, and rare
| Pokemon cards have always had appeal and commanded high
| value.
|
| This is less like Beanie Babies and more like the rare Magic
| the Gathering card economy. (Which is also a thing.)
|
| The demographics are different too. Beanie Babies was mostly
| a suburban mom thing that came and went, whereas Pokemon
| cards appeal to computer nerds - many of whom have high
| paying engineer salaries.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Meanwhile we still don't have a minimum wage that is anything
| like livable.
|
| Why should the minimum wage be livable on its own? The minimum
| _income_ obviously should, but why should people who can't
| currently provide labor worth a "livable" wage in the market be
| excluded from productive engagement in the economy?
|
| The minimum wage is a crude hack to prevent economic coercion
| of low-negotiating-power labor by capital, but a UBI funded by
| progressive income taxes which treat capital income similarly
| to other income, would serve that purpose more effectively.
| lumost wrote:
| Minimum wages also provide a price floor on labor. If I make
| 21 an hour managing a Starbucks, then I make 3x the minimum
| wage.
|
| I'd suspect that the owner values labor in multiples of the
| minimum, if the minimum wage were cut in half I'd expect the
| managers rate to similarly fall.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'd suspect that the owner values labor in multiples of
| the minimum
|
| For low-bargaining power labor, having a progression from
| the minimum is probably a factor; OTOH, UBI eliminates the
| economic coercion that is a major contributor to low end
| labor having low bargaining power.
|
| For labor what the combination of oversupply and economic
| coercion doesn't overwhelm normal market factors,
| competition among purchasers should result in wages @ the
| marginal value to the employer added.
| habosa wrote:
| 100%, something about supply and demand fundamentally broke
| during this pandemic and may never return to normal.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| $18.22 per hour would exceed the _median_ wage in the
| _majority_ of States. I think it is safe to assert that what
| constitutes a "livable wage" is much lower than this number
| _ipso facto_. Not everyone lives on the west coast. There is a
| lot of evidence that the locale-adjusted livable wage is much
| lower than the numbers often thrown around.
|
| Per the US government, which tracks what people in different
| deciles _actually_ spend on various things in surprising
| detail, the median US household has ~$1,000 in cash left over
| every month after all ordinary expenditures.
|
| People consistently overestimate the cost of living in large
| parts of the US because they only visit the very expensive
| parts and imagine everyone spends money like they do. I have a
| long-time friend, a single mother with no outside financial
| support, who was able to buy a condo in a decent school
| district in a major midwestern metro on ~$15/hr with prudent
| planning. It took her a long time and it isn't in a suburb
| where bougie tech people would want to live but she seems
| pretty pleased with herself. I will admit to being surprised
| when she told me but she'd actually figured it all out within
| her constraints and was able to successfully work toward that
| goal on that wage. The way most people talk about it, this
| should be literally impossible.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| > People consistently overestimate the cost of living in
| large parts of the US
|
| I'm sure there are parts of the US you can get by with less
| than $3 wage. I think out of the 600000 homeless people a
| fair share manages to do that without dying either. Doesn't
| mean you should.
|
| > who was able to buy a condo in a decent school district in
| a major midwestern metro on ~$15/hr with prudent planning.
|
| ok, sure but a lot of context is missing.
|
| > It took her a long time
|
| Is it paid off? How long will it take her to pay it off? If
| it is how did that happen? How much was the Condo. If not,
| what happens if she misses one payment?
| JamesBarney wrote:
| My wife sold a nice condo for 50k a couple years ago. It
| was to a single woman who'd never made more than $10 an
| hour.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Which is about right according to the 3x your salary
| equation.
|
| Not sure what market that's in but my partner paid $150k
| in 2004 for a condo just ITP of Atlanta behind a run down
| shopping center in a gentrified neighborhood, the
| neighborhood still ain't great but the condo today it's
| worth around $250k which would require you to make around
| $40 an hour.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| It was in Houston. It was in a suburb that wasn't great
| but wasn't crime ridden either.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Per the US government, which tracks what people in
| different deciles actually spend on various things in
| surprising detail, the median US household has ~$1,000 in
| cash left over every month after all ordinary expenditures.
|
| I'm really not trying to be the "citation needed" dick, but I
| would genuinely love to look at the source for this. What I
| found from googling was a hodgepodge of unreliable
| information, or studies that are decades old.
|
| EDIT - just went straight to the source, since articles
| linking the source couldn't find it.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables/calendar-year/mean-item-
| share...
|
| It roughly lines up, although it seems to be trending down
| recently.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| It is a standard extract from the US Bureau of Labor &
| Statistics. Among other things, they collect statistics on
| how much each income decile actually spends on different
| things in surprisingly granular detail.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| https://www.fool.com/amp/investing/general/2015/10/18/the-
| av...
|
| These aren't those exact numbers but they're close enough
| to make the $1,000 number seem realistic.
| [deleted]
| Others wrote:
| I think this comment implicitly assumes that just because
| people survive on less than 18, it's livable
|
| That's not necessarily true, since many people around or
| below the poverty line rely on government assistance to
| survive.
|
| Also, the federal minimum is so low and our social safety net
| is so weak (virtually non existent), many people would be
| instantly screwed by any sort of drastic/expensive event.
| (Like unexpected illness or the loss of a job or a car
| accident.) Is a wage livable if you can't live through times
| of trouble?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| How are you calculating the left over income? Going to the
| BLS tables that Judgmentality linked to, specifically this
| one (https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables/calendar-year/mean-item-
| share...) showing income and spending by decile from 2019, it
| isn't until 6th decile that after-tax income for the mean
| household is greater than expenditures. Everyone in the lower
| half of American income spends more than they earn. It isn't
| until 8th decile that after-tax income exceeds expenditures
| by more than $1,000 a month. Those numbers are $93,571 and
| $75,945 annually, for $1,468 excess. In 7th decile, they're
| $74,234 and $66,435, for $649 monthly leftover.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| That BLS table contains _all_ expenditure categories they
| track, including expenses which are not "ordinary" in BLS
| parlance, which is incorrect for these purposes. An
| expenditure is "ordinary" if the vast majority of Americans
| spend part of their income on it, regardless of how or how
| much people spend -- a lot of objectively luxury spending
| is classified as ordinary. In practice, ordinary
| expenditures captures every kind of reasonable living
| expense most people think of as typical for living in
| America, with no frugality implied.
|
| The BLS calculates discretionary income by subtracting all
| _ordinary_ expenditures from income in a given decile.
| Which is ~$1,000 /month for the median household. Some of
| that leftover money may be spent on non-ordinary
| expenditures, like the odd expensive hobby or lifestyle
| flex, which is _also_ captured in this table but is not
| included in the cost of living an ordinary life. I find
| this to be an eminently reasonable approach to inductively
| measuring the cost of an ordinary life without making a
| judgement if some spending is excessive or luxury. Spending
| money on a car is an ordinary expense, the BLS doesn 't
| care if it is a Honda or a Ferrari, both are included.
|
| This explains another apparent anomaly as well: ~35% of
| households have no meaningful discretionary income, yet
| only about ~15% (per Federal Reserve studies) have
| difficulty paying their bills. Because there is a
| substantial amount of luxury spending padding the ordinary
| costs of living, households in the 15-35% range have
| significant elasticity in how much they spend in some of
| these categories.
| marcusverus wrote:
| I assume the gp is referring to https://livingwage.mit.edu/.
| The fact that it is A) hosted on a .edu domain and B) is
| associated with MIT, is enough for most folks to blindly
| accept its outputs as some kind scientific truth. Folks love
| a good appeal to authority.
|
| The calculator is pretty strange, though. A quick glance
| under the hood reveals that the calculator goes well out of
| its way to inflate the cost of living which is used to
| calculate the 'living wage' in a given area. They consider a
| mobile phone as a basic need, which makes sense. But when
| they calculated the cost of a mobile phone, they included the
| price of a new $200 phone every 2 years, and a plan that
| includes 10GB of mobile data per month! As a result, the
| expected monthly cost of a phone was ~3x what I pay. When
| pricing broadband internet, they said $60/mo was the lowest
| they could find in my area, which again was ~3x my own
| monthly expense. The transportation allowance was so high as
| to be roughly equivalent to the payment+insurance on a 1-2
| year old Toyota Corolla. For the food allowance, they
| arbitrarily chose the 'second cheapest' FDA approved balanced
| meal plan price scheme, which added $60/mo in expenses for no
| reason whatsoever. That's where I quit investigating, but I
| would be surprised if those are the only living expenses
| which were so inflated.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I'm sorry but I looked a bit too and I findi your
| criticisms a bit unconvincing. The mobile plan may be a bit
| much but $60/mo is literally the cheapest broadband plan
| available where I live. In fact it's almost literally the
| only plan available unless you want to spend more.
|
| I looked up both my low cost birth county in Montana and my
| current high cost home county in Washington. Both had a
| budget of about $5,000 a year for transportation. Which,
| ignoring all maintenance, fuel and registration costs would
| leave you with about $300 per month after meeting most
| state minimum insurance requirements and full coverage.
| That's the payment on about a $15,000 car financed over 60
| months, if you have good credit. Not a beater by any means
| but honestly that's pretty much the value sweet spot in
| terms of getting a reliable used car. You could get more
| car by ditching full coverage but as Dave Ramsey says, "you
| insure the things you cannot afford to replace." Your sole
| mode of getting to work seems like a thing you probably
| can't afford to replace on minimum wage. Again, you can
| play with the numbers but I already threw your argument the
| bone of ignoring, fuel, maintenance and licensing costs. A
| nontrivial sum.
|
| Regardless, I'm not sure why your argument takes as it's
| premise that a living wage should represent the minimum a
| person needs to get by in our modern world. Why is that the
| default standard?
|
| Edit: When I think about it more, isn't that kind of the
| whole point of a proposing a living wage over a minimum
| wage? People proposing it believe that we shouldn't peg
| wages to the minimum a person needs but rather to some
| fulfilling standard of living?
| pseudo0 wrote:
| The housing estimate seems quite high for my area as well,
| particularly for the single adult category. It was using a
| figure that I'd expect for a nice 1br in a trendy area.
| Someone under financial pressure would probably be renting
| with a roommate in a less nice area instead, likely paying
| a third to half the figure the calculator cites. I also
| agree on the transportation cost being way out of whack.
| For the adult plus one child cost they cite for my area, I
| could finance a new $40k car plus pay for insurance and
| gas.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Here's my interpretation.
|
| Workers that lived off the "trickle down" effect of the economy
| lost their jobs. The govt injected money and created policy to
| help keep those workers with food and shelter rather than let
| everything crash a year ago.
|
| If you were a high skilled worker you never lost your job and
| you no longer had the same outlets to spend your money. You
| probably saved money and now have a surplus of cash. So a year
| later everything is frothy and real asset prices are on the
| rise. The Fed still doesn't think we're back to 'normal' yet so
| low interest rates and cash injection will continue.
| walshemj wrote:
| Not so sure the average high skilled worker had that much of
| a portfolio to get to the point that they would need to put
| investments into fringe investments.
|
| And if you did things like proper art collectables or vintage
| rolex's. I did vaguely think about watches even looked at
| actual antique katanas or wood block print auctions.
| vmception wrote:
| Just wait till Millenials are appointing themselves to the
| Federal Reserve and Treasury, instead of Baby Boomers
| [deleted]
| skluug wrote:
| Fyi, $15/hr in 2011 dollars would have been significantly
| higher than the minimum wage has ever been. The highest ever US
| minimum wage adjusted for inflation was $1.60 in 1968 which is
| $10.34 in 2011, $12.18 in 2021.
|
| https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2015/07/23/misconceptions-rai...
| patentatt wrote:
| This contradicts everything I've ever read on the topic, is
| there a good reason I should trust this source over others?
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| This CNN article seems to support that.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/21/politics/minimum-wage-
| inflati...
| coryrc wrote:
| Certain political bents like to mix "inflation" and
| "productivity growth" to juice the numbers. OTOH not sure I
| really trust inflation is balanced properly and accurately
| captures the cost of a certain standard of living.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/21/politics/minimum-wage-
| inflati...
| pessimizer wrote:
| You don't just adjust for inflation, you adjust for
| productivity growth. That being said, $15 is meant to be
| high. It's meant to give you the ability to pay for housing.
|
| For amusement value: the median house price in Jan 1968 was
| $163K in 2020 dollars. The median house price in 2020 was
| $300K. So really, minimum wage should be $24 an hour to bring
| you into Property Purchasing Power Parity(tm) with 1968.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Housing costs for inflation isn't the cost of home
| ownership, it's rent (shelter). Buying a home is considered
| an investment not a consumable good.
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-
| an...
|
| "Why doesn't the CPI include the cost of buying and
| financing houses as well as property taxes and home
| maintenance and improvement?
|
| Houses and other residential structures are not consumption
| items and, therefore, should not be CPI items. All
| buildings and structures are capital goods, which are items
| that provide a service. In the case of houses and other
| residential structures, that service is shelter.
|
| Buildings and structures are also investment items, things
| that are bought and resold in organized markets with a
| potential for gain. House prices frequently appreciate; in
| this respect they differ from consumer durables such as
| vehicles."
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Don't houses depreciate while the land is what
| appreciates? IANE, but I thought some people in the
| states had a depreciation deduction on the building.
| coryrc wrote:
| Why? Because someone invents a more efficient process, we
| should increase the wages of ditch diggers?
|
| I believe we should focus on relieving the burden of the
| massive regulatory state on the poor. I.e. relax zoning and
| lower regressive taxes.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| People digging ditches is a requirement for a functional
| modern society. When a general strike happens the ditch
| diggers and their friends will be the ones wielding the
| power they forgot they had all along. I strongly
| recommend not looking down upon people who work with
| their hands. It's very bad decorum, and their shovels are
| sharp.
| coryrc wrote:
| If you think that's going to happen again in the USA, you
| haven't been paying attention.
|
| Signed, child and grandchild of union workers from
| Michigan
| mythrwy wrote:
| The problem there is they can make cars in Korea.
|
| But they can't dig ditches in Korea and export them to
| the U.S.
| oivey wrote:
| The ditch diggers dug the trenches to run internet to
| your home. Your internet connection has only went up in
| value/utility, yet the people who dig those trenches now
| don't make any more than they did before.
|
| The idea that employees are paid according to their value
| is entirely wrong. Employees are paid according to the
| labor market. The price of labor on the market is
| significantly controlled by supply, not the value to the
| employer of employing someone. Besides that, employers
| have much more power in the employment relationship. This
| is true even in tech. For example, the FAANGs got caught
| colluding with one another to suppress salaries via
| secret anti-poaching agreements a few years back.
| coryrc wrote:
| They learned to use modern power equipment and make more
| than minimum wage. We shouldn't be forced to pay more to
| people who won't switch from using a hand shovel or
| whatever the modern equivalent is - cash register
| attendant? When people were "clerks" it paid an okay
| amount, but should it be paying more than an "okay"
| amount? Why should their buying power increase? Why
| should it track the salaries of people who made computers
| orders of magnitude cheaper and better? The people whose
| technology made mRNA vaccines possible for everyone to
| have?
| pmorici wrote:
| Maybe we just need to increase the supply of houses to
| drive that cost down. Raising the minimum wage doesn't help
| if everyone is competing for the same limited supply.
| bluedino wrote:
| Wouldn't help now. Building supply costs are so high and
| labor is short as well
| almost_usual wrote:
| Housing inflation is based on rent prices not the price
| of home units. Purchasing a home unit is an investment
| and not a consumable good.
|
| Edit:
|
| Downvoted for stating facts. From above:
|
| https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-
| rent-an...
|
| "Why doesn't the CPI include the cost of buying and
| financing houses as well as property taxes and home
| maintenance and improvement?
|
| Houses and other residential structures are not
| consumption items and, therefore, should not be CPI
| items. All buildings and structures are capital goods,
| which are items that provide a service. In the case of
| houses and other residential structures, that service is
| shelter.
|
| Buildings and structures are also investment items,
| things that are bought and resold in organized markets
| with a potential for gain. House prices frequently
| appreciate; in this respect they differ from consumer
| durables such as vehicles."
| nitrogen wrote:
| _Downvoted for stating facts._
|
| This isn't so much a "fact" as it is a "position." In
| other words, the fact that the BLS uses this position in
| its definition does not make that definition the best
| possible definition, nor does it mean people have to
| accept that definition when they use the word "inflation"
| in a conversation.
|
| There are loads of reasons why one might argue that house
| prices should be considered necessary expenses rather
| than investments. A particular area may have only houses
| for sale and very few rentals. Ownership provides things
| that cannot be achieved by renting. The appreciated value
| of a house is largely meaningless or even detrimental for
| people who just want to keep living where they live when
| their wages are not increasing. Etc.
|
| Also, generally, quoting definitions unprompted isn't
| well received in most conversations :).
| [deleted]
| pmorici wrote:
| Whether it is rented or purchased is irrelevant.
| Increasing the supply will drive the cost down. If you
| have more renters than rentals prices will go up and a
| minimum wage is just a handout to wealthy landlords
| because you have the same people competing for the same
| housing just with more money.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| > Lately I have been feeling like the economy just broke on a
| fundamental level over the past year.
|
| I've been thinking that recently too, although it's possible
| that I'm only now paying attention because I've finally become
| someone who has enough money to ask "what do I do with my
| surplus money?". That's not something I had to concern myself
| with 10 or 20 years ago.
|
| Some folks will rightly point out that there have always been
| fads, but things feel quite outlandish these days with
| GME/Wallstreetbets, Bitcoin, NFTs, SPACs. The stock market as a
| whole has done well over the past year, but it's been outpaced
| by stuff that feels like people counting on a greater fool. But
| then here I am on the sidelines, avoiding the riskiest stuff,
| and of course a bit envious of their returns, so who's really
| the fool? _Shrug_
| smlss_sftwr wrote:
| Something I wonder about is whether the inflow of money into
| all these "assets" is indeed driven by people with buckets of
| excess capital, or actually from people who could use the
| cash in hand the most. Anecdotally I know individuals crushed
| by student loans/HCOL who immediately threw their stimulus
| checks into crypto and meme stocks with the rationale that if
| they lose it all, a few thousand dollars would've made no
| difference on their debt anyways whereas getting on the next
| rocketship trend early could become a life-changing sum of
| money. I agree something is fundamentally broken if we've
| reached the point where we live in a casino economy, I don't
| know how long it can last and the long-term potential
| consequences are quite concerning
| vmception wrote:
| This has never bothered me.
|
| Those same people could always go to an actual casino with
| only negative expected value games so why spend any thought
| on it? It seems so incongruent to suddenly care when
| someone decides to play a _positive_ expected value game.
|
| The only consequence is that people still dont want to give
| random entrepreneurs their money if they dont have a
| certain pedigree. Thats the best way for money to circulate
| in the economy and people dont have the confidence in that
| to do it. So expect greater market distortions while the
| government still attempts to get people to do the one thing
| they dont want to do. People will rather buy bonds at lower
| and negative yields for capital preservation, or they will
| rather buy collectibles and crypto for capital growth. The
| macro trend is clear.
| jnsie wrote:
| You should articulated my thoughts/situation with an eerie
| level of precision.
| fullshark wrote:
| The past year made me realize if you are selling your time for
| money that means you are a part of the underclass. Full stop.
| Having lots of assets that appreciate in value and you can
| comfortably exchange them for money when you need to, that's
| where you should be trying to get to.
|
| This story is a sign that I'm not the only one I guess that
| feels that way. The r/wallstreetbets story another example.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| This is commonly known as "making money while you sleep".
| xwdv wrote:
| A far better alternative to "making money while you sheep".
|
| As returns on capital and assets start to vastly outperform
| returns on labor, you should be focusing not on what work
| you can do, but rather on what assets you can acquire and
| capitalize on.
| abstractbarista wrote:
| This is why I've been buying equities as fast as I can
| since I started working. Only been a few years but I'm
| loving it so far.
| lumost wrote:
| An economy based on speculation in assets is unlikely to
| survive long. At some point the the majority of dollars will
| just represent speculation of one kind or another.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> Having lots of assets that appreciate in value and you can
| comfortably exchange them for money when you need to, that 's
| where you should be trying to get to._
|
| I think it's still middle class at best if the assets have to
| be sold to realize the gains. Full upperclass (IMO) means the
| ability to leverage assets to acquire even more assets
| (especially in down markets) without risk of catastrophic
| loss while funding a lavish lifestyle.
|
| It's an important distinction because short of total economic
| or societal collapse, productive assets held as collateral
| continue to generate capital. One can raise large amounts of
| capital almost on demand with extremely favorable terms using
| those assets, essentially multiplying the wealth that the
| upperclass has at its disposal. Once they hit a certain
| scale, it's almost trivially easy to make modest but
| consistent returns on borrowed capital because investing is a
| lot like farming: being a farmer and owning a single farm is
| really risky due to unpredictable stuff like droughts, but
| being Tyson and owning farms all over the world is really low
| risk unless the entire planet is hit by a drought
| simultaneously, in which case everyone will get bailed out.
|
| Imagine you own a hundred million dollars worth of
| Blockbuster franchises free and clear that generates a
| "paltry" $2 mil a year in profit. What do you do when your
| investment is threatened and Netflix IPOs at around a dollar
| in 2002? You go to the bank and get a $25 million loan to buy
| Netflix stock. Then in 2008 when it's at $5/share and the
| stores are barely generating enough money to cover the loan
| payments, you firesale the remaining Blockbuster assets to
| pay off the rest of the loan and laugh yourself to the bank
| after selling $125 million worth of Netflix stock for an
| annualized return of around 3% in a recession. That's a very
| contrived example but it illustrates the point: with
| productive assets, you can use the proceeds to pay the cost
| of hedging those assets. When you do that across a large,
| diverse portfolio, you have to try not to make money.
| dbish wrote:
| I think of that as independently wealthy, since I
| personally have a hard time telling someone that if you're
| an engineering exec making > $1mm/yr, that you're middle
| class because you get paid for your time. That seems pretty
| upper class even if it isn't the properly wealthy, no need
| to work, upper class.
| akiselev wrote:
| I'd say the exec is upper middle class because if their
| employer went bankrupt and they had to pay for a bad
| string of unexpected medical expenses or got sued for
| some liability they weren't insured for, it could easily
| send them deep into the middle class. It's like having
| exactly a million dollars in net worth - are you really a
| millionaire if all it takes is a little depreciation to
| drop you back to six figures? However, entering the upper
| class with executive salary like that takes a lot less
| luck - they don't need to start a billion dollar unicorn,
| they just need a little bit of luck and a few decades of
| steady investment.
|
| The way I see it: the underclass has to work hard to move
| upwards, the middle class has to work hard to stay where
| they are, and the upper class has to work hard to move
| downwards.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| The difference between "upper class" and "old money" ?
| JamesBarney wrote:
| People just started saving a lot more money because they
| weren't doing anything. These savings sloshed around and are
| finding their way into assets.
| banbanbang wrote:
| I think we are in a transition period where a new underlying
| economic system will be underwritten (and with it our politics
| system). We simply cannot continue this way.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| You're right. Overwhelmed card grading services cannot be the
| defining feature of the American experience; we must rise
| together to meet this challenge. Nine month waiting times to
| get a Charizard graded? What is this, Soviet Russia?
| infoseek12 wrote:
| In Soviet Russia Charizard grades you.
| goldenkey wrote:
| Why was my exam paper returned as ash?
| banbanbang wrote:
| Wow. I was just replying to the thread. You don't need to
| be an a$$hole.
| [deleted]
| Natsu wrote:
| A ton of money flooded into the economy via stimulus, the
| brighter folks realize that inflation is inevitable and rush
| out to every random scarce good in the hopes it will retain
| value.
|
| When this many people feel that NFTs or Pokemon cards might be
| a better store of value than, say, the USD, it probably
| _should_ be giving us some kind of shock, no?
|
| And at this rate, we'll probably get that $15/hr wage soon
| enough. As you pointed out, the real question will be whether
| it actually buys more than the existing minimum wage once did.
| imtringued wrote:
| There has been a savings glut for the last 20 years and it just
| got really bad this year.
|
| Excess savings are simply dollars that are sitting around doing
| nothing, employing no one, investing into nothing. There are
| lots of sources of excess savings. Right now one of the fastest
| growing source is the house hold savings rate but for the last
| 20 years it was mostly foreign exchange reserves and corporate
| savings.
|
| These excess savings are almost equivalent to a contraction of
| the monetary supply with the caveat that in theory they could
| come back at any time and nobody knows when, however it's been
| 20 years and no sign of stopping. The Fed is conservative and
| only increases the money supply in a mostly reversible way
| either by issuing debt or buying assets which are then put on
| its balance sheet. Debt must be paid back, eventually the money
| that was issued via debt disappears and only the interest
| payments is freshly minted, QE (buying assets) works under the
| assumption that inflation will cause asset prices to go up and
| therefore if the Fed sells assets it will end up with a profit
| and the returned money is then destroyed to contract the money
| supply.
|
| However, interest rates aren't powerful enough to steer the
| economy. At some point they will hit the 0% lower bound. At 0%
| people will switch to cash and cash equivalents (usually
| treasury bonds) and therefore it becomes impossible to charge
| negative interest.
|
| If 0% interest rates are not enough to force people to invest
| their money themselves then there must be a barrier that is
| impeding investments to be made. The total investment rate and
| the total savings rate are just convenient numbers that
| summarize an entire economy. Surely there must be a crucial
| piece of information missing that explains the discrepancy.
| E.g. the type of savings that is currently in abundance is
| incompatible with the type of investments that are possible and
| profitable.
|
| As with all things in life this is merely something I am
| figuring out as I go.
|
| My first clue is venture capital and the Softbank Vision fund.
| VCs are chasing unicorns simply because their huge scale of
| capital requires a huge scale of investments. Softbank doesn't
| even bother with anything less than $100 million. Surely there
| are startups out there that need $10 million in funding to get
| started and can double their money in 10 years but have no
| growth potential beyond say $30 million revenue per year. These
| companies would do productive work and employ people along the
| way and everything would be fine but they simply don't fit into
| the VC model. The most famous case of a over funded company I
| know is Juicero. I'm sure there would have been a way to keep
| it running even if it takes a dozen revisions to the original
| juicer, but at $120 million you knew it was going to shut down
| before it made any money.
| ed312 wrote:
| The reality is basic unskilled labor is worth about as much as
| it has been. At the same time, multiple new industries have
| sprung up and computer/ai-aided workers are vastly more
| productive than ever. I think a higher minimum wage could be a
| good "forcing function" to eliminate more low-skill jobs. The
| problem is, the general population is always going to have some
| proportion of people who can not or will not do higher skilled
| work. Also, normalizing WFH/remote work might help to let folks
| diffuse to lower cost of living areas.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| On the contrary, what this means is the same "unskilled"
| labor is now actually worth more because it is resistant to
| automation. People doing automation resistant work get to
| share in the productivity improvements of other sectors, and
| that is perfectly fair.
|
| But what's odd about your argument is that the federal
| minimum wage ought to be $12-13/hour if it had simply been
| adjusted for inflation since the late 1960s. So by that
| measure, we value "unskilled" labor even LESS than we did
| half a century ago.
|
| If we had adjusted minimum wage for productivity growth, it'd
| be about $21/hour right now.
|
| So I think we ought to have a nationwide federal minimum wage
| minimum of $12.50-15/hour, adjust it for inflation
| continually, but also adjust for local cost of living so that
| the nationwide average (average of regions) minimum wage is
| around $21/hour, continually adjusted each year for cost of
| living.
|
| And I am not worried about automation increasing unemployment
| over the long term. We should have targeted efforts to
| increase employment rate if there are periods of
| disemployment from disruptive automation, but we have more
| jobs now than we did a century or two ago in spite of two
| centuries of increased automation and mechanization.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _continually adjusted each year for cost of living._
|
| One big risk here, or with any cyclically referenced
| benchmark, is runaway positive feedback. This can be
| exponential growth, oscillation, or exponentially growing
| oscillation.
|
| If wages are referenced to CoL, but CoL is affected by
| wages, you have this risk.
|
| A real example I have encountered: years ago, before an
| area I was living in experienced hyper demand, rent prices
| were fairly stable. I was able to get decent places just
| under $1k. My landlord was pretty chill, but said that they
| had to raise the rent eventually because they couldn't
| write off expenses (or maybe it was losses) if they were
| charging below the area median rent. So every year,
| landlords would have to increase the rent to the median,
| which would almost certainly raise the median (unless
| literally the bottom 50% of prices were exactly the same),
| and then they have to raise again, etc.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I don't buy it. Civil servant salaries are adjusted for
| cost of living, and this isn't just the lower levels but
| ALL levels.
|
| Again, this is just excuse.
|
| You can't fix a lack of housing issue by keeping wages
| low.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _I don't buy it._
|
| It's math. If f(x)=K * g(x-1), and g(x)=L * f(x-1), you
| need to be very careful about choosing values for K and
| L.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's not math, it's a hypothetical, somewhat absurd
| model.
|
| There's actual empirical research on minimum wage, and it
| doesn't support these claims of exponential cost
| increase:
| https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-15-minimum-wage-is-
| pre...
| akiselev wrote:
| That's because minimum wage isn't actively pegged to a
| cost of living measurement, it's manually adjusted from
| time to time (ostensibly to be inline with cost of
| living). That manual adjustment is slow and decoupled
| enough that there's no runaway feedback loop.
|
| If you legally define the minimum wage as a formula
| instead of an absolute number, and that formula includes
| cost of living, you can create a runaway situation.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > One big risk here, or with any cyclically referenced
| benchmark, is runaway positive feedback. This can be
| exponential growth, oscillation, or exponentially growing
| oscillation.
|
| Have we ever witnessed an exponentially growing
| oscillation in a large scale economic feedback loop like
| this before? I'd never really considered that concept for
| macroeconomics.
| nitrogen wrote:
| I'm sort of extrapolating from the very little I know of
| control theory and feedback systems. I've seen others
| mention that economics and control theory could benefit
| from collaboration.
|
| Maybe the boom/bust business cycle, coupled with
| inflation, is exactly this phenomenon? Maybe social media
| frenzy is also a feedback phenomenon.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's not really a big risk, here. It's hypothetical. A
| scare tactic to argue against increasing the minimum wage
| to even moderately adjust for for inflation and overall
| productivity growth (and cost of living growth).
| nitrogen wrote:
| It is very frustrating to have any kind of productive
| discussion when the slightest hint of anything unexpected
| is negatively labeled and associated with the entirety of
| some diametrically opposed position that was never
| actually raised.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I apologize. But it's frustrating when people express
| opposition to even a minimum wage level from the 1960s
| with sort of outlandish hypotheticals. There's a bunch of
| pretty good empirical research out there on the effects
| of minimum wage increases, and none of them suggest this
| sort of "exponential" increasing effect.
| https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-15-minimum-wage-is-
| pre...
| nitrogen wrote:
| The thing is, you assumed what I believe. I'm actually in
| favor of higher minimum wages and indexing to costs. But
| the feedback-loop nature of the economic system, or any
| feedback system (where future output numbers of the
| system depend on previous outputs), must be acknowledged
| and accounted for, or else you will, mathematically, get
| exponential growth and/or oscillation.
|
| I also have a lot of family who currently live just fine
| making less than $15/hr. Their employers (small
| businesses) would have to raise prices (or go out of
| business, or both), which would raise costs, which would
| raise the CoL index, which would raise future minimum
| wages in a feedback cycle, if there is not some
| compensating factor in how wages and prices are set.
| usrusr wrote:
| How many people would Google actually _need_ to supply
| humanity with targeted ads?
|
| I suspect that ultimately, most are just there to out-
| innovate would be upstarts that might, perhaps, take some of
| their pie. But this doesn't have to go on forever, there
| already is the precedent of Google not dying at all from
| utterly failing with their Facebook counter. And that's just
| one example. I believe that the "productivity crisis" is
| actually much deeper than it seems because so many parts are
| glossed over by zero sum games taking up some of the
| overcapacity.
| lumost wrote:
| If double click/search is a true monopoly google may not
| _need_ any further work to sustain itself and could push
| new costs to their customers.
|
| I won't venture a head count figure for google without R&D
| but it's probably a tiny fraction of current head count.
| aphextron wrote:
| >"Meanwhile we still don't have a minimum wage that is anything
| like livable. "
|
| This is because the Fed, as well as the entire US legislature,
| knows deep down that wages are the final "finger in the dyke"
| of the whole system collapsing. For wages to truly begin rising
| would send inflation spiraling out of control. It's only under
| check now because the asset owning class is reaping the
| benefits; not the vast majority of wage earning lower/middle
| class which is keeping consumer prices in check. Our entire
| monetary policy is now pinned on the fact that wages will lag
| gains of productivity and inflation, so that the almighty CPI
| rate can be held up as evidence for low inflation and the free
| money gravy train keeps rolling for the monied elite.
| NanoWar wrote:
| An overview of most valuable cards would have been nice, but
| apparently you can't get a rating anyways. How do Pokemon cards
| compare to other card games, like e. g. Magic or Yigioh?
| setgree wrote:
| I gave all my Pokemon and Magic the Gathering cards to my little
| cousins a few years ago. BRB just sending this article to their
| parents on the off-chance that there is real money sitting
| there...
|
| And for what it's worth, when people wonder what inflation looks
| like in 2021, as far as I'm concerned, it's this.
| drivers99 wrote:
| When I read about the grading companies, it makes me wonder about
| processes that could be improved and how I would go about it. It
| says they hired efficiency experts ; it would be interesting to
| hear from them.
|
| I'm more into buying comics (for reading, not profit) but there
| is a book coming out called Overstreet Guide to Grading Comics
| that sounds interesting. (Overstreet also publishes a famous
| annual price guide for comics.)
|
| The craze for buying new cards makes me think of a cautionary
| tale. In the 90s certain old, rare issues were going for tens of
| thousands (current day, a few can go for millions). People
| started buying new comics thinking those would be worth something
| someday too. Customers, comics, stores, all expanded greatly
| before collapsing. Because the companies were printing and
| selling millions of copies they were not rare at all!
| https://comicbooked.com/comic-book/
|
| So the important thing is, are they printing more and more cards
| to meet demand? (I actually don't know; do any of you know?) If
| so, there's going to be a collapse.
|
| Actually the article pointed out how massively the production of
| _graded_ cards is increasing, so there you have it. If those are
| new cards getting graded, I guess that will collapse at least.
| patentatt wrote:
| It does seem like something a high resolution camera and some
| neural nets could do, right? Or conversely just put
| standardized images up on a website and have the public sort
| them (like hot or not). I'd bet it would become a fun thing for
| card aficionados to do even.
| 88 wrote:
| Presumably the main reason to get a card graded is if you intend
| to sell it?
|
| Does that not mean there's an almighty supply shock coming to
| these markets?
| dehrmann wrote:
| My guess is only on for high grades. For good, but not great
| grades, I'd expect you can get a good enough idea from a high-
| resolution photo, and you're better off rolling the dice,
| knowing you're not getting a gem mint, anyway.
|
| The other reason to get it graded is it marks that it might be
| valuable for when you die and family is going through your
| stuff.
|
| I'd also expect CGC-graded cards to be worth less. I sold all
| my MTG cards except one (unfortunately, I sold the Beta Chaos
| Orb), but when I saw the price ($200-ish) of the one I kept,
| figured I'd get it graded in case I want to sell it. There were
| two grading companies, BGS and PSA that have been around
| forever, and I went with the cheapest for grading one card. I
| didn't recognize the name CGC. The article says they've only
| been grading cards for a year, and I wouldn't be surprised if
| people value BGS and PSA-graded cards more.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| This feels like a very machine learnable problem, has anyone
| tried grading cards/coins via ML?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > A collector I know has begun to simply buy Top Loaders from
| Chinese wholesale websites and sell those on eBay rather than
| deal with Pokemon cards at all.
|
| Just like in every gold rush, the ones who will end up with the
| most profit are the ones selling the shovels.
| cinntaile wrote:
| This is commonly claimed but is there any data to support this
| thesis?
| edoceo wrote:
| Levi Strauss did this in a literal gold rush - and used the
| capital to pivot to pants
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Strauss
| JamisonM wrote:
| Joseph Francis Ladue founded Dawson City and became a very
| rich man by expoiting the gold rush that way instead of
| mining (he ended up making some money directly from mining
| stakes as well in the end though). I believe his reputation
| and life story are certainly one of the foundations of that
| popular idea.
|
| I don't know of any empirical studies of commerce in the
| Yukon gold rush that demonstrated that the merchants were the
| fattest of the fat cats in the the whole scenario though.
| Lots of stories of scammer and schemers making big bucks too,
| but again, who really knows?
|
| Very few legitimately struck it rich on gold, that's for
| sure.
| 55555 wrote:
| Your intuition is correct. Look up the market cap of gold and
| then look up the market cap of shovels.
| dehrmann wrote:
| This trend in trading card prices is the same trend that's
| driving bitcoin right now: people who are bored and have some
| extra cash to spend on something that seems to be appreciating.
| everyone wrote:
| Just out of curiosity what about 'Magic the gathering' cards? I
| found a load of them from when I was a kid. They are in good
| condition, I have unopened booster packs too.
|
| Would now be a good time to sell them? Also could I just sell the
| lot for a reasonable price and not have to go through them all?
| Thanks!
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