Limited!

     A. Edward Newton, one of the great American book collectors suggested, when people asked him how to buy books as an investment, that they buy the best of whatever they happened to like.  That way, he said, if the market didn’t behave as expected and that collection did not appreciate, they’d at least have things to read.

     I like him in that mood much better than when he wrote articles warning collectors against buying a lot of trash.  There were actually people, in his later days, who were collecting (shudder) mystery novels, and other current fiction.  It made him sound like an old goat, but that is not why I thought of him in connection with this particular postcard.

     See, one of the side effects of a misspent youth (which went on for some fifty years) reading whatever I liked, is that I felt this postcard could be dated fairly certainly.  The canned beer as we know was introduced to the American consumer somewhere around 1935.  The reason that factoid is stuck in my head is that I read a number of books on collectibles in my younger days, which DID exist, and which coincided with the massive fad for beer can collecting.  I devoured all those pictorial guides to what collectors needed to buy, and though I have never so much as spotted a can of Billy Beer or any of the James Bond series of cans, the information is stuck forever in my brain.

     Some people still DO collect beer cans, just as some people collect glass insulators, but somehow, these collectibles don’t get the same attention nowadays.  If I could find a nice set of the Encyclopedia of Collectibles (read repeatedly) it would be nice to go through and find out which of these collectibles turned out to be fun but no bonanza.

     I bethought me of comic books.  Sure, people still collect comic books.  But it’s not the same.  Famously, the comic book industry took note of investors and nearly put itself out of business.  Even today, comic books have not quite escaped the LIMITED COLLECTOR’S EDITION phenomenon.  So many companies brought out SPECIAL FIRST ISSUES of comic series (because everyone knows that first issue is going to be worth millions some day) that many collectors just gave up the too volatile comic book market and sensibly put their money into pogs instead.

     I have seen people burned by investing in Beanie Babies, collector plates, baseball cards (Sports Trading Cards, to you young’uns), and, well, anything advertised with a variation on the words LIMITED EDITION COLLECTIBLE.  Of course there are Barbies and Beanies and Beer Cans which are worthwhile investments.  But these are outnumbered by the sheer product produced to take advantage of you for thinking so.  Real rarities are few and far between (it’s why we call them rare) and were almost never advertised as being a great investment.  They were advertised as things that were exciting, or pretty, or just fun.  (And that is what made them rare: people had so much fun reading them or playing with them or hanging them on the wall that a majority were used up along the way.)

     Another cantankerous old goat who was fun to talk to told me that a truly valuable collectible needs to meet three criteria.  It must have been fun enough to be bought by everyone, then thrown away or destroyed as people found other interests, and only THEN have a collectors’ price guide published.  You may argue about individual collectibles, but you see his point.

     So if I may bring this to some conclusion (Who just shouted “Please do”?) I think both of these gents had the right of it.  Collect something and do it well: do your research and get the good stuff.  Enjoy yourself doing it.  Maybe you’ll make a profit, but if not, at least you’ll have stories to tell and trophies to show.

     And everyone knows how profitable your podcasts on the subject will be.  (Note to self: see if any of those pog collectors are now doing pogcasts.)