Friday, February 19, 2021

Thank You Federal Reserve: Two LeBron James Cards Are Worth $7 Million in Total


The asset price explosion, which has pushed prices higher in the stock market, home real estate and Bitcoin, has not left behind sports cards.

The New York Times reports:

Aaron Davis’s wife thought it was absurd when he spent $312,000 on a one-of-a-kind LeBron James trading card in 2016. That assessment has not been officially retracted, but only five years later the card could fetch well over 10 times that at auction, experts say.

In July, another James card — this one not nearly as rare — sold for $1.8 million. That caught Davis’s attention because there are only two versions of that particular card that share the same high quality, and Davis, a 42-year-old investment manager in California, owns the other one.

Davis keeps those two cards, with a combined worth in excess of $7 million, safely squirreled away in a bank vault with some of his other prized specimens.

“Every time I buy a card I feel like I’m a little bit crazy, too, and the rest of the world might also think that,” Davis said during a telephone interview in which he revealed, for the first time publicly, that he owns the two million-dollar cards. “But that’s when you’re buying a good card, because they are irreplaceable. There are two of them, and they are in tight hands.”...

In January, a 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card set a record when it sold for $5.2 million thanks to its unusually pristine condition...

“The industry is at its hottest point in my 40-year history,” Ken Goldin, the founder of Goldin Auctions, said in an email. “It is nearly impossible to keep up with demand from buyers.”

Of course, what is driving the prices is the mad money printing by the Federal Reserve. The Fed increased the money supply by more than 25% last year and continues its aggressive printing in 2021. With a Biden $1.9 trillion spending program just ahead the debt will explode to even greater levels, no doubt to be monetized for the most part by the Federal Reserve.

-RW

(ht The Closer)

3 comments:

  1. If their value is anything like Lebron himself, they are certain to eventually flop.

    David B.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What is the end-game, Robert? Does the world come to its senses, and these sports trading cards sell for 1/10th the current price, or does the value of the USD degrade enough so that nominally speaking, there is never a crash in the sports card market?

    Today, in February 2021, would you rather hold $2 million in cash under your mattress, or $2 million worth of collectible trading cards?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Here's a way to look at it:
      Imagine you are walking in the forest...and you have (insert 'asset' here). You look around, there is no one around. Just you and the trees. You're getting hungry. What is that asset worth?

      To use the example...you are walking in the forest... you have 2 lebron cards and 60 trillion in bitcoins. You're getting hungry. What is the asset worth?

      Delete