Remember the Princess Diana Beanie Baby?

$4.99

You might be outbid by $4.99 but I'm not seeing anywhere for a buy it now at that price?

Actually, what brought this topic up?

I think there was two versions, with one rarer than the other.

I could be wring though

I don't believe so. I've never seen anything about a "special" version. People just thought that the basic one was going to be worth a lot someday.

I hate how everything gets turned into an "investment". Rampant speculation underlies a lot of problems we're experiencing, including cost of housing. We have an abundance, but the system depends on artificial scarcity.

As someone who's dabbled heavily in sports cards as an "investment", there's definitely a difference between artificial scarcity and actual scarcity.

Example: Modern cards that are "Limited" to 5, 10 , 100, 500 etc. copies, where the only difference is the color of the card. They make them every year, so how rare can they really be?

As opposed to something like a 1952 Mickey Mantle "Rookie" card. With many being destroyed due to them not selling, and then getting into poorer and poorer condition as time passes, that created actual scarcity as there is rumored to only be 1500 copies left in existence.

This is cardboard we're talking about.

"An item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it"

And people are willing to pay A LOT for certain pieces of cardboard.

That's like saying "it's supposed to happen, otherwise it wouldn't have happened".

Rampant speculation underlies a lot of problems we're experiencing, including cost of housing .

Beanie Babies saw the 80s comics inflation and was like "what a foolproof plan"

In this case, he's exactly right, though. Value is a subjective quality. An item that's worthless to you ("cardboard") can be worth thousands, if not tens of thousands, to somebody else.

I know you probably wouldn't pay $3.25 million for a bunch of "pieces of paper," but if those pieces of paper were used in 1938 to create Action Comics #1, there are collectors out there who will spend $3.25 million to own them.

In other words, just because you think paper or cardboard is worthless, does not mean they are worthless.

Just because an idiot pays $3.25 million for it, doesn't mean it's worth it.

Just because an idiot pays $3.25 million for it, doesn't mean it's worth it.

Just because an idiot pays $3.25 million for it, doesn't mean it's worth it.

I mean, literally, yes it does, on the basis of it having a validated market estimate. Otherwise you're just speaking subjectively.

That's exactly what it means.

The noun "worth" refers to the monetary value of something.
The adjective "worth" mean having monetary or material value.

and if the next second it sells for $1 then that's suddenly its worth. Yeah, that's meaningless.

Usually, an item is worth the highest price someone will pay for it. If somebody sells/buys it for $1, that doesn't mean it was only worth a dollar. It just means that the right buyer wasn't in the room at the time.

This is why auctions are held, because it gets all the right people in the right room in order to sell an item for what it's actually worth.

Ripping off somebody's grandma clearing out her attic by vastly underpaying for a valuable item doesn't mean the item is worth less, it just means the seller was uninformed as to its true value.

Meanwhile an idiot overpaying for paper is not acting subjectively?

Very unlikely. TCGs, like most other collectibles, have established markets. It's like how when you almost anything, it's not just some number you pulled out of a hat, but something determined by the product's worth relative to the economy it exists in. Like, c'mon, you understand basic capitalism. It's fine if you don't like cards, but you're not making sense just assuming a non-existent scenario in order to shit on cards.

Your last sentence contradicts the idea that "it's worth what it has been sold for."

No, no. That is not what we've said.

The exact wording of what was said is that it's "worth what someone is willing to pay for it."

If it sells for a lowball price due to one or more parties lacking sufficient market information, that doesn't lower the item's value.

The person who's willing to pay $3.25 million doesn't have to be in the room with the item for said item to be worth $3.25 million. He just has to exist somewhere out there in the market.

Because if you paid $1 for an item worth $3.25 million, you essentially made a deal with a $3,249,999 profit.

Yes I do understand capitalism, which is why I understand things like marketing which are used to make items look more valuable than they really are.

Ah, so it's "lacking sufficient market information" if it sells for less, but "lacking brain cells" doesn't matter for if it sells for more? If everyone is offering oil changes for $50 but a provider manages to fool someone into paying $100 for the same service, does that mean the real value of an oil change is $100 and everyone other than the one scammer is "lacking sufficient market information"?

Are there times where a person doesnt know the value of an item they have, and they get taken advantage of? Absolutely.

But when there are multiple people interested in buying the same item, you tend to get the VALUE that the market dictates.

Where "the market" is just a dressed up way of saying "the people who are there at the time". It's not some omnipotent invisible hand dictating rules.

Are you really fighting the the face that the word Value has no meaning simply because its attached to items you personally arent interested in?

I'm pointing out that defining value as "it is what it got paid for" is a meaningless tautology and that it's also flawed to claim an item that sells for less is because of "lacking sufficient market information" but somehow an item that sells for more isn't. I'm also pointing out that someone paying a certain amount for an item is just as subjective as someone else saying that item isn't worth that much.

So then how do you define value?

Well, hang on. Market value is different than personal value.