Lizzy and Lissa break down the hidden costs – financial and otherwise – of collecting stuff. From classic collections like stamps and coins to more modern-day collecting, like Funko Pops and NFTs, people have a long-standing relationship with collectibles. People are drawn to nostalgia, the thrill of the hunt, and of course – the potential for financial gain. But is it worth the time, effort, and money? In this episode Lizzy and Lissa welcome a long-time mutual friend, Alex, who is an expert at collecting vintage tees.
Lizzy and Lissa break down the hidden costs – financial and otherwise – of collecting stuff. From classic collections like stamps and coins to more modern-day collecting, like Funko Pops and NFTs, people have a long-standing relationship with collectibles. People are drawn to nostalgia, the thrill of the hunt, and of course – the potential for financial gain. But is it worth the time, effort, and money? In this episode Lizzy and Lissa welcome a long-time mutual friend, Alex, who is an expert at collecting vintage tees.
Main Topics
00:00 Introduction to Collecting
00:43 Intro to Hosts and Special Guest
01:45 Running The Numbers Segment
03:29 Things We Collect
06:21 The Value and Challenges of Collecting
09:25 Collecting Things While Traveling
20:35 Downsides and Risks
25:05 The Thrill of the Hunt
29:00 Financial Investments in Collections
34:01 Digital Collectibles and NFTs
40:06 20 Cents Segment
References for Statistics
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1243205/share-of-us-adults-who-collect-physical-items-as-a-hobby-by-generation/
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/12/671
Lissa: All right. Do you guys know what these three things have in common? Decks of cards, coasters, and trash.
Lizzy: It's all stuff you've got a gang of in your house.
Lissa: No, they're all things that I collect. Yeah.
Lizzy: All right. All right.
Lissa: We'll get into it. We'll get into why I would even collect trash, but they're all collectibles.
Lizzy: Is collecting worth it? Let's talk about it.
Lissa: Welcome to Net Net with Lizzy and Lissa, where we analyze hidden costs and empower you to make your own decisions in life. Each episode covers a different facet of life, and at the end of each episode, we each give our takes on whether we think something is net positive or net negative.
Lizzy: I'm Lizzy a strategist and consultant with over 17 years in finance and investing.
Lissa: And I'm Lissa, a personal finance expert and accredited financial counselor. We're best friends who talk about money.
Lizzy: And everything else.
Lissa: Now, today we also have a very special guest joining us. He is our longtime friend, our basketball teammate, he was my roommate for about 10 years. He is a creative at heart. He has a passion for collecting things. Help us welcome Alex Brackett.
Lizzy: Welcome to the pod.
Lissa: Do we have to call you Alex?
Alex: No, you can call me.
Lissa: We call him magic as like a nickname.
Alex: Yeah, don't switch it up. Don't switch it up.
Lissa: Don't switch it up and be fake.
Alex: Yeah.
Lissa: So is collecting stuff worth it?
Lizzy: First up, running the numbers on collectibles.
Lissa: According to Statista, 42% of millennials and only 20% of Gen Z collect physical objects as a hobby or as an investment.
Lizzy: So they just gave up on that?
Lissa: Yeah.
Lizzy: Physical objects. Maybe they collect digital stuff.
Lissa: Yeah.
Lizzy: Okay. So getting into the psychology. Psychoanalysts have identified five main motivations for collecting, for selfish purposes, for selfless purposes, as preservation, restoration, history, or sense of continuity, as a financial investment, or as a form of addiction.
Lissa: That sounds, yeah, that runs the gamut of all possible reasons.
So estimates of the size of the collectibles market range from 75 billion dollars to 450 billion. That's a huge range. And that likely varies because it depends on what people consider collectibles.
Lizzy: Yeah. You can collect anything.
Lissa: Yeah. Trash is not worth anything. So that's not a collectible.
Lizzy: Worthless.
And then the top 10 most popular collector's items are antique furniture, vinyl records, comic books, coins and currency, classic cars, trading cards, dolls and toys, stamps, wine, and fine art or jewelry.
Lissa: Well, we know there's more to life than numbers and statistics, so let's talk about it. Let's jump into it. Is collecting stuff worth it?
Lizzy: So first of all, let's talk about the costs of collecting. What are some of the key costs that come to mind?
Lissa: Well, the money you got to spend.
Alex: Yeah. I mean you got to buy whatever. I mean like Lissa said, not everything costs money. Like you say you collect trash. You can find things and collect it, found objects. People collect driftwood and stuff like that and turn it into art.
Lizzy: For sure. Seashells. That kind of stuff.
Alex: Seashells.
Lissa: So then space, where you keep the stuff.
Lizzy: Space. Yeah.
Lissa: Sometimes collecting can be free, but you got to have space.
Alex: That's the number one downside for me is space.
Lissa: So what do you collect?
Alex: The things I collect, I collect a lot of fashion items like sneakers over the years, for 20 years. And vintage T-shirts, I collect now for the past five, six years. And that takes a lot of space, boxes of shoes. I keep the boxes. That's historically been a very big issue with anyone I'm living with, my parents. It's very, very troubling to figure out how are you going to store that stuff. And if you live in LA you don't have a big apartment, most likely.
Lissa: So we used to live together for 10 years and I remember the hallway would be lined up with boxes. So you could still use the hallway and walk through it, but you had to side step your way.
Alex: All right, I didn't know about this. Okay.
Lizzy: Air it out.
Alex: But it is an issue.
Lissa: I'm just kidding.
Alex: Space is definitely the biggest downside of collecting physical, things that take you a lot of physical space. T-shirts, you stack them up. I have hundreds of shirts now in my room, and I have to stack them up and figure out how I'm going to tetris them in my room.
Lissa: And these are vintage T-shirts.
Alex: And how, you know, you got to fold them. You got to figure out where you're going to store them, and it's just like, yeah, it's a big headache.
Lizzy: So how did you get started collecting? Or what was your first collection that you remember?
Alex: I mean, for some reason, I don't know what it is, if it's hereditary or something in my brain, I've always been a collector since I was a kid. So I've collected toys, trading cards. I've always had some sort of collection of where I kind of got obsessed with it, and I just like, I'm going to get everything in this thing. And it was like Ninja Turtles at first, baseball cards in the nineties like a lot of kids, Pokemon cards, and then eventually sneakers when I got older, and I could save money. But yeah, I don't know why. I think it's, I got kind of obsessed and my mind was like, "Oh, I need to have this thing and every version of it, anything I can get my hands on that revolves around this thing."
So yeah, I don't know where that came from, if there was a moment triggered me when I was a kid. But yeah, I could tell you why I collected stuff later and how I rationalize it, but from a young age, I don't know why, where that came from. But yeah, just always collected stuff.
Lizzy: So what is the experience like now that you're an adult? What is the thought process behind it? What are some of those justifications?
Alex: So I look at it two reasons why I do things, and they kind of feed into each other a little bit. So first one is, is it fun? Is there a community around it? Do I have an interest in it? Is it deep, and I can, there's a lore behind it? And things like that. Is it interesting? Is it fun?
And then second thing is, does it appreciate in value? So I kind of rationalize it in that way. Can I make money on it? If I don't want it any longer, can I resell it? And they feed into each other where the community will, if there's a big enough community, there's a big enough market for me to resell. And the more things are valuable, the more the community is going to grow. Sneakers is a good example because that was a really small community when I got into it in the late nineties and now it's massive, and it's oversaturated, and it killed the interest for me. That's why I moved away from sneaker collecting into shirt collecting. So those are the two things I look at. Is it fun and is there monetary value for me?
Lissa: For you personally, you go into it also as an investment.
Alex: Yes. I've always told, my dad would always be like, "What are you doing with all these sneakers in your room?" And I'm like, "Dad, those are my investments." He was like, "What? No, these are worthless." I'm like, "No, I can resell them. I can make money on them." And so I've always looked, I rationalize it that it's an investment.
Lizzy: Yeah. So do you resell though? Because some people use that justification.
Lissa: And then they don't want to part ways.
Lizzy: They don't ever, and they never would.
Alex: So a story I'll tell you real quick is yes, short answer is yes, and sometimes not, no. But I had accumulated hundreds of sneakers at my dad's house, and he would always make an excuse of why he can't leave the house to go travel. He is like, "No, if I leave your house, someone's going to break in, and the only thing worth money is your sneakers, and I can't leave them." And I'm like, "That is the worst excuse ever." So I was like, "I'm going to sell all the sneakers that are at my dad's house." And so over a summer I think I sold 200 pairs of sneakers.
Lissa: Dang.
Alex: And I calculated I made a good profit on them. And then they also things like sneakers, they deteriorate. So you can't hold them forever, or they become worthless.
Lissa: Yeah.
Alex: You got to time the market.
Lissa: Yeah, my Yeezys turned yellow.
Alex: Yeah, they yellow, they crumble.
Lissa: Don't know what to do.
Alex: But I was just like, "Let me get rid of these." And it forced me to resell. I was like, "I'll resell them in 20 more years. I'll just keep holding them." But that doesn't really make sense. So you got to kind of, you're forced to sell things. If you look at the market, are they going to deteriorate physically? You got to resell them. You can't. But that's only certain things.
Lissa: Do you collect anything that is not an investment that's just for fun?
Alex: Yeah, that's a good question. Nothing I think of top my mind.
Lissa: Nothing like modern day. Not right now.
Alex: No. Nothing that I can think of top of mind. Like art maybe, all of my art.
Lissa: Books? Coffee table books?
Alex: Yeah. Books. Yeah, I guess books. Yeah. I have a lot of books. A lot of art books.
Lissa: Like art books?
Alex: Yeah.
Lizzy: What about you Liss?
Lissa: What do I collect?
Lizzy: Yeah, what do you collect?
Lissa: What did I say at the beginning? So coasters and decks of cards became a new thing in the last year or two. And that's based on where Allan and I travel. Allan's my fiance. And so every time we travel, so this is actually interesting.
My mom has a really cool collection of Starbucks mugs. She doesn't travel a lot around the globe, but me and all my siblings do. So anytime we go somewhere, we'll go get her a Starbucks mug. So she has an entire collection. So when I used to travel, I would get her Starbucks mugs wherever I went as well as magnets for the fridge. And she's never going to sell these, it's just, it's a collection.
But then I realized that I don't have my own collections of things when I travel. Like currency, I'll keep a bill or a coin wherever I travel. But with Allan, when we started going on trips together, I think we bought a deck of cards at some crafts fair one place that we went, I can't even remember where it was, where we started. So then after that I was like, "Let's get coasters so that when we have a house together, we can have, not a set of coasters but coasters from all over the world." And then decks of cards we can either play with or just have because they're kind of cool. So those are two things I currently collect. And then trash.
Lizzy: Trash. You got to explain this.
Lissa: Okay, trash is, all right, so how do I explain this? Let me explain this. So I have this idea. Don't anyone steal it, I'll share it with you guys. So rewind, I used to have all these CDs for you young'uns out there, CDs are these round things. I don't know how to explain them. You put them on another thing and then music plays. Is that how you explain it? No, no, not records. Anyway, so I had all these old CDs, and then I don't know, years ago I decided to cut up all the CD covers and make an art piece out of it. So I made this really big piece of a bunch of my favorite albums, album covers and inserts because they used to have artwork in the inserts too and lyrics and things like that. So that's what you would find when you walk into my house is this big piece of art.
And so after that I was like, "I like this." I actually made another piece of art out of candy wrappers, so I would buy bags of Starburst and then whoever were my roommates, I'd just put them out and be like, "Put your trash here. Don't throw away the wrappers." So then I made that, it ended up breaking and cracking one time that I moved. So then after that I've been collecting candy wrappers for the last five years. So I have a bunch that I am going to make art out of.
Lizzy: And?
Lissa: Oh yeah, these, I'm going to make art out of two. All these cards that we use, these Net Net cards.
Lizzy: Every time we record I got to give them back.
Lissa: And so the collection is going to be called One Man's Trash. I already have the domain name. I was like going to make a Shopify store, but I got to make the art first. And what I want to do is create these art pieces, sell them maybe at auction and something that should be worth nothing because it's trash, maybe it can sell for $10,000 or something, donate half of it to beach cleanup, and then take the rest of the profit for myself. Something like that. That's the idea.
Alex: No one steal this idea.
Lizzy: Yeah, don't steal it, don't do it.
Lissa: You can't because One Man's Trash dot XYZ is already taken.
Alex: Timestamped.
Lissa: Timestamped. Anyway, those are my collections.
Alex: That'd be cool. A gallery of all your pieces. Do a show somewhere.
Lissa: Yeah, if I can do a gallery or a show.
Alex: There's definitely a gallery that would let you in.
Lissa: I just got to actually get to doing it because now I literally have bins of trash at home. And then I have all these old collections I had from back in the day, POGs, marbles, Nintendo games, I still hold onto those. I have all my baseball and basketball cards, NFL cards from the nineties. But are cards worth anything anymore?
Alex: Yeah.
Lizzy: I don't even know.
Alex: I definitely had things that depreciated in value. Cards, for example in the nineties, baseball cards, they got over saturated and then they became worthless, but now they're back in value. Like Pokemon cards I had when I was, now they're like skyrocketed.
Lissa: And then they go down in value and you're like, "I'm going to throw this away." And then all of a sudden.
Alex: Why did I throw those away, gave them away?
Lissa: Oh, Funko Pops. You have some too. I collect those -ish.
Lizzy: I do not have them. They were a collection with my ex that we built together, and I forfeited. But we had an extensive collection.
Lissa: But did you ever track what Funko Pops were worth? You can do that in the app, in the Funko app.
Lizzy: I'm the complete opposite of Alex I'd say. It has never really been about that for me, with the exception of when I was a kid, I didn't really participate in a lot of those things personally because you had to have money to do that. So I didn't have disposable income as a child. We were really poor. But I do remember distinctly when Beanie Babies came out, convincing my stepdad that I needed them because they were an investment, and they were going to be worth so much money one day. That is probably the only collection I've ever had that really wasn't about that, but it was my justification.
Lissa: Where did those Beanie Babies go? What happened to them?
Lizzy: God knows. I probably have one. There was one Lizzie the Lizard that I probably have somewhere still, but yeah.
Lissa: Well what is that right next to you?
Lizzy: This is my perfume collection. I started collecting perfume maybe 8 or 10 years ago, traveling. So this is the very first one I bought on a trip in Colombia. And so I get a local perfume pretty much every country or sometimes city that I go to, and I try to get something that you can't get elsewhere, and it just brings me back. The scent memories are really strong, and the only problem is that you don't want to use them too much, so it becomes extra special. Which actually leads me to a question. What do you think about using the items in your collection? Do you use them, or are they just for display?
Alex: Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean there's that whole I'm a forty-year-old virgin where he is like, "Don't open the box. Don't open the box. It's going to go down in value." For sneakers it was that way. If you wore the sneakers, it lost half its value.
Lizzy: Right.
Alex: So you pick and choose, or you buy two have it if you have it like that. But for vintage T-shirts like what I'm into now, you wear them. Sometimes the more worn in they are, the more valuable they are. If it has a cool wear pattern, the more faded and more holes in it and distressing, it could be worth more than a brand new version of that shirt. So yeah, I definitely wear all of my stuff now, and I got over collecting sneakers, so I just wear all of 'em now because they're going to deteriorate.
Lizzy: Right. Might as well.
Alex: I'm just going to wear them. Yeah.
Lizzy: Get your use out of it.
Alex: Yeah. What about you?
Lissa: Well, do I use my trash? No. I guess not really because I don't collect anything like that that's usable right now.
Lizzy: Your cards and your coasters?
Lissa: Yeah.
Alex: Well the cards, do you open them?
Lissa: Oh yeah, eventually. The cards are not opened yet, but I'd be willing to use them. The coasters we will use when we move into a new house. So yeah, in that sense.
Lizzy: You're just building the collection first.
Lissa: Building the collection because these are personal collections that means something to us that they're not investment value at all. It's just we'll end up using them.
Lizzy: It makes me think all the examples we gave, there's something about collecting that's pinpointing a place in time and in history, like a memory from a trip, an experience, harking back to when a shirt came out or pair of shoes came out and that desire to collect that experience or feeling or whatever it may be.
Lissa: Something I just remembered I used to collect, I don't know if this means I stole things.
Lizzy: Oh, girl.
Lissa: You know when you go to a restaurant like Denny's or something, and they give you a number to put on your table?
Lizzy: Oh yeah.
Lissa: I had a bunch of those in high school.
Alex: Yeah, that's called stealing. Yeah, you stole those.
Lissa: Can I get arrested for that? No?
Lizzy: Think the statute of limit limitations is probably right now.
Alex: That's like a level above stealing napkins and stuff.
Lissa: I mean, yeah, I guess that still has a relation to a time and a place. Make me remember my last Grand Slam.
Alex: Grand Slam, moves over Miami.
Lizzy: Well, so what do you think are some of the other motivations? We talked about psychologically, but what has inspired you? You gave some examples or why do you think people get started with the collection?
Lissa: I think what I said, I was going to say, Alex, what Magic mentioned about there's community around some collections. That's why I've held onto all my nineties collections, like my POGs and marbles. Because it's this thing now, you'll see memes, but only millennials will know. No one will know after that what POGs are and why we would even pay so much for little cardboard.
Alex: Slammers.
Lizzy: Slammers.
Alex: A slammer collection.
Lissa: The community of it I think plays a big role. You feel part of, you belong with a community, you guys understand the same things.
Alex: There's events for things like that. There's vintage T-shirt events that I go to here in LA. I've traveled to Miami to go to one. And it's a sense of feeling part of a community and like, "Oh, you collect this specific type of thing?" You're a specialist in that area, so I want to go talk to you about it." And you feel welcome and appreciated in that type of environment.
Lissa: Oh yeah. Well, I don't know if they still do this, but I remember you invited me to some Instagram live auctions that you used to do with other collectors, and they were fun.
Alex: Yeah, that's what got me into vintage T-shirts.
Lissa: I bought a couple shirts from these auctions of Tiny Toons.
Lizzy: Oh, I remember. Yeah.
Lissa: Again, only millennials will know, but Tiny Toons T-shirts and stuff, that I paid like 200 bucks for a T-shirt and stuff like that. But it was fun because everybody in the chat is nice and supportive. Everyone's cool.
Lizzy: Yeah.
Lissa: Yeah, it's a shared experience.
Lizzy: So for you, do you consider collecting or these specific collections a hobby or is it just something that you do? Because for me, I collect kind of accidentally. It's not something I put a lot of time and energy into for whatever reason. But for you, it sounds like it's different.
Alex: Yeah. Yeah. So that's another kind of downside. I mentioned space. The other one would be time. And it's definitely a hobby for me. I have fun doing it, but it can take up my time, and it can be an annoyance to people around me. If I'm on the internet looking for something, I'm searching for something very specific, and I keep searching for it every day, that time you can't get that back. So is it worth it for you? Is it affecting the people around you? That could be a drain, but yeah, it's definitely a hobby. Definitely takes a good bit of my time. Anytime I have downtime, I'm searching.
Lizzy: Okay. Okay.
Lissa: Have you ever bought or ordered something for your collection that ended up being a fake or something?
Alex: Oh, for sure. Yes.
Lissa: How does that feel?
Alex: I have so many stories about that.
Lissa: That feels like an emotional cost.
Alex: That is an emotional cost definitely. And you have to learn your lessons and not get too invested in it being what you think it's going to be. For example, bought plenty of fake sneakers over the years, taking all my lunch money and all my allowance money and buying a $200 pair of sneakers, and they turn out to be fake, that is heartbreaking.
Lissa: They're Mikes, not Nikes.
Lizzy: Or Liss, remember you bought the Space Jams, and they got stolen?
Lissa: Oh yeah. And those were supposedly real. I ordered off eBay.
Alex: I mean when you lose something like that, and that's just painful too. So the emotional investment is definitely a big part of it, but you learn how to vet things better and who to trust and how to find the right safety nets and, "Oh, if it turns out to be fake, will eBay protect me?" And things like that. So you learn how to vet and protect yourself against that, but that pain is never because you get so excited for something to come in the mail, and if it's not what you want it to be. For example, shirts, there are fake shirts, but there are also dry rock shirts. So black T-shirts deteriorate over time, and if you buy a 30-year-old black T-shirt, it could rip like a piece of tissue paper. And so that is heartbreaking.
Lissa: A legit paper, thin T-shirt.
Alex: Right. So that hurts. But you got to learn how to protect your feelings and separate yourself from that and be like, "It's not the end of the world."
Lissa: What about the stress of you have these valuables, like you said your dad didn't want to leave home because you stored sneakers there, but what about for you? You have certain things where you live. Do you ever get scared of getting stolen from?
Alex: That's a good question. I mean that does cross my mind once in a while or a natural disaster wipes your house out or something, floods your house. I do think about that occasionally, but I'm like, "You know what? The fun of doing it will outweigh the loss."
Lizzy: Sure.
Alex: Monetary loss, I think over time I think it would be heartbreaking, but it was fun doing it. So if I lost everything, or they all go down to zero value, did I have fun doing it?
Lizzy: And that's more about experience and process than the actual item.
Lissa: That's a good positive approach.
Alex: Because things go up and down, they fluctuate, or you could lose and whatever. And I always think about that, but I always go, it would've been worth it. It was worth my time doing it because I enjoy doing it as a hobby.
Lizzy: Well, another interesting element about some types of collections is that many of these things are irreplaceable, or there's a very limited quantity in the world, which obviously increases the value, that scarcity. But yeah, should your collection get destroyed, you might, we've talked about having insurance, or there might be some way to recoup the value.
Lissa: But it's not the same.
Lizzy: You can't necessarily recoup the items which is what's crazy.
Lissa: Yeah, because I was looking into do collectibles fall into your personal property insurance? Let's say you have renter's insurance or homeowner's insurance. But I guess depending on what it is and what the value looks like, you have to get additional writers, which are additional, I don't know. How do you describe our writer? Like additional coverage on your insurance policies if you want to cover certain things. So some people don't end up doing it because for that same reason is yeah, I could get the money back, but it wasn't about the money completely overall.
Lizzy: I feel like you'll definitely see it with jewelry, with art, fine art, you'll start to see some of those policies, cars, classic cars.
Lissa: But less so these very rare, nostalgic things that you couldn't replace. You couldn't actually replace what it means, the value of it.
Lizzy: One feeling we haven't talked about that I guess could be a cost, but it's certainly a benefit, is the thrill of the hunt. So growing up, my best friend's mom was an insane collector. Their house was covered in antiques and then this was early eBay, and she would collect these charms that came in Cracker Jack boxes in the fifties and sixties. They were tiny, and she had tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of them, and she'd be on eBay all day selling and wheeling and dealing. But we used to go to flea markets. We used to go all over with her searching for the holy grail charm. What has your experience been with that thrill?
Alex: Me?
Lizzy: Yeah.
Alex: That is the most exciting part of it. The monetary part of it, that's cool. If you find something for cheap, and you can flip it, but to just go out and find it in the wild especially, or use eBay like you said and things like that, that's really fun. But I'm in a neighborhood I'm not used to being in, I'm going to go to Goodwill right after this and go try to find something. So that's the biggest part of it is the thrill of going and discovering it and trying to dig it up and find it. Finding something cool that is exciting.
Lizzy: How often would you say, or what percentage of the time would you find something worthwhile?
Alex: Low. Very low. That's what makes it exciting. I'll probably go to the thrift store and find something that's cool 1 out of 10 times.
So that's what makes it exciting though because when you get that one time, it's like all those other times are worth it for this one moment. It's like Indiana Jones archeology, you're digging up something that's really cool, maybe it's valuable.
Lissa: So this made me think of kind of the darker side. So that feels fun. That feels like a legit, healthy thrill of the hunt. You know why you're doing it. Maybe it's you're an adult now. It just made me think that kids are primed early to collect, and we were as millennials, but they still do that. All these mystery boxes and toys they have nowadays that have collect, it's a one out of five or a one out of 120, and so literally I'll buy these little question mark box toy thingies for my nieces and nephews, and they'll open it, and oh, I already have that one. Throw it away.
What? Consumer culture. Waste culture. Wasteful.
Lizzy: They don't want the actual item, they just want the feeling,
Lissa: The feeling.
Lizzy: Which is wild.
Lissa: And then you got to have buy how many of those mystery boxes to find the thing. But that's kind of equivalent to us with trading cards back in the day.
Alex: That's where the addiction part comes from. So there's a lot of, like you said, IG lives or whatnot or whatever. They'll buy a place, and then they'll open it for them. And so it's like a form of gambling.
It's like, I don't know what I'm going to get, but if I do get something amazing, that rush, that adrenaline rush and that endorphin rush comes in. It's an addictive feeling. And I think a lot of collecting is, is there some sort of addiction?
Lissa: So how do you find that balance? I don't know.
Alex: Is it healthy? I mean, I don't know.
Lissa: I think if it's fun for you, and it doesn't affect the rest of your life, like your finances and stuff.
Alex: If it doesn't affect your finances overall and you could pay all your bills comfortably.
Lissa: And you enjoy it.
Alex: And it doesn't hurt anyone. Space, like I mentioned, things like that that are you hurting someone else around you, then yeah, do whatever your heart desires.
Lizzy: Sure.
Okay. Coming back to the costs, obviously we've talked about there's items you can collect that are free. There's million dollar paintings, there's a huge, huge wide range, which speaks to the variations and the size of the market. For each of us, what do you think is the most you've put into a collection financially? If you are comfortable sharing.
Alex: You want me to go?
Lizzy: Yeah.
Alex: I'd probably say my sneaker collection over 20 years of collecting probably north of 70, $80,000.
Lizzy: Sure.
Alex: Hundreds of pairs of shoes.
Lizzy: In cost or in value?
Alex: In cost, how much it actually cost me retail or resell to buy those things. And I've definitely calculated my resell. I've made more, but I don't know how that goes with inflation and all this other things.
Lissa: Yeah, but if you're a rough dollar figure of making that you've made more of it, then you've spent, you're probably net positive on it.
Alex: Net positive.
Lizzy: Yeah. What about you Liss?
Lissa: Geez, I can't think of anything off the top of my head. I did have a lot of phases where I was also into sneakers and would spend on J's that you don't get them on the first drop. So you pay double or triple just to buy them off eBay or someone else. So I've had that a lot. I think I've also, one that I checked my Funko Pop app, Funko Pops are these little toys with the big heads, if you guys don't know what I'm talking about. They're cute.
Lizzy: Pop culture.
Lissa: But again, they make so many of them now. It's crazy. So the very first Funko Pop that I ever got was 10 years ago. My sister got into them before I knew what they were. She gave me a Tupac one, Tupac Shakur. So I had it for the longest time, didn't know what Funkos were. And then maybe five years later I started buying my own or getting them as gifts. And I really, really wanted one that was Miles Prower from Sonic the Hedgehog. Tails. Tails' name is Miles Tails Prower, and that is who one of my dogs is named after, so I really wanted that Funko pop.
They were the most rare, one of the rare ones you could find. So I found it on eBay. I didn't know if it was real or not, but I paid 300 bucks for it, which is a lot because these Funkos are 10 to $15 a piece.
Lizzy: When they first release.
Lissa: When the first get released. And then so over the, maybe a year ago I checked my Funko Pop app, my Tupac Shakur was worth like 200 bucks. My Miles Prower was like 200 bucks. And then all the other ones that I bought for $10 were like 15 to 20. So they all were worth more than I bought them for. I checked yesterday. No, the whole thing has dropped. Nothing is worth anything anymore in that collection. And I never even kept the boxes, so it's not like I would've really sold them anyway.
Lizzy: So that made me think of, because I remember I got into Funko Pops, my little phase later, and you had your Tupac, and I remember at that time seeing that one available for a few hundred bucks. Excuse me. Several years later, they released a different Tupac. And I know they do that with J's, right? The re-release. Tell me, how does that make you feel if you have the originals?
Alex: Coming from a sneaker collector? It can hurt.
I mean, it's like if you missed it the first time and you got the re-release 10 years later, that's awesome. But if you collected it and saved it for that long, it's definitely going to hurt the value. And then if you're doing it for that, then that can really hurt.
Lissa: And now yours is yellow and the new one is white.
Lizzy: Or you had something special and rare and now it doesn't feel rare anymore.
Alex: Especially a very specific color, color way or something. Yeah, that's really painful. It hurts.
Lizzy: It's rough pain.
Alex: But that could happen. And the market can be flooded. The market could collapse. Sneaker markets collapsed.
Lizzy: Yeah.
Alex: Yeah, POGs, cards.
Lissa: Now POGs are going to come back one day. I'm going to have all of them, Slammers/
Alex: Bring back POGs.
Lissa: Bring back POGs.
Lizzy: We're going to spark it right here.
Alex: Start that campaign hashtag.
Lissa: I mean, fanny packs came back.
Alex: Fanny packs.
Lissa: Did they even ever leave?
Alex: Who would have a fanny pack election? Yo, I need to hit him up.
Lissa: I'm not saying not as a collection.
Alex: I need the neon.
Lissa: I meant as a trend.
Alex: A nylon neon joint.
Lissa: Yeah, a lot of things make their way back into pop culture.
Alex: Okay, true.
Lissa: Little kids, what do they play with out at recess?
Lizzy: They play with their phones.
Alex: Marbles. Yeah, they don't. It's all digital. It's all virtual.
Lizzy: Well, so let's talk about that. Digital collecting.
Lissa: Oh yeah.
Lizzy: Digital collecting. Virtual collecting.
Alex: Oh my God.
Lizzy: You got stories, Alex.
Alex: I totally forgot about this. I don't even know why I didn't think of this. Yeah, digital collectibles like NFTs now are a big thing. My buddy. This is a long story. I won't go into it, but my buddy told me about NFTs really early on, years and years ago, and he was going to start an NFT and he wanted me to be a part of it. And I was like, "Dude, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. Digital collectibles. Like a JPEG? I don't want a GIF or a JPEG."
Lissa: You can just make a copy. People can make copies.
Alex: Yeah. That's not special to me. There's inherently no, I don't know, I just didn't feel like there's any value to it. But the NFT thing, skyrocketed, he made an NFT. He asked me to be a partner on it. I declined, and he made 3 million dollars on an NFT project and retired, and he moved to Taiwan where he can save on taxes and stuff.
Lizzy: Man.
Alex: And I regretted that, but I did start my own NFT with him later, and it went fairly successful, but I just didn't find a lot of joy in it. I didn't have a lot of passion for it. So I don't know. I just feel, and then the NFT market obviously collapsed very recently, and a lot of people spent millions of dollars on these NFTs, and they're worth $10 now. So it's the same thing with physical things, did they find joy in it? Do they care about the monetary? A lot of people did it for investing and flipping, they failed. That hurts. But if there's people that bought stuff that they just really thought was awesome and a special art piece from a special artist and that made them happy, then that's cool.
Lissa: What's funny is I bought your NFTs a couple, because they're really cute. They're called bitty bots. They're cute.
Alex: Yeah. Bitty bots.
Lissa: I have a couple of them, and I don't really use them for anything. I think one of them was my Twitter picture for a while, but whenever I have to calculate my net worth, my lawyer was asking me to put all my assets, anything I had, so I put NFTs on there. I just couldn't calculate what they're worth. I'm like 20 bucks, something like that. But they're on there. They're on my list of assets. They're assets.
Lizzy: They are.
Lissa: Who knows? They might come back.
Alex: Never know. You never know.
Lissa: Hey, hold on to everything. They might come back.
Alex: I know Michelle, my girlfriend, I gave her a few, and she sold them for 120 bucks and made some money on them. I was like, "Damn." I was like, "That's cool."
Lissa: Dang. I should have sold mine.
Alex: Yeah, that made me happy when that happened.
Lissa: That's cool.
Alex: It was a cool moment.
Lissa: Well, all of these, I mean it all goes back. I think we were talking about this before the episode of what makes something valuable? How does a community even come about for these various things like Funko Pops or sneakers or vintage tees? How do those come about? Just a couple of enthusiasts starting the trend?
Alex: With a lot of things I collect at least, well, obviously I think there's a common denominator across a lot of collectibles. It's like scarcity. How rare is it? If there's only one of that thing and there's enough interest, then it's going to keep going. Whoever's the highest bidder is going to drive the value up. But I think community is the biggest thing in hype because community creates hype. So the more people that are interested in a topic, and they're searching for this very particular thing, they're going to hype it up more, that's going to drive the value up more, and that's going to grow the community more.
Lissa: Until people are onto the next thing.
Alex: And then if it becomes oversaturated or too popular, too mainstream, there's a number of examples like this, it could collapse the whole market and value.
Lizzy: So from an economic perspective, it would be considered an inefficient market. So there's demand, something that has to be popular, but demand outpaces the supply of it. It's scarce. And there's this unique thing with a lot of really popular collectibles where there's an informational advantage or an access advantage. So there's some way to get more or get your hands on it or learn more about it or how it's used that not everyone is privy to. And because there's that gap and who knows and accesses what, that makes it inefficient. And so the people that have that access or that are knowledgeable are going to have an inherent advantage. And sometimes the access is just having more funds. I'm going to buy a thousand trading card packs to get the ones that I want. There's a big similarity and a parallel to investing. And in fact, a lot of these collectible markets are literally considered alternative investments. So art is fully respected as alternative investment. There are funds around art and that kind of thing, and so it's just interesting to see how that kind of hobby can turn into a financial tool.
Lissa: Well, upside on collectibles as alternative investments, obviously some of these markets are harder to predict, but they could withstand certain economic times that other assets can't. So they could be a hedge on some of your other investments.
Lizzy: Exactly. That's really the key to alternative investments is that they have nothing to do with the stock market. So that goes down, you still have gold, or you still have your jewelry or your art. The challenge is that they are fairly illiquid. So depending on what it is, it might be hard to translate that into cash or to do it quickly at value. If you needed a sell your T-shirt collection tomorrow, you probably have to take a big discount on the value of it to get rid of it versus if you had two years to sell it.
Alex: Yeah.
Lizzy: Yeah.
Alex: Very true. Finding the right buyer is important.
Lizzy: But over time, if you can manage that correctly, it can really help diversify your overall financial portfolio.
Lissa: All right. 20 cents. 20 cents is the segment of the show where both Lizzy and myself, Lissa, each get 60 seconds to give our 2 cents on today's topic, whether it's a net positive or a net negative. Where does 20 cents come from?
Lizzy: Because you get the opinion of two dimes.
Lissa: And today, you finally got it.
Alex: I'm slow.
Lizzy: Actually, this is our first live reaction.
Lissa: We actually don't know if anyone knows what we're talking about when we say that.
Alex: Hopefully they see my reaction, and they figure it out.
Lizzy: That's funny. It's funny.
Lissa: Well, today you also get the opinion of a special guest, so you get three opinions. Well, we'll start with Liz. You get 60 seconds on the clock.
Alex: You got an official clock too? Oh my God, the pressure.
Lizzy: All right.
Lissa: All right. 60 seconds on the clock. Is collecting stuff worth it?
Lizzy: All right. For me, I don't put a lot of financial investment into the collections I happen to have, I would say I have maybe 10 to 12 small collections from hundreds of dollars to a couple thousand, some that are free found objects, and it brings me joy. I don't invest a ton of time. It's kind of something that casually accumulates over time, and I also don't think mine tend to take up that much space, so I'm reaping a lot of the benefits without a lot of the costs, and I think there's a lot of room in life for things that bring you joy. So for me, net positive on collecting.
Lissa: Net positive, I'm sure you're within 60 seconds.
Net positive.
Lizzy: Going to give this to Lissa, the normal timer operator.
Lissa: Normal timer.
All right. So for me, I get one minute on the clock by myself. All right, let me think. Is collecting stuff worth it? I mean, every collection I have, now that I think about it, has some personal emotional meaning to me, to my friendships, my relationships. Like you said, they represent a moment in time, something ties me back to the past in a nostalgic, happy way. So it's all good stuff. Similar to you, I am net positive. Yeah, I think I wouldn't spend money for something that doesn't mean something to me, so in that sense, anything I collect will be worthwhile.
Lizzy: All right.
Lissa: Yeah.
Alex: Nice.
Lizzy: Magic, you're up.
Lissa: All right.
Alex: One minute.
Lissa: Yeah, one minute.
Alex: I think just not bearing a lead, I'm net positive to an extent. If it doesn't dig into your personal finances and hurt your ability to pay bills and cover any emergency expenses, then I'm all for it. If it brings joy into your life, it doesn't take up too much space and hurt the people around you, it doesn't take up too much time and affect personal relationships, which I've definitely had that problem in the past as a minor form of addiction to collecting. And yeah, if those things don't happen, then I'm all for it. If it brings you a lot of joy, it ties you to community, and the bonus is that maybe if it appreciates in value, and you can sell it one day and make money on it as an alternative form of investing. I'm definitely a net positive with collecting, and I'm not going to stop collecting anytime.
Lizzy: Anytime soon?
Lissa: You get three net positives from three millennials.
Lizzy: Yes.
Gen Z, go ahead and disagree, y'all.
Alex: The ghost of collecting millennials.
Lissa: Well remember, this is what we think right now at this moment in time. Who knows? That could change in the future. Right now, all three of us are net positive on collecting stuff. So what do you think" is collecting stuff worth it?
Lizzy: Hit us up. Let us know what you think. DM us on Instagram at netnetpodcast or email us at hi@netnetpodcast.com. And if you want to follow us individually, here's where you can find us.
Lissa: I'm at WealthforWomenofColor on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
Lizzy: I'm at live_well_lizzy on Instagram and TikTok. And Alex?
Alex: You can find my vintage account at HangtimeVintage on Instagram. Hit me up.
Lissa: All references, statistics, and resources mentioned can be found in our show notes. This podcast is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, and should not be constituted as financial advice. Remember to always do your own research, consult a professional as needed, and feel empowered to make your own decisions.