One of the biggest reasons people hold on to old junk is that “it could be worth something someday!” On very rare occasions, this can be true. One of my friends has mentioned that certain classic or otherwise limited-production cars go up in value, ditto for rare guns, and I don’t want to ignore this fact. But really, what most people mean when they say this is that “this item can be sold for money someday”. Which is fine, but that’s true for pretty much anything. If you buy something in 1990 for $20, and you sell it for $40 30 years later in 2020, that means it went up in price by 100%. But did it go up in value? Did it really? The interwebz tells me me that $1 in 1990 is worth $1.98 in 2020, so your $20 barely kept pace with inflation. And yet, you spent 30 years heating, cooling, and otherwise maintaining this item, if you weren’t getting any direct use from it.
Too often, the price people think they can get for something is inflated. Most good stuff sells fast if it’s cheap, but few people are going to pay $10 less for a 10-year old Osprey backpack than a brand new one, and people don’t usually have nostalgia for the last decade. Give it another 10 years, then maybe.
Many years ago, at a friend’s suggestion, I went to a large antique store nearby. They had some really cool stuff there, but I didn’t see many people buying. And some of the prices were not bad. But even the super-retro table from the 70s was only a few hundred dollars, so really about as much as you might pay for a new one today. It was in good shape, so it likely sat in somebody’s spare bedroom or garage for years before being rediscovered. It’s unlikely this person “made” any money on it, but to the right nostalgic buyer, it must have sold for something, and that’s as good as you can get most of the time. But I sure hope nobody bought that hoping that 50 years later it would be worth more. The only people who typically make money from these sorts of things are those who offer to buy it cheap from the original purchaser, who’s willing to sell at a loss just to get rid of the darn thing and get some beer money. That person is then able to mark it up and pocket a small profit. Sometimes these are professional antique pickers, sometimes they are just savvy garage sale hunters. Either way, these people very rarely make a living doing this because it is so difficult to carry the value of things into the future. There are just too many things with low or no margins.
Many years ago, it was common for my mom to think this way. We kept a lot of stuff because it could be worth something someday. I suspect this may be related to the difficulties my grandparents had getting established as farmers. They held on to a lot of stuff, and grandpa was a bit of an antique purveyor who loved going to auctions. I suspect some of this just naturally passed on to my mom. It started to be passed on to me, too. When I was a kid, probably around 10 years old, I convinced my parents to loan me my next week’s allowance so I could buy these Pokemon figures that were hard to find. I convinced them to do this by stating that “it could be worth something someday” because it was rare. So they relented and let me borrow the next week’s allowance. And true to form, I never opened that package. I really thought it would go up in value! Kind of sad when I think about it – a 10 year old, trying to hold onto an unopened toy, hoping for what? To sell it for $20, the rough equivalent of 5 or 6 packs of hockey cards?
While I’m on that subject, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with collecting, as collecting can be fun, but you really have to acknowledge that it’s really not something you’re going to make money from. I used to collect hockey cards and I had 5 or 6 of the rare “stick” or “jersey” cards, which had pieces of either embedded in the card itself, used in a live game. Some were especially rare and marked with a number out of 100. And all the card guides put great numbers to these: $60, $100, $200. But by the time the internet came around, this kind of changed. I remember, not too many years ago, looking these up online and finding my cards for $5 or $10, hardly worth the money I paid for the packs (though buying those packs as a kid was still fun and, in my opinion, worth it). I was so annoyed with this that, only a few years ago, I donated the last of them to a card store. I actually told the guy, “I’m too lazy to sell these, but I figured I’d rather them go somewhere they can be useful than to throw them out”. He laughed. Truth be told, that probably barely paid his wage for half the day, but at least they maybe found a new home where they were loved and appreciated. I guess.
Oh, sure. Everybody’s got “a story”. Uncle Bob make $200 on this, or Great Aunt Sally had a rare Tiffany silver spoon that sold for $1,000. But these are the stories that perpetuate the myth that your crap is earning you money. Plus, they’re difficult to replicate. You get really lucky once, and that’s usually it, and that money is often gone before you know it. Stuff that actually earns you money is photography equipment if you’re a photographer. Books that keep you up-to-date in your field if you’re a professor. Your car if you deliver food for a restaurant. The suits you wear as a lawyer (cause you often have to). Your tools if you’re a mechanic. In other words, capital, of some form. Capital is really what can help you earn money. From other things, well, you really have to get lucky. And luck is a bad strategy for seeking value.
I try to avoid buying things assuming they may be worth something some day. I’m just not a great connoisseur of stuff. Which doesn’t mean it can’t be done! I just prefer to focus on life itself, and I don’t like the distraction of extra crap lying around. More capital, more things that make me happy regardless of their potential resale value, and less junk. Always less junk!