A Wall Street Journal article tells about collectors of strip art. They collect the original hand-drawn comic strip. One collector, “paid $4,000 for the original drawing of the first Pogo strip to appear in newspapers.”
When the collector tried to sell the 1948 strip in an auction, nobody was interested because Pogo was taller and skinnier than most collectors remembered. In the owner’s words, “My page has tremendous historic significance, but Pogo doesn’t really look like Pogo. It just doesn’t have the nostalgic appeal to a lot of today’s collectors.”
The valuation of credit card collections
When it comes to credit card collecting, quite often we’re told, “This credit card is really valuable. They’re out of business.” Remember, prices of credit cards are based on supply and demand. It’s vital to have a credit card collectors can relate to.
Sure, a business may have gone under and few of their cards are available – but remember, if people don’t want their card then it’s worthless. And if people have never heard of the business, you can generally figure they don’t want one of their cards.
Importance of collector familiarity
Collector familiarity is very important. Think along the lines of what you would be interested in collecting if you were just starting to form a collection 20 years from now. In most cases, the answer will be the national credit cards. Think of what you collected when you first started.
You may have started with a few local cards, for example, but now mainly collected national ones. And if that’s the way you started, then you can safely guess that’s the way everyone else is doing it.
Collector familiarity with the national credit cards make them the most popular collecting group. If a group is the most popular then those cards will probably always be in demand. Keep this in mind when forming your credit card collection.
Copyright 1986 by Greg Tunks
