On the idea of “doom spending”: I’ve noticed that hobbies I used to enjoy, spectating sports, trading card games, video games, and just about anything else seen as a leisure activity have been destroyed by unreasonable men. Sports are now synonymous with gambling over every possible outcome on any given play. Trading card games are now all about min-maxing decks and chase cards and overprinting to meet outsized demand (cards have themselves become a meme stock). Video games are also about mix-maxing and DLC and microtransactions. 

Every hobby has become a possible content creator career [for better or worse], but now there’s more content than consumers. Gemini and I also discussed the idea of “market movers” which is the name of an app that tracks sports (and Pokemon) card prices on a daily basis. This is to say, the “market mover” is an entirely unreasonable concept, especially when cards aren’t really assets at all. They are the avatars of our hopes and dreams tied up in a subject tainted by extreme nostalgia or popular sentiment. It’s why I finally got out of sports cards and only buy TCG cards when they get reprinted and super cheap and I can get my nostalgia fix for pennies on the dollar compared to the recent past. 

More importantly and broadly, food and energy markets have been so manipulated that they are unrecognizable from even twenty years ago. And with the rise of on-demand meals like Factor, who needs to dine out? (I’ve even noticed some restaurants are just using the same ghost kitchens like the food delivery places do and so there’s not much differentiation other than the price and the ‘dining experience.’) I feel like this unreasonable approach to consumer spending isn’t sustainable, though. When will we finally wake up and prioritize the things we need to survive and allow our hobbies and diversions to return to their previous harmless status?

On Value Investing and Trading Cards…

… If I know my history correctly, Warren Buffett was part of the value investing movement. [Gemini would confirm this is correct, as Buffett learned from Benjamin Graham, author of The Intelligent Investor.] I will also say that while in retrospect that the stocks crashed, I would argue that many of those companies benefitted in the short term from these massive investments, and sadly the ones holding the “bag” in the end were the people losing their pension and retirement funds. Even today, we’re seeing outsized stock prices, which is why Emily and I exited the stock market after making major profits because bonds and high-yield savings and CD’s are just more practical once you reach a certain level of wealth. And I do think that SOME graded cards will actually stand the test of time, particularly the truly scarce top condition vintage cards and certain pop culture staples like Pikachu or Charizard, whereas the other 99% will become antique shop curiosities in forty years.

…And I already see people pivoting to eschewing grading altogether (especially as grading costs and horrible turnaround times make it impractical) and being super picky about who they collect. But it’s not a mainstream sentiment yet. I do, in fact, think that collectibles long-term WILL be a legitimate asset class, but only the top one percent of all subjects and then the top 10 or so percent of cards and collectibles related to that subject.

For example, I see Aaron Judge as the best investment in baseball cards today. He’s very likely to be a lifelong New York Yankee, he’s the best hitter of his generation, and a high likelihood to make the hall of fame. Shohei Ohtani might be the more valuable player overall thanks to his contributions on the basepaths and as a pitcher, but his prices are already so pumped that you’re not going to make money buying right now. As much as I’ve tried in the past to find steals in cards based on statistics, it rarely works out. Even if I’m right about the player’s future performance (and I often am), the cards rarely move. Let’s see your five questions and apply them to Judge, Shohei Ohtani, and Bobby Witt Jr (the best all around player in baseball today). Who will be the big “retirement” play in a generation? I’d say Judge.

I think Jeter is a great historical comparison, and there’s no doubt Judge will ultimately be a monumentally more valuable player than Jeter in the long run. (I don’t think Jeter’s fielding is as bad as the metrics say, by the way.) Home runs run the hobby. It is the best thing you can do ass a hitter, so if you hit a lot of them, you will do well. I don’t know that A-Rod, or even Barry Bonds, is the best comparable to Jeter, though, because their PED use (and other personality issues) have tainted their value in the hobby forever. The best comparison for Jeter would be Ken Griffey Jr, a “clean” player whose career second half was tarnished by injuries and yet was still a great “accumulator. However, Griffey’s long-term value is because he was the premier card in a historically relevant set (1989 Upper Deck) and because he was such an icon in the 90’s. Griffey was a better and more valuable player than Jeter ever was, even in his diminished injury-plagued years, but Jeter as the Yankee captain has more cultural clout. Once people like myself as a millennial, who actually saw Griffey at his best, are no longer around, who will be more fondly remembered in the hobby, Griffey or Jeter? Look how cheap the cards of legit home run king of all time, Hank Aaron, actually are in comparison to PSA 10 rookie cards of modern stars!

… I believe Judge is still an amazing long-term play even right now. He JUST won an MVP (2025) but because the Dodgers won back to back world series, Shohei is at the top of the hobby. And I think Shohei will go down as the best baseball player of all time, but there will be a point where his cards will come way down, just like Trout’s did. And it’s funny because the Angels play just outside of LA, but they’ve been irrelevant since Ohtani left. Trout is an aging player who’s barely an average contributor at this point. Shohei will probably be a long-term DH hitting 50 homers a year who might start a game pitching here and there. And Japan will always be a market for his stuff. Judge is the value play for me, as home runs will always sell. It’s funny because I’m a Red Sox fan, and yet, a Yankee (Judge) is my top target. I’m also quite fond of Mookie Betts, who already has more career WAR than Jeter ever did, and he’s Shohei’s teammate! His rookie cards are more expensive than Judge’s! And I love Mookie, but Betts, while a future Hall of Famer, is not Aaron Judge.

…I do think there being so many different cards will make this era of collecting very different. For example, Judge has a rookie card in 2017 Topps Update card number #US1 that features the rookie Judge in the home run derby. I think this is a good card that will probably age well, but there are so many variations of ‘Judge rookie card’ that I think everyone will have a favorite based purely on aesthetics; what will prevail in the end is pure supply and demand and the scarcest card will eventually rise to the top of the pile. Trout’s 2011 Topps Update rookie had the potential to be this generation’s 52 Mantle. But injuries and the Angels’ front office incompetence ruined that. Like Judge, Shohei has a lot of rookie cards to choose from. Most modern stars do. Funny enough I think the home run derby card, which is about $6 a copy in raw near-mint condition right now, is the greatest value play for Judge rookies, although his 2017 Topps Fielding variation (Judge is also known as an above average fielder) may end up being his most iconic, ironically enough more valuable than anyone than shows him batting (doing what he inevitably will be known best for).