What a coincidence - that is actually the worst income stream I ever created.
I was working at Software Etc.[1][2] in 1995 and used my employee discount to buy 12 boxes of Fallen Empires. I was certain it would make me (relatively) rich.
Five years later I sold them all on ebay for, basically, even money. FE was so overprinted that it had no value at all and I don't think I would have made any significant money until after 2010.
[1] Southdale Mall in Edina, MN - the first shopping mall.
Fast forward to 2022: Hasbro is printing limited series of various qualities.
For the juicy series, the price basically doubles right after the sold-out.
That’s my definition of easy money.
Hint: the next limited serie is « MtG meets The Lord of the Rings »
That's awesome! MtG didn't make me any money but it got me into MIT, so I love sharing this story:
I was super into the game in my later high school years (1994-96), right when the market started going absolutely bonkers (relatively speaking). And I discovered a pattern - there was a price guide that got published on Usenet every week, and every card had "low", "average", and "high" prices. But people would only transact at the "high" level, so every week the price guide was updated with the new average and the loop began. Anyway I discovered this loop, started trading actively at tournaments, built up a huge portfolio of cards.....and then had the entire collection stolen from me while I was playing a match.
Anyway, I told this story to my college interviewer who just so happened to be an early Algo trader at a large Wall Street bank, and he loved it and wrote me up a glowing interview recommendation.
(Side note: At one point I had 9 Black Lotuses and was super proud of that...first page of my album. Few Alpha, few Beta, mostly Unlimited, one was signed by Christopher Rush, etc. Ahh memories.)
Wow, insane anecdot. Thanks for sharing!
My only anecdot is probably that i exchanged a mox from my very first starter, for a shivan dragon.
Everybody in the shop was shocked. I discovered the reason why much later :)
To continue on the Usenet stuff, my very first contact with the Internet was me on Usenet trying to find a collector set [that I eventually got from the famous Tommi Hovi]. The first international shipping I ever received in my life.
[1]: Magic: the Gathering.