HI everyone, lately, I've been selling some of my collection, and in the light of today's continuing financial meltdown I was wondering: have any of you reconsidered any of your hobby purchases?

Sometimes, people actually flee to more tangible, albeit more illiquid assets, during a stock market meltdown, so card collectors may be willing to trade "paper" for cardboard assets.

Any thoughts?

I don't think this is the time to say "cash is King" because he's getting too much paper and ink these days.

I dont buy cards on a whim, and I dont have duplicates in my collection for the most part. Over the years Ive sold some cards to get money in a hurry to pay some bills and I mostly look back at those with regret for selling. If you need to sell because you need the money or you just dont care about cards anymore thats one thing. Im not going to sell things I like because of events that are out of my control.

This has been discussed before on this forum, but the recession has been going on or so long, it's no surprise that it has come up again. Especially since the stock markets have been tanking for more than a week now.

I still say that these things are temporary. Even if it takes a few years, eventually the economy will strengthen again and I'll be glad to have any good quality vintage cards that I purchased during the downturn. My personal income has not gotten any stronger or weaker, so I'm still buying at the same pace. It seems that whenever I get some extra cash, I want to add something else to my collection. Sometimes I have seen cards increase in price many hundreds of dollars over the course of 10 years, and I ask myself, "Why didn't you buy that when you could afford it easier?"

I plan to continue buying at the same pace, which for me goes in spurts. I'm always thinking about cards I want to buy, but sometimes extra bills pop up and I have to stop buying for a little while. Then a few things work out for me and I end up with a nice little stack of extra cash. That's when I can really catch up on my sets a bit.

Earl, I kind of disagree about the economy. This situation is different and much worse than past recessions. You can't be so sure that it eventually will strengthen again, even financial gurus don't have a basis to predict how it's going to be tomorrow but... collecting shouldn't die. I know myself - if you take my collection from me and the collecting in general, my life will be half empty.

Elmar--what I mean about the economy is that it always runs in cycles. I remember when everyone was getting rich day trading about 10-12 years ago. A lot of people quit their jobs so that they could have more time to sit in front of their computers and watch the stock market. It was great while it lasted, but the cycle ended. If you go back to the Great Depression you see that things were rough for a lot of people, but the economy turned around and improved.

I believe that we have to learn from history and history tells us that the economy will not remain at one certain level, regardless of how good or bad things look. Eventually, the economy will improve and things will get back to normal. (But not permanently.)

Nope Earl...The economy always HAS RUN in cycles in the past but we have never had such large debt.
Great Depression is a bad example - the economy turned around only because of WWII. This time a new World War will cause "an Armageddon".

We have to learn from history but history is not always repeat itself.

I'll take my words back if you show me a realistic way to liquidate the debt.
Nobody knows a solution so far, just printing more money putting ourselves into a larger **** hole.

Sorry guys, who cares what happens tomorrow - back to collecting