Mental musings of doing things on the side

 Last week at work, the topic came up of doing some trades on the side within the geeky life.

Well, for one who has done that, I brought some fond memories, but also those of hard work and struggles to mind.

So for no really particular reason, I sat down and decided to put my thoughts on the matter to virtual paper in this opinion piece.  In the past decade, I have been tippytoeing in the matter on various fronts: wargames, LEGO, trading card games, anime figures... and they all have their plusses and drawbacks, but one really did stand out as perhaps the most "intresting" investment for those with not that much funds or spare time.  But of course, that will be talked about later in this piece, namely cards.

Let's first have a look at the other three.

LEGO is by far perhaps the best return in the long haul, the venerable brick remains an ever popular item, and especially (bigger) franchise sets can really double to tripple over value in the course of only a few years.  Unless the umpteenth Star Wars rerelease comes around, which can sink your stock.  Another market for the bricks is literally that, selling the bricks seperatly.  But truth to be told, dealing in lego is nearly a full time occupation, especially if it involves the sorting out of a bunch of loose elements.

Another drawback is that you need really a LOT of space to store it all, wether it's loose bricks or boxed sets, and you have, in the latter, keep in mind to store it dry and dark to obtain the quality of the box.  So the damp cellar is out of the question.

Anime figures is perhaps the most volatile of them all.  It's hard to predict which figures will remain popular, there are so many alternatives of each character, and an anime that is hot now might be forgotten tomorrow as there is a LOT of material out there, so everyone can have a different waifu or husbando every day of the year.  This makes it a very risky investment (as I found out shamefully) that can leave you with a lot of dead stock, though usually IF one goes out of the RRP to the highly wanted list, the numbers tend to rise very high.  Mainly also due to the high cost the figures usually start at.  I`m talking scales here, because the cheaper price figures are so abundant, people usually grab one when a character comes out, and don`t have the need for a full collection of them generally, bar perhaps miss Hatsune Miku who has a rabid following of collectors.  But they usually don`t wait to long after figures come out to get theirs.

Wargame figures are really tricky.  Over the years, I found that there are two "worth it" markets: OOp but still usable currently Games Workshop models and well painted complete historical armies.  But the issue with that is, that apart from the buy in of an army, no matter the scale, there is also a lot of time investment needed to paint, base and generally make it nice armies to sell on.  While there are mainstay periods, often other historical era's lost their mojo by the time a non-professional studio or artist has had his army finished, and he remains stuck with an army to sell off hopefully at purchase price at the local Bring and Buy of a convention. 

So that brings us to the fourth player, the trading card.  Especially Magic, Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh are incredibly popular still, and buying booster boxes at releases often, if you go the loose card market like I did, yield some profit.  The storage space needed for your stock is, if using a good toploader boxing system, smaller then the others, and with some decent filing system you can rather quikcly pick orders.  BUT, and there is a big BUT, not only are you dependant on the meta of the moment for which cards are hot or not, you also have the "tournament legal" period of most sets to actually flip your cards around.  After that, you tend to get stuck with cheap rares and boxes full of commons and uncommons that you can barely get rid off, unless as bulk at flea markets and the likes.

But, if I consider all those factors, I guess card games still are the safest bet to invest a bit on the side.  The limited needed space, combined with the less hassle to pack things up, make it a good side-hobby if you look to do some side-haggling.  And you never know when you might break open that awesome card that is wanted by everyone and gets you a nice amount of pocket money.

Maybe I should indeed return to do that a bit again... and save the work of the other ones I tried over the years.