NEW YORK — For 31 years, Alan Rosen has built a successful career as a professional baseball card dealer, but his real pride is an army of robots.
Rosen has amassed a robot collection now 609 large, worth $1.2 million. He keeps every one in individual shrink-wrapped plastic cases displayed in cabinets in his home office in Montvale, N.J.
The Japanese-made tin robots have blocky heads and moveable arms and legs. Most are silver, although some are painted blue, green, red, orange and grey. His prize possessions include robots named Jupiter, worth $35,000, and Television, worth $25,000.
Owning 609 of anything demonstrates real dedication, the kind that has built countless collections of Beanie Babies, stamps and state quarters. And in the current stock market turmoil, the possibility of making money from collectibles may appeal to those looking for a different place to invest.
Certified financial planner Ellen Dorle said the value in collecting depends largely on the items. A passionate collector may spot value that others miss, she said.
“If something is old and it has some scarcity to it, it may eventually be worth something to somebody,” Dorle said. “The question is who is that person and how do you find them.”
Still, collectors indulging their passions run certain risks, said financial planner Carl von dem Bussche. He said the biggest downsides to collecting are liquidity, retaining value and a 28 percent capital gains tax to be paid at the time of sale when collectibles have been owned for more than a year.
Rosen, who is known in the collectors circuit as Mr. Mint, sells an average of $4 million worth of baseball cards per year and makes roughly 21 percent profit before expenses. He finds the cards at conventions or through collectors who see his ads in trade magazines.
In most cases, though, collectors view making money as incidental.
While Rosen is passionate about both baseball cards and robots, he makes a distinction: Cards are his business, and robots are his fun. He started his collection in 1954, when he was eight years old and his parents bought him his first robot. As an adult, he stopped his other collection — of documents signed by presidents and signers of the Declaration of Independence — so he could afford his robot collection.
“A collector usually collects what they had as a child,” said Rosen, 61. “Collecting is sort of buying back a piece of your youth.”
There are enthusiasts for almost any collectible, judging by the clubs listed on Collectors.org, the umbrella for the Association of Collecting Clubs and the National Association of Collectors. The list of 3,566 clubs turns up Beyond the Pond for collectors of frog figurines, Kollectors of Nasty Old Ties (KNOT), Hammered Aluminum Collectors Association and the Lighter-than-Air Society for blimp enthusiasts, not to mention clubs for people who like Christmas ornaments, hunting decoys, salt-and-pepper shakers, thimbles, bricks, bottles, beads, buttons and board games.
Wine is a gaining popularity as a collectible among amateurs and professionals thanks to growing demand leading to sharp price hikes. That has drawn interest from investors who have created funds to treat wine much like stocks. The Fine Wine Fund and Wine Investment Fund, both based in the U.K., buy wines making bets on how different vintages will sell later.
Former investment banker Steve Bachmann founded Vinfolio — a San Francisco company that sells wine through its Web site, stores bottles for clients and helps them catalog their cellars — to follow a passion for wine that had already led him to create a personal 7,000-bottle cellar. Bachmann’s clients sometimes end up as accidental investors.
When Bachmann’s clients are buying wine for personal consumption, they sometimes add a few cases to their order, with plans to sell them for a profit later.
Bachmann generally doesn’t encourage wine collecting as an investment strategy, but he concedes that in recent years at least, wine has proven to be a good investment. For example, he bought six bottles of a 2003 Petrus for $670 a piece in July 2004 that have nearly tripled in value, with an average auction price of $1,878.97 today.
“I don’t in general advocate people treating wine as an asset class, like securities, partly because that’s not what it’s intended for,” Bachmann said. “It’s intended to be consumed.”
But the collecting sickness certainly seems to afflict at least some of Bachmann’s buyers. He reports a near-fanatical loyalty by some Chinese customers for certain vintages from the Bordeaux region of France, popular partly because of its long track record for producing quality wines.
On the Net:
National Association of Collectors: www.collectors.org
Alan Rosen’s Web site: www.mrmint.com
Vinfolio: www.vinfolio.com
Ellen Dorle: www.ellendorle.com/new/ellendorle
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