GM ☀️
Discussion
Good morning Mahdood 🌞
If I still had my Magic The Gathering card collection from high school I could sell it and retire 😭
Seriously?! I kept my comic books from back then (actually middle school), of course they're worthless though. Wish I'd played magic, mighta saved those too
Had I kept them, and in good condition, they would be worth a lot. High school was 30+ years ago now 👀
I remember coveting a Black Lotus at the Phantom’s Attic store where I bought my mtg cards. I think it was $250 then. I never bought it because poor and it’s a worthless card for playing but I remember staring at it every time I went there. Man that was a fun time. MTG in middle school was such a vibe.
Today that card is worth like 10k minimum, depending on the release up to the millions 🤯 I stopped playing in probably '94 so a lot of that collection would have been worth $bank.
But you're right it was a vibe. I got my value out of them with fun and friends made.
It was only a handful of ultradorks that played it at my school. And that's coming from me, a certified nerd
My highschool eventually gave us a room to play in at lunch because we filled the main hallway at the school blocking foot traffic 😂 There were a lot of us. Maybe there was less stigma then? It was basically brand new at the time. Years before Pokemons or whatever.
We weren’t allowed to play at school technically. They called it gambling. My school was pretty decent overall. Actually this reminds me, they were going to impose lanyards as mandatory and me and my friends distributed anti-totalitarian literature and pamphlets all over the school and did a guerrilla protest involving pamphleting and propagandizing. We never had the lanyards imposed. The nerds were in control of my school it was amazing to be alive. It was weird because all of the super nerds/computer guys were also the elite sportsman. My one friend at the time is now a patent lawyer but could bench 300lbs in high school. It was a weird school, I was very lucky.
I love jacked nerds. Rare breed
My hs was very white and stereotypical with its caste system. Very little magic was played
I was never into the team sports in high school, more of a scrapper and rabble rouser. The closest I came to sports was beating the shit out of the football teams quarterback on the front lawn of the school.
#goodtimes
Did the school hate you for that? 😂
Some people did, it was a very clique school though, a lot had my back. It had ~1400 students from a large area, with a city/rural divide.
His dad was my English teacher too. Holy shit did that semester ever suck 🤣
Ya that’s a wild dynamic.
It was. Had the usual jock vs nerd stuff, with an added layer of city vs country.
Did he fuck with your grades enough to not be obvious but still let you pass? 😂
The more I reflect on my middle/highschool experience the more I realize how lucky I was. It was a relatively small school with engaged and interesting teachers and not much in the way of belligerent cliques that excluded anyone arbitrarily. Most groups overlapped substantially and got along. Essentially you couldn’t hang with people if you had nothing to contribute, which just makes sense. I was very lucky.
Depressing
gm
prior to bitcoin and just when Covid hit I bought a collection off a poor idiot who needed money.
1000 Euro, all basepack generation one cards.
sent them in to be graded to PSA.
it took 2 YEARS, because everybody and their aunt went completely ape shit and were sending in cards to grade.
got them back with a decent grade. all in all the whole collection is probably worth at least 10k.
best case: 15k (conservative)
good times! but insanely valuable what it taught me about bitcoin and hard assets.
That’s a wild story. I wonder if that guy was desperate or just didn’t realize what the real value was. The way markets and price discovery works is so fascinating.
How does anyone know if the printer can’t just print more?
They don’t
Then wtf
🤷♂️
There are a lot of fakes going around. That is true. That is why there is a ‘trusted third party’ in the space…. that is PSA (a company in the U.S.) they grade collectibles (baseball, NfL, you name it) and you pay for that ‘assessment’.
there are even more ‘Grading Companies’ and they compete with each other of course.
but how do you verify that 1996 Charizard Base Set is REALLY from 1996? as a noob, you can’t. that’s why bitcoin makes so much sense.
you know what’s even wilder? My close friend does this:
1. collects cards. sends in a multiple cards (like 20 charizards. he believes one should at least get a 10)
2. it gets graded. PSA sends him back a couple of 8’s and 9’s. not a single ten. PSA knows a 10 grade is the holy grail. you cannot inflate that number too much. otherwise you destroy prices.
3. he destroys the Grading Case around it cards and just sends them in again hoping it gets graded a 10 instead of a 9
4. he discovered a dude on the internet who is really good at ‘improving’/‘fixing’ the scratches the cards (like a scratch on the hologram if they are shiny). he sends them to that dude for a couple of euros and sends them back to PSA to have them grade it again until he gets a 10.
sometimes it works, often it fails.
but it tells you everything you need to know about bitcoin. 🤣
just in case you haven‘t seen it. nostr:nprofile1qqsytuv4el7t3jtjfm7zfrc9q730ked40806he7dx5uctxqk8j4hvfcpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgqgkwaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8qunfd4skctnwv46qg262m8 tagging you here.
Centralization issues
I think these grading orgs are just fake referees, paid to be an illusion of authority or fairness.
A market functions until it doesn‘t…they have serial numbers on the cases and everything. They try to track the sells on ebay and stuff to check on the price.
(like ‚ Charizard PSA 10 was sold for 450.000 the last time we checked). you can visit their website.
I’m sure they do some actual grading but yeah people like authority for some reason
he was a little desperate. but also he was MORE than happy to sell them for 1000 Euros. I think he just did not get the hype around it. a pretty simple ‘offline’ kind of guy.
the hype was so massive in the english speaking circles in the internet. as a German without any language skills I think stuff like that just ‘passes’ you without you even knowing.