Investing fads that didn’t pay off (and some that did)
A look at some throughout history...
• less than 3 min read
Will your collection of Sillybandz and POGs be able to pay for your kids’ college? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean that collectibles and speculative fads are always a bad investment. Here’s a look at some throughout history that were and some that weren’t.
Tulips: At the height of the Netherlands’ tulip bulb bubble of the 1600s, tulips reportedly rivaled mansions in price, thanks to their then-exotic beauty…and rampant speculation. While some historians doubt whether the bulb bubble was as bulbous as once believed, the market collapsed either way, likely leading florists to plot their next big score: prom corsages.
Railway shares: Nobody was conducting bubble business like the British in the 1840s, when investors like Charles Darwin and the Brontë sisters poured money into speculative railway investments, leading to one of the biggest financial crashes of all time.
Baseball cards: Like a knuckleball, collectible card values are kind of all over the place. Old cards featuring legendary players can bring in millions of dollars, but in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the so-called Junk Wax era, cards were overproduced and their value slid. Now, some fans worry the industry is making some of the same mistakes again.
Beanie Babies: In the late 1990s, you could probably buy a house using a Princess Di bear as a down payment. But Beanie Baby demand isn’t quite what it used to be, and prices have fallen considerably. Some might still be worth more than the typical decades-old stuffed animal, though.
Bitcoin: The OG cryptocurrency is down from its all-time highs last year, but it still spent the past week hovering north of $80,000, a far cry from the $600 it cost 10 years ago. That upward trajectory hasn’t been a straight line, though, with volatility and speculation concerns constantly dogging the crypto.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs): These digital assets were supposed to change the future of art, media, and plenty of other things through the magic of the blockchain. Per data firm Nonfungible.com, NFT sales jumped from $82 million in 2020 to $17.6 billion in 2021, before crashing down to about $5.63 billion last year, according to CryptoSlam data.—BC
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