As you know one of my favorite targets is Jordan Hembrough the Toy Hunter. I have not said much about him lately since his show was canceled. Recently he popped up on ABC Good Morning America. You can see his segment at link below.
https://gma.yahoo.com/turn-old
All I will say for now is collectibles are illiquid assets and you collect for enjoyment not investment.
He is not a collector ,not a hunter, he is a money hungry ,looking to make money out of toys and self portrait. Those program are edited ,you can tell. He bluff a lot as typical show man, nothing more. A lot of his find offer-buy to collectors are turn down and those are not showed in his program.
It is true you can invest in toy to resale then, but then you are not collecting just playing a typical business man in the vintage toy arena.
I agree with you.
The landscape is littered with these “investment items” that were “better than the stock market” —– Avon bottles, wall-hanging plates, and Beenie Babies. Like Admin says: They, like toy soldier figures, are not “liquid assets” — that is, they cannot be immediately converted into cash. Hence, they are not investments which are “better than the stock market”.
Stocks can be immediately converted into cash, at any time, on any day, at the seller’s choosing, at a going commercial rate which everybody from one end of the country to the other will recognize. If you want to see the difference, gather up your entire toy collection. Either take it to a show or list it on ebay, and see what happens.
For me, all my toy soldiers are a hobby which gives me substantial pleasure. As an added benefit, I can, from time to time, recoup some of my costs by selling parts of it at a show. But it most assuredly is not an investment on which I can in any way rely.
I admire and respect those like CTS, Hobby Bunker, and TSSD who have managed to establish their hobby interests as a self-supporting business. But they are the exceptions.
As for Toy Hunter Jordan, I watched the video, and all I see is a showman/salesman full of hot air puffery. When he told the guy cleaning out his garage that the toy contents were “valued” at $1900.00″, the guy should have immediately offered them to Jordan for $1500.00. That would represent for Jordan a 26% profit, right? —- just as soon as Jordan resold them for their $1900.00 value. How do you think Jordan would have reacted to such a great bargain?
Don
There are so many problems with the segment. Looking at Rockem Sockem Robots on EBay there are 192 offerings for this item only one is the Marx version which is at $189.00. Most people will have it without the box so it will be worth under $50.00. Jordan skipped over on Beenie Babies which were a disaster for the people who invested in them. There are people lost their savings and at least one person in jail because of Beenie Babies. The Ideal Utility Belt Jordan got that in the UK at least two years ago.
Yes, I also noticed how Jordan just glided by the interviewer’s comment on Beenie Babies: “What about my Beenie Babies? I’m still waiting.”, she asked. Jordan didn’t even acknowledge the point — he just continued on with his Ra Ra spiel that toys necessarily keep going up in value because they always get older.
As to Jordan’s point about “older equals increased value”, permit me to point out that around 1988 or 89, I went to OTSN looking for Ideal Rev.War/Alamo/War of 1812 figures. I was finding them with more than one dealer asking $7.00 each for them, and a low price of not less than $5 per figure. Last year at OTSN, I walked into Rick Eber’s room. His roommate had a large box of 40 – 50 of the figures, all in pristine condition. Price? $2.00 per figure, as many as you wanted. I purchased about 10 of my favorite poses.
Don
I tweeted Laura Spencer that the value has gone down on Beenie Babies. On the Star War Toys the big money is in the early items except for Vril a character from the cartoon Droids. That figure was not made here and was done in Brazil. there have been some salesmen samples that have shown up.
What a fake phony fraud. That ABC “puff piece” featuring Jordan is a joke and not reality. Want reality, visit any show today and see what items are really selling for. Speak to anyone who collected those 1980s/’90s Britains Limited Edition sets as investments. I’ve seen them selling for as low as 70-percent of their original selling price. Same for many G.I. Joes as well as all those Limited Edition trucks. Fact is that folks may think of these “collectibles” as investments, people should buy them because they like them, and then they will enjoy their collections any way, regardless of what happens to their prices.
Bill L
I agree so many people have lost out on their “investments” in collectibles. I do the same thing on telling people on collectibles get it for your enjoyment.
Jordan is desperate to get his career going again. He has been trying to revived the show with no luck.
I guess I missed out on the whole collection thing when I joined the Army and my dad cleaned out my closet of my comic book and baseball card collections. I had many now-classic books that I’ve seen sell for thousands of dollars – not to mention baseball cards. How about BOTH the entire 1968 & 1969 Cardinals and Tigers baseball teams? (I played the Series’ along with the games). Whenever there was a blurb on the news about this or that comic I had selling for a chunk of change my mom used to give Dad some jazz about it. But none of my stuff was in pristine condition so who knows how much they might have sold for. Which brings me to my point.
I’ve never been the kind of person who buys stuff to seal up for resale. I bought comics to READ! I never really had enough money to buy two – one to read and one to hyperbolically seal to be opened in 2050 for an auction. I see kids who buy toys that sit still in the box – I guess they expect to pay for their college with a mint “Incredible Hulk” doll? To me, toys are meant to be played with. I may never be a millionaire, but I’m going to enjoy my stuff because, after all, it’s just “stuff.”
I keep telling my wife she needs to sell my collection if anything ever happens to me for whatever she can get out of it, but it is not my nest-egg for her to live on when I’m gone. I’ve had too much fun with them when I was here.
Perfect attitude about collectibles. Have a member of the extended family who married a fellow who was a gun nut and Civil War re-enactor. Sadly, he died at a relatively early age of cancer. Also, sadly, he told her what his extensive gun collection (originals and repros) was worth retail. She asked me to help liquidate the collection and was not only aghast, but felt insulted when she found out what people were willing to pay for the guns. Most of the collection is still in storage. This reinforces, in my mind, that you collect for the fun, the joy, and the thrill of the hunt for that elusive piece. Most of what we have, soldiers, comic books, guns, electric train, all have value, but, for the most part, we won’t retire by selling off the collecti0n. let’s face it, they are toys or comic books, or whatever, right?
I agree with what most everyone says about this; collect for fun, not for investment. A friend of mine amassed a huge collection of metal Britains boxed sets over many, many years. He kept meticulous records and, I know convinced his wife that the collection was ‘money in the bank’. For decades it did increase in value, then , as collectors of metal sets aged, bought less, and passed away, their collections also came on the market. Values decreased, something he either never realized, monitored, or perhaps believed. He did not inform his family of that fact. He passed away over a few months, a few years ago and his wife then approached some of his friends to help liquidate the collection.
It was then as Mr. Albamy says; she could not be convinced that they are not worth the some $120,000 he said they were. It is a very difficult situation so eventually most of us begged off being involved and suggested she sell the collection to dealer who buys estates and gave her several names. They are negotiating but now the collection will go through middle-men who must buy low to flip and make a profit. She is very unhappy about the difference between her expectations (based on her husband’s estimates) and the actual amount of $$$ recovered from the collection. In the end it seems she actually resents the whole collection as a ultimate fiasco instead of remembering the wonderful times he had collecting and interacting with other collectors. That is a true shame.
Maybe part of our responsibility is, as Wayne W. has done, for we collectors to make sure our loved ones have an accurate sense of what our collections are about (fun, interaction, memories, satisfaction, etc.) and are roughly worth, AND how they might actually “re-circulate” them should they need to do so.
Having said that, I am guilty of not having yet made complete arrangements for my extensive plastics horde. I am working on the first stage though … the mega -sort.
Cheers, Brian
Still believe or not there some vultures around in this hobby looking for some gain out of decease collectors collection, family who had then or in fact after some in terminal time to buy and resale it. It has been done and some are in fact very well known in the hobby .Unfortunately is part of the game we all play.
At the end most of this collection rarely past to a descendant with same like; so either is sold under table or abandon for years. I rather mark mine to a benefactor with good wills than let in wrong hands. But every year are less.
Unfortunately, the survivor wives described by George Albany and Brian Nielson cannot now even make some money off their deceased husbands’ collections, because they believe even reasonable offers at current selling and reselling values represent someone trying to cheat them. As a result, they get nothing, except the frustration of holding on to something they’re not really interested in —- all because their naive, misinformed and misguided husbands passed on to them a distorted view of how collectible markets really work.