Marlene Daab is a woman with a passion. Taken with the television series "Star Trek," Daab has spent the past decade collecting comic books, lunch boxes, Christmas ornaments, plates, pins, paperbacks, technical and medical journals all relating to the starship Enterprise.
She's now got several hundred items, and the collection is growing.
"It's an obsession," laments the Portland, Ore.-based investor. "When you have to decide whether to buy groceries or another comic book, you know you're in trouble."
But Daab's obsession has a flip side. If she ever decides to sell her collection, she knows she'll make a profit. Already, little items that she purchased for just a few dollars some years ago are worth hundreds. Some day, she says, she may retire on the proceeds of her passion.
Daab is indicative of millions of investors who dabble in the quirky world of collectibles.
Collectible investors are unlike most others. They don't usually get into the field simply to make money. They invest mainly for the love of whatever they're amassing, be it historical documents, coins, stamps, baseball cards, cups, dolls, doorknobs or Ferraris.
But often, they do make money--and lots of it. That is, if they decide to sell.
Consider the investor who held onto Mickey Mantle's rookie baseball card, which cost a few pennies in 1952. The card is now worth $40,000 if it's in mint condition, said Ira Goldberg, president of Superior Galleries in Beverly Hills, which sells many types of collectible items, including stamps, coins, sports memorabilia and historical documents.
You could pick up a baseball signed by Joe DiMaggio for $30 three years ago, Goldberg added. Today it's worth $300.
And a letter "of normal content" signed by Harry S. Truman that once sold for $25 is now worth $250, he said.
Even the tacky and tasteless can turn out to be extraordinary investments for those with a flair for the slightly bizarre.
Vicki Brenner started collecting "snow domes" some years back because she thought that the plastic toys were amusingly tasteless. She's got 500 of them, and she knows that a few--including a dated dome from the 1964 World's Fair--could be sold for many times what she paid.
But like many people who collect off-beat items, Brenner's not in the market to sell, so she's never bothered to price her collection.
