Victor Wembanyama’s trading card market is exploding …

April 7, 2023 7:43 AM

… but there’s a wrinkle: It’s just one card (archive.today link)
posted by Etrigan (5 comments total)

All the articles like this sit with me the same way all the articles about how valuable NFTs were did. Like the purpose of the article, at least for a bunch of people involved in it, is to legitimize a dumb speculative collector market, pumping up the value of everything in it. Even if that’s not the author’s original intent, it gets bent that way because of course the only experts that even exist that they can talk to are the people who are really into it and stand to make a lot of money if everyone else gets into it.
posted by aubilenon at 7:54 AM on April 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

Like the purpose of the article, at least for a bunch of people involved in it, is to legitimize a dumb speculative collector market,

Markets like this are legitimized _as_ speculative investment by the smallest fish in the pond. Their real reason for existing is, like NFTs, about fraud, money laundering and tax evasion. The real innovation of NFTs was that you could replace the the whole cardboard-and-contractual-authenticity step with software.
posted by mhoye at 8:35 AM on April 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

...wait, baseball cards' reason for existence is money laundering? I'm not calling bullshit or anything, but that sounds like a hell of a story and I definitely want to know more.
posted by nebulawindphone at 9:19 AM on April 7, 2023

This is interesting but I don't understand why, as a collector, you'd want to tear the card out from the sheet. If it's so difficult to do correctly, what's the upside? Just leave it where it is and collect the magazine. They probably want it to go in the same box with the rest of the cards? Doesn't seem worth it.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 12:37 PM on April 7, 2023

Hmm, maybe we should stop using SI For Kids as bathroom reading and keeping it directly under the kids’ hand towels…
posted by staggernation at 3:14 PM on April 7, 2023