I don't remember where I first heard this, but it's good advice: don't collect as an investment, collect because you really enjoy the objects. I collect rare books, but never because I think they'll go up in value (although they probably will). I just like having them around. Socially, infamous corpo-swag is really even better - what a conversation starter! But I personally wouldn't want that sort of stuff in my shared spaces. Interesting or not, its still just corpo-swag.

> don't collect as an investment

I've seen a lot of Pawn Stars in the past six months. They never say this, but you can put it together. Most things that people collect trade in low volumes, so pricing is hard, and the bid/ask spread kills you. If you decide to sell, you'll either get 70% of the value if you sell it fast, or maybe 100% if you're ready to wait two years. If you want to liquidate everything, it might depress the market. There's also a discount when you have it as a collection because someone could part it out, but that's even more time. That, and the drive to collect is building the collection, so there's less utility in getting an instant collection.

While I totally agree about not collecting as an investment, "because you really enjoy the objects as a person who likes this stuff" is probably not actually a terrible metric for future desirability of an item in a niche area of collecting. Other fans/collectors likely feel the same. Of course, it doesn't tell you if that niche will die out and no one will want anything, although I suspect rare books are less at risk of that.

As a collector of memorabilia for a band that's been around a while: The items I was drawn to, either because I just loved the look or because they were from a show/tour/album I particularly found special, have often turned out to be the ones that have appreciated much more in value than the average thing of that level of rarity for the band.

Cool! Do you focus on any subjects?

Also, have you seen The Booksellers?

It took me a while to realize I was collecting books. Before, the way I thought of it was "I would never walk past an out-of-print book about computing history! I might never come across it again!" But now I am a bit more focused on the collection aspect, for example, there are now specific titles and authors that I seek out.

I have a good collection of old science books. One of my favorites is called "The Perfect Woman", publish in 1896, and it is a manual for women. It's precisely as horrifying and unintentionally hilarious as you would expect. But mostly I collect early editions of my favorite stories, or occasionally limited editions like from Subterranean Press. And no, I have not seen The Booksellers. I got into this because as a kid I'd buy a lot of books from our neighborhood used book dealer, mostly cheap science fiction paperbacks. I've tried ebooks a couple of times, and I just don't like them. I wish I did because it's highly convenient. But I just really prefer paper. For one thing you can give away your book when you're finished with it, or loan it to a friend, neither of which you can do with an ebook.

I could imagine having a little ‘altar’ of failed company swag on a shelf in your office could be fun and motivating in a way.

To be completely honest, I'm more of a buyer than a seller. I have a few items that are "worth" (in a loose sense) in the hundreds and thousands, but most are nothing more than a rare conversation piece I have on my desk.

Did you get the MSCHF fucked company toys? The tiny Theranos machine is adorable.

Like you, I collect fucked/defunct company merch, tho my collection isn’t just fraud related, I’ve got Quibi merch — most of it is. I’ve got MoviePass, Fyre Festival legit merch with tags, Ozy Media was a recent one, Enron business cards, Arthur Andersen tote bags, Worldcom mugs, etc. I’ve even got some old Internet Explorer merch, because it’s kitsch!

What is your favorite piece?

Do you have a website to show some of them off? I would love to see some of your gravestones.

This thread is the most interested anyone has ever been in this stuff, I'll have to consider some sort of catalog as the collection grows, not a bad idea.

I'm assuming it's lots of dot-com era, do you also collect outside of tech? E.g Lehman Brothers or Enron

08 graveyard is actually some of my favorite stuff. I love Lehman and Bear stuff.

> I have a few items that are worth in the hundreds and thousands

At first I read 'worth in the hundreds of thousands' and I was really curious what garnered such value. Language ambiguity is fun.

They said collector, so I suspect they aren't holding to sell :P

A Theranos memorabilia pump and dump scheme would be quite something.