Huigens was lugging around a print-out of vintage sports and non-sports trading card sales as thick as an old phone book. Using sales compiled by the indispensable Vintage Card Prices, the chart includes cards ranging from a 1916 Sporting News Babe Ruth rookie in very good-excellent condition to a 1954 Topps Hank Aaron rookie in mint condition. In the bar chart below, Huigens traces the return on investment of his PWCC 500 index versus the S&P 500 The two bars in red show that over the past ten years, cards have jumped 150% compared to 92% for the S&P 500. The two bars in blue illustrate that over the past five years cards have soared 138% while the S&P 500 has gone up 86%. Graph by PWCC and Vintage Card PricesOf course, there’s no proof---and certainly not from just 10 years---that cards will continue to outperform stocks in the future.

Source: Forbes February 23, 2018 17:17 UTC