Collectors often put a lot of money into their hobbies.  For instance, my brother-in-law has a lot of really cool guns, some of them quite old, while I have well over a hundred 1950s dolls.  Other popular and potentially valuable collections include antique books, airsoft guns, and vintage or antique toys.

But can these collections actually act as an investment?

Well, yes and no.  Just as with investing your money in Wall Street, you can’t predict what the market will do.  One thing is for sure, though — usually if you get into collecting after the items have already become popular, chances are they won’t increase in value fast enough to make you a profit, particularly after you take inflation into consideration.

The cases where someone makes a killing off of something very valuable and collectible usually happen quite by accident — for instance, the item has been in their family since their great-grandparents bought it new, or they were packrats and this one item just happened to be worth something eighty years later.

You aren’t likely to make your fortune buying and selling KWA guns, in other words.

What does this mean?  Well, if you collect Tokyo Marui airsoft guns as a hobby, do it for the sheer enjoyment of it, not because you expect that one day you’ll sell your collection and retire to the Caribbean.  If that does happen it’ll just be a nice surprise!

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