Collector's item
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A collector's item is an object or item of any kind that has become valuable -- often unexpectedly. Over the years, a large number of incidents have resulted in certain objects related to those incidents becoming very desirable and valuable. The objects, which may have been common everyday items when they were originally produced, have since gone on to become rare and valuable, and have sometimes been sold to collectors for large sums of money.
The desirability of a collector's item separates it from the broader field of collectible items in general. For example, stamps are collectible items, and stamp collecting is a popular hobby. But certain stamps are far more valuable than others, and these rare and valuable stamps are usually described as collector's items.
Some examples of collector's items are:
- Comic books produced during the golden age of comic books
- Newspapers with headlines related to historic events, such as "Dewey Defeats Truman" (see United States presidential election, 1948 and Chicago Tribune)
- Cap'n Crunch toy whistles
- The U.S. 1955 doubled die cent
- The Inverted Jenny
- The first edition of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune
- An alpha edition Black Lotus Magic: The Gathering card
- vintage motor vehicles
- The Mickey Mantle baseball card
Various manufacturers have occasionally attempted to deliberately create a collector's market for their products, in the hope that they will increase in value and become true collector's items (and thus make a profit for the manufacturer). A few of these attempts to create collector's items have been successful, but most "collector's items" created to artificially inflate the collector's market have ended up as worthless or near-worthless in value.
