Gaming

one got a down payment on a house in the late 90s. another paid off a home out in the valley. another bought a motorcycle and a year and a half vacation of apathy. cashing out $20k~$80k from a several grand early collection is not unheard of.

some of the banned rares are still rising in price. my revised dual lands are currently $50 a pop for a start. the big jump in point is gone, but there's still money to be made.

biggest collector advice is follow the popularity. this can mean large amount of casuals or small pool of rabid fans. the best returns are on large pools of casuals with rabid fans within, but slow product release. that means why Madden football games are generally low in resale, old NES Techmo Bowl has high returns due to high casuals with rabid fans, and why old NES/SNES Final Fantasy can fetch a pretty penny.

But overall anything that requires an actual copy or give bragging rights really ups the price. It is why ROMs gut a good amount of video game price.

So MtG cards can't always be proxied for tourneys, has high casual pool, its small rabid pool, and is competitive in both collecting and play thus bragging rights. Thus it is a speculative perfect storm. But a lot of CCGs failed trying to capture that lightning in the bottle.

Best advice, chase what's nerd-tastic in cool, but still appeals to bro-gamers aesthetics. Star Wars & Star Trek CCG have nerd cache, and maybe some high popularity, but bro-gamers fear it will prevent them from getting laid, thus those CCGs faded and MtG persists.