As a young kid in High School I tried to talk my dad into buying a convertible. I didn't really care if it was something fairly basic like a MGB or more fancy car like a Lotus Elise S4 or Jaguar E-type. I remember saying "Dad the Lotus Elise S4 is An Asset to Appreciate, an Asset to appreciate owning and an Asset that will Appreciate in value." I thought I was being clever and I still feel the saying is fun to think back on. Dad was not that interested in cars, he certainly never thought of cars as an asset and disagreed that cars would appreciate in value. He used to ask me why I thought certain cars would go up and my answer was simple, convertibles are not made any more so any convertible car is going to go up
To me decades later I see that certain cars have gone up heaps in value and others not so much at all. as an 18 year old a 1960's Mini was about $1000, A Mini Cooper maybe $2,000, a MGB probably $4,000 and E-type around $10,000. But a good Mini Cooper is now worth double a good MGB. So much for my thoughts that a convertible will go up in value and other cars probably not.
Now I am more like my dad regarding. I own my Frontline modified style of MGB because I want something nice and I hope to drive it for a couple of decades and not care less what it is worth when I can no longer drive it. It is my "Asset to Appreciate" driving and I don't care if it is also an "Asset to Appreciate" in value. To me the most important thing was to buy a house and pay it off, then have some funds in the bank for a rainy day, then buy a nice car. Now I would say my house and my superannuation are my biggest investments.
I feel Cars, Bikes (like in the video), Boats, Guitars etc. are things you own if you can afford and want, if you can make a profit selling later on then good luck but not something to base your retirement on. But I know some people especially with car collections who would disagree.
Baby boomers are a lucky generation, houses were cheap enough to pay off and other stuff could be bought and I expect a fair few of us have collections of stuff worth something, but like this video the reality is it is probably not worth as much as we think and as tastes change prices are probably dropping. Plus without credit cards it was harder to get into bad debt. Also I feel we got to enjoy many types of cars. I do wonder if my grandchildren will ever drive a car, my wife wants to keep her Skoda Rapid for them to learn on but it will be very old by then. Not even sure if they will care about driving, let alone a manual ICE car.
The video is sad as the guy left his wife with his hobby to deal with and that is not going to be easy to cope with, plus she needs the funds so must try get a decent price. But at least the stuff has some value, not like the crockery, teaspoon collections etc. that are so prized by their owners, but can't even given away once they pass on.
One of my neighbour's was into cars and had a pretty good collection of 6 at one stage, he knew he was getting too old to deal with them, one of his kids wanted one of them but no-on wanted the others so he got me to take photos and help him sell them, when he died his house, some furniture etc. was sold quickly and the kids had a pretty easy time as anything hobby related was sold before he passed away. To me my neighbour was much more thoughtful about the people left behind than the guy in the video. My son is not into guitars, he might keep one of mine just to have it as something from me but I don't think so. I have got rid of a couple recently as I want to reduce to a sensible collection. What I have done to make it easier after I have gone is write a description of each guitar that could be used in an advertisement including the history of the guitar. I have also got an agreement with a guitar nut mate of my sons to help sell them for my son for a good price and for his efforts he gets to keep the one he wants, I have a few idea's of what ones he likes but no idea what he would actually choose.
I feel if we want to be responsible baby boomers we either need to clean up our stuff before we go or at least make it easier for the next generation to get rid of it.
Not sure about being born in 1848 being the luckiest year, it could be as I feel those people got to but houses and other things a lot cheaper than people born later on, that is the start of the Baby Boomer era. I was born in 1963, the end of the baby boomer era and I managed to get into the real estate market even though I felt hard back then. But for the first 5 years of my working life was in an office with some chain smokers until smoking in the building got banned, sometimes I feel being born in 1968 night have been better and avoided passive cigarette smoke.
