"Those Are Hot Right Now."

I was watching one of my favorite shows the other night.  I'm a big car buff and I like a show called, Chasing Classic Cars.  Maybe you've seen it.  The show centers around a fellow named Wayne Carini, who buys, sells, represents and brokers fine automobiles.  It's a great show to watch because it combines beautiful cars with collector techniques and mentality.  Just as I collect coins, comicbooks, currency, and telescopes, some people collect cars as prolifically.  The fact is, I have a car collection too, but it consists of a couple of older air cooled Volkswagens in various states of disrepair.  Maybe I should be wrenching on them instead of blogging about them, but then you wouldn't have anything to read, right? :)

ANYWAY...as I was watching the show, Mr. Carini mentioned that he wanted to sell a particular car because "those are hot right now".  And that brought me right back to the topic of rotational leadership.  (If you hunt for it, I have another blog entry on rotational leadership where I broach this topic.)

But I wanted to reiterate the importance of rotational leadership from a different angle.  The "Do" and "Don't" of collecting.  Here they are:

Don't chase after something that is "hot right now"....you'll overpay.

Do chase after things that will get hot, hopefully in the near future?

But wait, how do we pick something like that?!!

The answer is:

Chase the things that are hot 95% of the time, but only chase them during that 5% of the time when they are not hot. 

OK, I'm exaggerating, but you get the point.

Here's food for thought while you're digesting that.  I mentioned my Hulk #2 comicbook in a previous blog.

 I watch the price of that book and it varies radically, but it stays in a trading range.  Why is that?  Well, for starters, there aren't lot of people looking for a low grade Hulk #2.  But likewise, there aren't a lot of people putting one up for sale either.  Because of this, five buyers of that book earnestly looking to buy it at an online auction site could be considered a high demand so the comic book would be considered "hot".  Likewise, five motivated sellers of that book at an online auction site would create a "glut" of them for sale.  If there is an oversupply, the sellers will compete with each other on price, and the foolish sellers will lower their prices until others (who may not necessarily want the book) think to themselves, "Wow, I don't need that book but that's too cheap so I'd better buy it". 

You want to be that buyer!  You want to be the guy or gal who buys it during a glut and then sells it when it's hot.  If the item is rare, and appeals to a focused group of buyers, the price differential between a glut and a hot market can be a large swing.  So buy during a glut and sell when they are hot.  That's what the professionals do.