There are collectors out there who buy cards and ship them straight to their vault. Sometimes they hold those cards for years and never even touch them or see them other than digital scans.
I could understand doing this if my intention was to buy and sell and I had no personal attachment to the card. I also understand that if you are a collector with tens of thousands of cards at any given time the importance of a single card (or security of a single card) might have a different weight to you than someone else.
But I have a really hard time imagining owning a card without having the card. I don’t think ownership would mean anything to me unless the card was in my hands. Receiving the card physically and placing it within the context of my collection is when the concept of ownership really takes hold for me. If I never actually received and handled and stored the card personally, I know I wouldn’t feel like I owned it at all. I’d feel like I owned a picture. The frequency with which I open up my cards and just perceive them up close and interface with my cards is too regular for me to be away from them.
For vault collectors, what is your experience like? What is your psychology? Do you never feel starved for the in-person sight, touch, taste of your collection?
I’m not a vault collector but i have few of my cards being held in a middleman service which i think is very close to vault experience. It’s a strange feeling when i think of it further, i really don’t feel like i own the cards since i’ve only seen them on my phone screen and don’t even bother to check them there very often, and they will eventually have the very scary shipping to me where anything bad can potentially happen. But on the other hand i don’t have to search them or buy them and at least partly i have a peace of mind about those cards because of that which basically is very much the same feeling as owning them. Kinda feels like they are just floating in some sort of limbo.
I have some cards I keep in a safe at my parents house in Louisiana that I’d rather not keep in my house in case everything happens. I know it’s different from PSA vault and those other types of programs out there but it’s essentially the same. Not having them in my physical possession sucks sometimes because I can’t admire them when I’d like. However, I know they are safe and will remain safe where they are.
I don’t have space. Tiny apartments in California don’t really accommodate the collector lifestyle. I have goals and sets to complete and most of them are slabs. I use vaults with the idea of one day getting a bigger place to have them all in one place but as I continue to fill the vault with random slabs it gets more and more worrying on how is the vault going to ship me thousands of slabs
I have the first couple of sets I finished with me so if I get a bit nostalgic I open up the suitcase and peruse my slabs.
Also the large amount of plushies I have doesn’t really help with the space, and it’s not like I can vault my plushies.
But to answer seriously. I’ve thought about a vault service but I look at my cards (when I had more) too often. I collect for nostalgia and to have them in hand and be able to admire them in different light and angles. It just makes me happy. I do have them in a quick get away case in case I needed to grab them and run or something in case of a flood or fire etc.
The vault service doesn’t make sense to me. Why is it better then a safety deposit box at your bank or a gun safe, keeping them in a safe at a relatives house? I can understand it if someone runs a business and doesn’t want to pay fees but other than that why is it better then other options?
Oh I see. I’m not to familiar with it as I’ve never used it. I’ve never had a problem with using my gun safe or the safe at my parents house. Does the insurance cover the total cost if something happens?
All I can picture is @stagecoach sitting at home, on his French nobility cushion, licking different era cards and arranging his binders on a scale on saltiness.
All 350 of my slabs are at PWCC. I like the tax savings, drop shipping, insurance, and scanning. I have twin 2.5 year olds and don’t like the idea of paying a private insurance policy year to year. I have a dream of going to pick up my collection in-person when I retire.
And yet — is it worth not having your cards that you’ve spend your hard-earned money on?
I just can’t help but feel collections you can’t touch are… symbolic? Hypothetical? I’m not sure the word I’m looking for. It just feels like putting in all that effort for “nothing”.
But if you don’t have this problem then it’s neither here nor there. This whole thread can be shut down with the response “I don’t have the problem you would have.”
I prefer having cards in my possession, but with the market doing what it did in 2020, it got to the point where having everything in one place was too risky for my liking. The vault has been helpful for my own peace of mind. It’s also great for buying relatively cheap cards where I don’t want to pay shipping.
a few years ago and got it back the other day. I routinely take out cards after they’ve been in for a few years