Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Here you can discuss Collecting Tenyo. Packaging, Variations, Rare Items, etc.
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Tenyofun

Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by Tenyofun » Fri Jul 26, 2013 3:29 pm

At least half of the Tenyo items I have bought have cost me about $100 or more plus another $20 for shipping. It adds up very quickly.

I am compelled to collect these little mysteries for mostly nostalgic reasons, reminiscing of the long lost magic shop I used to visit. I also love to play with them and perform some, while other will never get an audience but only a nice spot in my Tenyo collection box.

I have no intention of selling any of my Tenyo, so every time I click buy it is purely to feed my need in relation to the above. However, I wonder if many of the recent bidders and Tenyo collectors are seeing these as an investment so they can turn them around with a profit.

What are your thoughts? Are you investing in Tenyo? Are the high prices due to investors who buy high because they believe they will be able to sell higher? Are all of the new collectors just buying for the love of Tenyo?

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Richard W
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Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by Richard W » Fri Jul 26, 2013 4:00 pm

I buy only the ones that interest me and have bought some extra sealed ones as backups and maybe someday might be worth selling as an investment I suppose. I think many are buying in hopes they will skyrocket even more as time goes by. I would like to have some of the really hard to find ones but just can't see paying the high price for most. Like to get an Ultra Tube at a good deal but so does everyone else. ;)
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Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by JohnM » Fri Jul 26, 2013 6:50 pm

I think collecting Tenyo can be a fun way to invest your money (that is what I tell my wife :) ). You can put you money in stocks that go up and down but never really seems to appreciate any more. There is no way of making money in a bank account. Real Estate has taken a severe dive. So what is left to invest in? Tenyo. I think if you can find the right items at the right price you can make a very good return on investment. BUT Selling them is another problem especially if you have Tenyoitis. I am glad that my Tenyoitis only covers my collection and not the items that I sell. If I hoarded those items, I would be totally inundated with Tenyo which I already am anyway. The money we have invested in these magic miracles has provided us with tangible items that can be touched, played with and performed. So much better than numbers on a monthly statement.

Seriously, I think that Tenyo prices with steady rise over the upcoming years. Look at the faces of our members, mostly young. I collect and race slot cars as well and the people in the hobby are mostly between 50 and 60 and no young faces at all. That means as these member get too old for the hobby or pass away, the people collecting will decline. According to the laws of Supply and Demand, less buyers will create lower prices. Since Tenyo releases new tricks every year, there will be new people consistently learning about them and becoming enthusiasts and collectors like us. I would say anyone who is into collecting now and is smart about their purchases can create a collection that will out pace other conventional investments.

The key thing to collecting anything is to buy what you like. I think all of us here are practicing that. So even if the market were to go down we would still be content with our collection.

The future is so bright, we are going to need shades.

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Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by David DeTenyo » Sat Jul 27, 2013 3:36 am

When I first started collecting Tenyo several years ago (I had a few Tenyo items without realizing it like Credit Slasher, my first one) I wasn't aware of the value of these items (I threw away all the packages for example). I knew they were often hard to find but thosedays when one popped up on Ebay the price was reasonable, like my first Floating Lady which I bought for less than 60 USD. I didn't see them as investment.

As the years went buy I became aware of the increasing popularity of Tenyo and started to first look for items I was missing but also bought several items which I knew that were hard to get from local magic shops. I offered them (and still do) on my website or on Ebay and earned some money back I invested.

For me, what I would like to do, is come to a point that I am break-even, which isn't the case by far even now. Expensive shipping costs, often custom taxes (which are absolutely horrible here in Belgium/Europe - for example buying an item for 100 EURO (/- 130 USD) will give me a nice 35 EURO (+/- 45 USD) to pay extra :x !) and buying some expensive stuff like a mint Coin case, Super Vase A La India and Fantastic (+ 1000 USD for the three, shipping/customs not included) make that the break-even point is still far away.

What I try to do since a year or two is have one opened and one sealed one of the 'good' tricks - not necessarly to sell them but to have a spare if one breaks (the foam on Ninja Experiment is fragile, the gimmick in Mirage can break, I know of a gimmick on the Ultra Tube which broke off, my current opened Credit Slasher, Midas Machine and Tricky Business don't work as 'fluent' anymore as they used to ...).

I do know one day, if for any reason I would need the money, my collection, especially the mint ones, will be worth quite some money. So yes, not that I'm planning to sell my collection (even the mint ones), but knowing you have something that will keep increasing in money gives a 'secure' feeling. Of course it would take A LOT of time and effort to sell an entire collection because you'll have more benefit when you sell each item apart.

In the long run Tenyo WILL become more popular and the value of the items WILL increase. Prices fluctuate, but we all know money looses its value over time (there has always been and there always will be inflation) so you can be pretty confident that in a year or 10 the Tenyo's you're having now will be worth more.

As I mentioned on my website, even if you're not in for the 'investment' it's always a good thing to buy a spare of even the 'newer' ones once they get discontinued. Perhaps it is not an investment for yourself, but I know if I have a child (or children) one day and I'm getting old they will have a pretty nice present waiting for them ;)

Tenyofun

Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by Tenyofun » Sun Jul 28, 2013 12:32 pm

Hi Ed

I tend to agree with your observation. I know from experience with my comic book, baseball cards, magic books collections, I would be hard pressed to break even. Actually I estimate that I could get less than 50% of what I spent.

Keeping that in mind, I have been overspending on Tenyo. I am lucky that a great part of my collection has been obtained at Tenyo Good Karma prices from a great guy you might know ;) but I wonder how much is too much to spend on an item...

eBay is the only place I know to find a good supply of Tenyo that one is looking for to build their collection. But spending 150-200 (plus shipping and border fees) seems to be the going price for 75% of the ones I have bought on eBay or that I am looking for. This gets me thinking how much is too much?
Last edited by Tenyofun on Sun Jul 28, 2013 4:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by John B. » Sun Jul 28, 2013 1:58 pm

I agree that now is not a good time to be buying Tenyo for investment- the prices are simply too high. However, there are some features that make Tenyo a little different from other collectibles like stamps, baseball cards and comic books or even magic collectibles like Thayer and Milson Worth. An item is only worth what another person is willing to pay- period. My understanding of the comic book collectible market is that younger people are not buying them and older people, such as baby boomers, are looking to sell as they enter retirement. Increased supply and decreasing demand will decimate any hopes for investment return.

Whereas with Tenyo, many collectors are much younger (20s - 50s), and with websites and videos, I think the market will continue to expand slowly. In particular, the demand for mint, unopened tricks will increase as some buyers open them and thus the supply may slowly become more scarce. That Tenyo no longer have any of the original molds and no desire to re-release any of the older items means that classic effects like Billscape and Mirage will hold their value. Moreover, the cheap Chinese knock-offs we have seen for sale are very poorly made and do not work well reinforcing the demand for authentic Tenyo items.

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Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by JohnM » Mon Jul 29, 2013 1:45 am

John B. wrote:That Tenyo no longer have any of the original molds ...
I would not be so sure that Tenyo does not have any of the original molds. That was just said by one person who tends to say a lot of outrageous things. The actual statement was "I'm also pretty sure they have no intention of remaking old items. It costs a huge amount of money to make a mold, and I'm guessing that Tenyo no longer has the molds for many of their older items." Why would someone who has excellent access to Tenyo have to guess at such a thing? The cost of making a mold has nothing to do with not making some of the hard to find classics again. Tenyo make molds for tricks every year so the cost of making molds is not part of the equation. I would guess it is more along the lines of "been there, done that."

Also one thing that I have heard from more than one source and tend to believe is that Tenyo is not in tune to what we are up to and what we like to have and buy. From the same person that I quoted earlier "One thing about my interview with Mr. Sugawara that was pretty funny was when I told him what his tricks, like "Mirage" and "Ultra Tube." now sell for on eBay. He was incredulous ... could NOT believe it! He just kept shaking his head and saying that he wishes he kept several of each." So the fact that they are not making these items might be just that they never thought about it. But who knows what the future holds.

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Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by SimonC » Mon Jul 29, 2013 3:21 am

Moulds aren't free but they certainly aren't prohibitively expensive either, especially when your primary material is plastic, a very cheap resource which will help your profit margins and offset the cost of any moulds.
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Very interesting

Post by JohnM » Mon Jul 29, 2013 12:27 pm

When I saw Simon write "mould" I instantly though I spelled it wrong in my post because I am a very bad speller.

BUT

Mold vs. mould
American English has no mould, and British English has no mold. In other words, the word referring to (1) the various funguses that grow on organic matter or (2) a frame for shaping something is spelled the same in both uses, and the spelling depends on the variety of English.

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Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by SimonC » Mon Jul 29, 2013 12:53 pm

Apologies, I dictated that post to my butler. He was taken out into the garden and shot.
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Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by Greg C » Fri Aug 02, 2013 11:23 pm

Spring snake gun?

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Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by SimonC » Sat Aug 03, 2013 2:46 am

No actually he made quite a convincing argument about how much it's costing me to dispose of all these bloody incompetent butlers so I've kept him on. I just pay him in sand now,
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Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by kellebotond » Thu Sep 05, 2013 5:27 pm

JohnM wrote:I would not be so sure that Tenyo does not have any of the original molds. That was just said by one person who tends to say a lot of outrageous things. The actual statement was "I'm also pretty sure they have no intention of remaking old items. It costs a huge amount of money to make a mold, and I'm guessing that Tenyo no longer has the molds for many of their older items."
I'm a mechanical engineer and I have some experience with molds for plastic injection molding. I think that they might have the molds, but some of the molds are surely no longer usable. Usually a mold is made for a specific lifespan. For example if you want to mold a small amount of items you can make a mold out of aulminium (it is lot cheaper, but wears off very quickly). But most molds are made out of steel. If you manufacture more than the mold was designed for, than after a while the manufactured plastic items will have burrs (as the two sides of the molds start not to close perfectly). The problem with molds are, that they are almost impossible to fix, even if a tiny microscopic piece of metal is broken off of the mold, you will see it as a scratch or a balge on the surface of the plastic item. You can fix few of this defects if htey are tiny, but because Tenyo has excellent quality control, I think they immediately stop manufacturing the item is the mold is defected. But manufacturing another mold could cost a lot, so there is a point where it is better to stop maufacturing the item. Factories rarely throw away molds (they have a higher value even defected, then to sell it as metal).

But I'm sure there are items where they just stopped manufacturing because of lower demand not because the molds are defected. They could easily start to manufacture these items again. I think there is a warehouse somewhrere in Japan full of Tenyo molds in perfect condition...
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Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by JohnM » Thu Sep 05, 2013 6:04 pm

Thanks for the interesting information.

Maybe this building is where the molds are stored.
tenyosign.jpg
I came across this when I was looking for pictures for the website.

You can see the blog where the picture comes from using the link below (I pass it via Bing Translator but it does not clarify much). The pictures are interesting.

TRANSLATED LINK
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.a ... 51983.html

UNTRANSLATED LINK
http://ameblo.jp/252400/entry-10523151983.html
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

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Peter G
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Re: Are you investing or collecting for fun?

Post by Peter G » Fri Sep 06, 2013 2:37 am

As far as I can understand (my Japanese is only basic), it is an old Warehouse of Tenyo, probably no longer in use...

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