Barry Silbert recalls selling baseball cards at 13 in 1987, when he learned how illiquid markets work and how dealers exploit information gaps. That early lesson shaped his belief that markets need transparency and centralization.
So as I was thinking about my background and I was thinking about all these different jobs, I was reflecting on my professional career and thinking, you know, which of these jobs had the most profound impact on me as an individual? Anybody want to take a guess? Of these choices, what do you think had the most profound impact? Just yell it out. Baseball. Baseball? Is it that obvious? Okay. So I was like— I was enlightened when I thought about this. And so I'm going to take you back to— let's call it's 1987. I was a 13-year-old kid. I thought I was pretty hot shit back then, but I was scrawny, sporting the bowl cut. I would go to these baseball card shows about once every 2 weeks and I would take my baseball cards in a milk crate and I'd lug them to the baseball card show and I'd set up this table and I remember like borrowing $30 from my parents to buy this glass display case to make it look like professional, like people are not going to see this 13-year-old kid, you know, selling baseball cards and think I'm not a professional. But anyway, so I was doing these baseball card shows, making some money, and it was eye-opening because I'm now reflecting back on that experience. And what I came to realize was the baseball card market itself was my first exposure to illiquid assets, to inefficient markets. And what's really interesting about it is that that market was basically— it was fixed. So you had these dealers who professionally made money off of buying and selling baseball cards, and then you had collectors. And you had these collectors, me and other young people and older people, would buy these cards from these dealers. And it always surprised me that somehow, some way, these dealers knew like 2 weeks before when the pricing guide came out every month which were going to be the hot cards, which were going to be the cold cards. And looking back on it, It was my first appreciation for the need for transparency, for centralization, for basically not allowing the big boys to control all the information.
O processo de reconhecer limites, mesmo quando a vida parece exigir sempre mais.
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