There was a time in my life when I read the Wall Street Journal every morning. I've always thought highly of it but ALL articles about spectacular "investment grade" guns (or cars, or books or name-your-item...) are written after the fact by people who wouldn't recognize a '51 Navy if you hit them over the head with it. No one is accurately predicting what will be the next hot item and, almost by definition, when something is hot it will eventually cool off. I'll give the WSJ credit in this case for at least admitting that several items barely made their estimates and some didn't even come close. (Which says something for auction estimates.)
There have been folks who made huge profits, but every one I'm familiar with was collecting something that interested them and found themselves sitting on a "great investment" when a significant portion of the rest of the world suddenly shared his interest. If collecting antique machine tools suddenly becomes all the rage, I'm a brilliant investor but, at the moment, I'm just a guy with a lot of old iron in the basement. The great irony here is that 100% of the value of collectable items is based on what a willing enthusiast will pay for something that has virtually no functional value. The rise in prices of many items probably has much more to do with increased disposable income than it does with increased demand or interest in the subject. Interest may always have been there but the money wasn't. As money becomes tighter, it becomes more and more difficult to convince people to part with it for items everyone agrees are very unlikely to ever be used and are only of value to another person who shares the same interests. I've spent my entire life surrounded by family and friends who thought I was insane to waste time and money on "old stuff"... so I am quite aware that very few people actually place much value on this stuff.
Its probably more realistic to think in terms of what we can get back from our collecting, even if it isn't a financial profit. If my guns were sold tomorrow for half what I've paid for them I'd be getting a heck of a lot more return than my neighbors are getting from their country club memberships, movie tickets and restaurants.
