Rarity or Condition or both?

If it was the mid-80s and you had $10,000 to spend on baseball cards, how would you divvy it up to maximize your return on investment now?

Please note: it appears to be the mid-80s in non-sports cards.

I would go to a National Convention and spend it all at Tik's Table. Buying Cabinet cards of Hall of Famers.
This may not be the best way to maximize the Investment but it wouldn't be bad and it would maximize my Smile

The Cards I remember from the 1990 National held in Houston. If I would have had 10 G's to spend, I could have had a few of these now.
N173 Black Border Connie Mack
Duke Cabinet Nash
2 Different Poses Hugh Duffy N173's
Complete Darby's Box with Crawford
S81 Alexander

What did I buy at that national
T3 Johnson (Later graded and sold PSA5) & S81 Mathewson (Still Have it)

From an investor's point of view, I'd aim for the scarcest cards possible first and foremost. While higher grades would be ideal, I'd take them in whatever grade I could find. With the toughest issues, one can't afford to be picky about condition b/c it may be one's only chance to acquire a particular type, like a Four Base Hits or something.

$10,000 in the mid 80's could get you a bunch of really nice cards. So I'd spread it out over a diverse selection of scarce cards, likely within the $100-$500 range apiece (but not confined to that amount if something extra special comes up).

With that said, if a t206 Wagner could have been had for 10k at the time, I'd scrap that former plan and jump at it (no-brainer). What were low grade Wagners selling for in the mid-80's anyway?

I had a chance to buy a really low grade (chunk of a corner missing) Wagner in 1982 for $5k. My whole collection at that time wasn't even worth that much.

If you wanted to maximize return, buying high grade commons would be the way to go. Most high grade commons have seen a 100x increase since the early-mid 80s. HOFers haven't had that sort of performance. If you could get someone to part with them, buying up a bunch of e107s would have been a huge score.

Back then, $10k would have gotten you a complete set of t206s (minus the Big 3) in Ex condition and left you with $5k to spend on other stuff. Buying complete sets would also maximize the number of cards you got as sets sold for serious discounts relative to the per card price.

Jay