So can this be generalized to other collectable items? If as a hobby I collect, sell and exchange X does it mean I will lose money in the long run? Recently there was a few articles about investing in Lego sets, from this article POV it may not be that good investment, the future price is hard to estimate and probably you will guess price increase/decrease about half of the time right. So using this model you will lose money in the long run. Or did I miss something?
Returning to the simulation, the coin experiment can be explained using different model:
Imagine position X on a line: |A A A A X B B B B B B B B B B B|, X can move either left or right by the amount specified by the rules of the game. But since one person is poorer the boundary | is closer to X. X is doing a random walk, so it will move with exactly the same probability e.g. 5 positions left or 5 positions right. But for the poor player 5 positions to the left means he is left with no money to play again, and for the rich player it means he lost some of his advantage. If the difference is huge like x100 the poor player has basically no change at winning at all. So this game is only fair if A and B have similar amount of money.
If you can only guess correctly half the time, then yes, it would apply to your scenario. But I don't think that's often the case with people who are seriously into collecting something. Chances are good that you know enough about what you're collecting to reasonably anticipate the things that will likely have more staying power.
Returning to the simulation, the coin experiment can be explained using different model: Imagine position X on a line: |A A A A X B B B B B B B B B B B|, X can move either left or right by the amount specified by the rules of the game. But since one person is poorer the boundary | is closer to X. X is doing a random walk, so it will move with exactly the same probability e.g. 5 positions left or 5 positions right. But for the poor player 5 positions to the left means he is left with no money to play again, and for the rich player it means he lost some of his advantage. If the difference is huge like x100 the poor player has basically no change at winning at all. So this game is only fair if A and B have similar amount of money.
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