Any investment can be considered both short-term and long-term. In the case of stickers, their value starts to increase only when their availability on the market decreases. This implies that to make a profit, one would have to wait quite a long time, and here’s why:
Every year, Valve extends the sale period when stickers are sold at a 75% discount. This forces many players to stock up as they used to, leading to an increase in the number of stickers on the market and in inventories. This results in an oversupply and causes the price to drop to a minimum.
Additionally, with each Major, the number of stickers is increasing, and they almost have an identical design. Therefore, it makes no sense to buy something that will be more expensive when it implies that all stickers from the last three Majors will cost roughly the same.
In general, when stickers had a fixed discount schedule and not the unpredictable approach taken by Valve, the average cost began to rise after about 3 years of waiting. This trend can be observed by looking at the price charts of older stickers. Take, for instance, the cost of the Sticker | FugLy (Foil) | Katowice 2019:
Are you willing to take the risk and wait however long it takes? If so, then we buy the cheapest stickers when the sale ends and there is a surge of sellers who change their minds upon seeing even the slightest drop in price, and we wait.
But we can take a slightly different approach, such as purchasing stickers of popular players, which are likely to increase in price faster. For example, buying stickers of m0NESY from G2.
Drawing a parallel, we can look at s1mple’s stickers, for example, the Sticker | s1mple | Katowice 2019 from the same year. It started to grow in value immediately, at one point even reaching a price of 50 dollars before plummeting. Those who sold at the right time made a profit. This is a clear example of artificial price inflation, where an owner with a large quantity of a particular sticker artificially inflated its price and then sold off their stock, causing the price to fall to its lowest point.
In summary, I think you’ve grasped the essence: it’s possible to make money on stickers, but it’s also quite easy to incur significant losses, so be careful.