Investment--(in-ves(t)-ment)--the outlay of money usually for income or profit.

An old roommate dropped into town this weekend. Along with getting cheap tags and registration for his vehicle, he wanted to take some boxes he had kept in storage back to California. Since he leaving over two years ago, his storage space had been busted into once, and someone ripped off his coin collection. The robbers took what they thought to be of value and left the rest of his boxes. As it turns out, the boxes they didn't touch included over two thousand comic books and graphic novels. An investment my old roommate was going to cash in once he returned to the coast.

Batmans, Supermans, Spidermans, Terminators, Punishers, Justice Leagues, Spawns and even a bizarre series called Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. To many those names mean very little, but there is a chunk of the population that will drop twenty bucks a piece for certain issues. Thus, the investment has value.

We all invest in something. Stocks, bonds, CDs (both kinds), art work, Star Wars figures, magazines, coins, stamps, houses, antiques, gold, home run baseballs, rare books, land, toys that survived our childhood, baseball cards, businesses and cars. Some investments are more intangible, like children, creative endeavors, husbands and wives, unique inventions, political movements and the point spread of a football game.

The key to almost every investment is time. Something that was worth a buck when you bought will someday be worth two. It is never clear how long it will take for an investment to blossom, if ever. I have a set of 32 cent Space Discovery stamps. As far as I know, they aren't worth the price of postage anymore, but if people forget about them for a few years, they might be worth more to some other crazy person who thinks Space Discovery stamps are cool.

That's the real trick to investing. Believing some strange eclectic freak will be willing to pay the inflated price for an object in the future. What will be worth it? What can increase in value just by not throwing it away for a decade or two? How come no one gives me insider stock tips?

The owner of a dog kennel I used to work at made a killing by buying up vacant lots in outskirts of Albuquerque in the 1950s. The population grew from 50,000 to half a million, and those outskirts turned into residential and business sectors. Stocks that people casually held onto have been bursting the last few years. The AT-AT (complete with The Empire Strikes Back box) I received as a birthday gift when I was a kid now sits on top of my television gradually becoming the most coveted item in the house.

The danger of collecting and hoarding investments is a disease called pack rat-ism. If you have more than two storage sheds full of "investments," you might want to have yourself checked out.

If you are a pack rat, do not fear too much because you're not alone. There are people collecting almost everything imaginable. Somebody out there has the complete collection of George Magazines. Somebody has the 64-69 series of Mustangs. Somebody has every Iron Maiden album. Somebody has a selection of Princess Diana dresses. Everything is for sale given the right price.

My old roommate said good-bye this weekend and hauled his comics out to the coast to flood the market briefly with his booty, and while most of America could care less about a sealed copy of The Death of Superman, there are a handful who will immediately drop the cash to obtain the blessed treasure.

The robbers of his storage shed only saw value in coins, so that's all they took. But everything has value in this country as long as you and someone else places a value on it. Strangely enough, it's as simple as that.

Chris Jungle can not believe his columns are only worth ten bucks a pop.