So while I have been building a trade list and a wanted list I have been considering which cards I want to add to my various want lists and which cards to prioritize. I have a question for the player collectors out there, how do you go about building the ultimate collection of your favorite athlete?
Do you begin with the players first cards and build up
to their most recent?
Do you begin with their most recent and build back to
their first cards?
Do you pick up your favorites and build around what you
like first and then pick up other cards as they appear?
Do you pick up cards based on price?
Do you focus on a player's autographs or relics first?
What I'm going to tell you isn't going to be helpful. I have a few player collections, but they started so gradually, I just sort of had a bunch of cards of them. They are still not organized enough to have wantlists, but I still pick up cards of those players when I can. I think if I started from scratch, I would pick up cards as I saw them, regardless of year or set.
ReplyDeleteI just add whatever I find, in whatever order I find it in. When I was younger I kept meticulous track of which of a player's cards I had and which ones I needed, but with all the inserts and parallels and high-end stuff over the last couple of decades I don't try to keep up anymore. One thing that is fun when first starting out on a player collection is to get on JustCommons and grab everything of your player under a certain price threshold, or get on eBay and search for bulk lots that appear to have a large variety of cards. For my main few players I try to grab one or two 'centerpiece' cards, like a nice auto-and-relic card or a graded rookie card or something. I also like building rainbows of players, grabbing as many of the parallels from a specific set as I can. And still other PCs grow like Play at the Plate describes, when you just kind of realize that you've got quite a few cards of some player.
ReplyDeleteWhen I see a Virdon card (my PC is Bill Virdon) I pick it up. But it helps that he was a semi star from the 50s-60s. That means there are not tons of cards of him out there although his 20 years as a coach/manager give me plenty of card to chase I just don't have to chase a whole bunch of new cards every year. No parallels or sp cards just oddball vintage stuff.
ReplyDeleteI would totally recommend a PC of a retired semi star. I actually search harder and find more enjoyment picking up a new Virdon than I do a new Red Sox card.