Player Collecting and Team Collecting:The basics

Player and team collecting is pretty common in this hobby. Most people have a favorite player or team so that’s a great foundation to start collecting. Many others don’t collect for player or team but for other reasons. I, find myself on the border of each. I collect NY Giants and Hakeem Nicks, but then I collect everything just to try and build a big collection.

If you do collect strictly for team or player, it is sometimes very easy and cheap to pick up your favorites to add to your collection. Obviously, that depends on the team and players popularity. You can sometimes go to ebay and find a ten to fifteen card lot of your favorite player or team for under five dollars. You can also got to forums where trading is involved. One example is Beckett.com trade forum. You can find people with something you want and maybe you have something they want. Not to mention you can sometimes find great people who are just looking to dump team lots for free to clear space in their house.  Those make awesome additions to anyone's collection. And of course it is always polite to mail them back a surprise package of their team to say thanks.

Team and player collecting can even be broken down more than that. For team, maybe you collect only a certain position on the team or if football, side of the ball. Maybe you only collect the teams rookies. Maybe its stars. It’s never wrong however you decide to collect your team. As for player, maybe you collect it all. Maybe only inserts, autographs and memorabilia or one of them. Or maybe you want a complex collection and will go to the ends of the earth to find every card serial numbered with their jersey number. For example, I like Hakeem Nicks, so if I was going to do that I would try finding cards numbered 88/???. That would be a very cool collection. But could cost more than the other options and much, much harder to find.

Most of you probably already know about these options, just thought I would help those of you who might not . The one thing about the hobby is… its always nice to help out the newbies. Because without them, the hobby cannot grow.

Til next time, keep busting wax.