Long gone are the days when there were only a few options in the baseball card scene. You have never had as much choice as you do today. But with so much choice, more decisions need to be made about which baseball cards you want to add to your collection.
We wanted to lay out the different options you've got so that hopefully you'll be able to make an easier decision about what you might want to collect. I'm not going to focus the different brands of card for the most part and prospect cards as an investment , both of which we'll get into a bit further down the line.
Favourite player - This is pretty self explanatory. Got a favourite player? Get his cards! This could be your favourite player on the team you support, someone that played in the first game you watched, or just someone you really like. There are plenty of options with base cards at the lower end, autographed cards at the top end and relic, parallels & rookie cards in between.
This is obviously going to be a lot cheaper if your favourite player is Tommy Pham rather than Fernando Tatis Jr.
Favourite team - Again, this is pretty self explanatory. You can easily find cheap cards of players for your favourite teams, and you've got the same choices as above. There are often team lots of base cards for sale on eBay and going this route can help build up your collection quickly.
This option has a great benefit of helping you learn about the players that have played for your favourite organisation over the years, especially if you are newer to the sport.
Are you a new Angels fan who hasn't heard about Jim Abbott yet? His 1990 Leaf card tells you a bit about him (and if you haven't heard of him, look him up because his story is incredible).
Or are you a Blue Jays fan wanting to learn about the glory years of 1992 & 1993?
Maybe Joe Carter's 1994 Score World Series Highlight card might be the one for you.
Or maybe Bill Mazeroski's 2012 Panini Cooperstown card if you're a Pirates fan.
Set building - This is where you aim to collect all of the cards from a particular release. Taking the recently released Topps 2021 for example; there are 330 base cards not including short prints or variations which are much rarer than their base counterparts.
The idea would be to collect all 330 of these cards to complete the set. This can be a great way to build up your collection and to help you decide if you want to narrow your focus in the future.
The Trading Card Database is my go to place to find checklists - https://www.tcdb.com/ViewSet.cfm/sid/241380/2021-Topps
There are plenty of people who try for this and the idea gives me fond memories of trying to complete the Panini Premier League sticker albums back in the day.
Rainbow collecting - This is very much a recent addition to the card collecting landscape as manufacturers started to create a whole bunch of variations in certain products. For example, 2020 Topps Chrome has no less than 19 different variations of each card to collect (not including printing plates). Generally, each variation is a different colour, hence why collecting them all is a "rainbow".
This isn't for the faint hearted though because some of these variations are incredibly rare and therefore can get very expensive, very quickly. Especially once you start get towards the rarer purple refractor /299, the much rarer gold refractor /50, the incredibly rare red wave refractor /5 and the ridiculously rarer still superfractor which is /1.
Even if there is just a handful of others around the world who have the same idea to collect a certain player, expect a fierce bidding war to get you hands on the limited numbered cards.
I know that's a lot of information considering what I'm going to say next...
It really doesn't matter what you choose to collect. Collect whatever cards you enjoy. That's it. That's all that comes down to. Collect whatever makes you happy.
I don't collect Red Sox cards but I've got a 2020 Xander Bogaerts card proudly in my collection simply because the photo was taken at the London Games and it makes me happy to look and remember being there.
And that's what it all comes down to. Collect whatever you enjoy & have fun with it. That's all there is to it.
Let us know what you collect on twitter or in the comments.
We'd love to see which cards are your favourites!
Comments