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DAVE'S CARD COLLECTION

   My friend Dave started collecting baseball cards about ten years ago. He said his goal was to get most of the cards ever made! I figured it would cost him $100,000.00 and take twenty years. But he has already done it for $20,000.00.
       Since 1885 about 400,000 cards have been issued. That's about 100,000 from 1885 to 1980 and 300,000 in the last 20 years! So Dave simply bought about 200,000 all-different from 1980 to 2000, and very little from earlier years.
       Dave now has about 220,000 all-different baseball cards in his collection. That is most of the cards ever made! What bragging rights! I wonder how many other colectors can match that.
      Actually, Dave has very few cards from the past three years. He sure knows how to get the most for his money! The most recent cards tend to be Hot-Hot-Hot, highly sought after and Way over priced. The proof of this can be seen after the cards have been out for three or four years and complete sets can be had for under five cents per card. Bide your time, Dave.
     Dave also avoids wasting money by not buying any of the recent hot Rookie cards, 95% of whom turn out to be a flash-in-the-pan. Wait a few years and buy them as commons. The limit of what Dave wll pay is 25 cents for a card. Since most cards in any regular set will sell for maybe five cents, none more rare than any other, a 25 cent limit will get him a 98% complete set almost every time.

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MY FIRST WEBCAM PHOTO

The Ultimate Collecting Challenge

Try to collect baseball cards which are not listed in any catalog! No catalog lists even 90% of all known issues. If the cards are unnumbered, how can one be sure of having a complete set?!?! Gather enough to make 20 complete sets! I am working on about 100 such sets right now. I have 12 different catalogs which collectively list only about 4800 of the 4900 known sets.

The Ultimate Collector

My old friend Charlie is the ultimate collector of baseball cards. He is so advanced that he is beyond cards and does not want them any more. What he wants , what he collects, is information. Charlie really knows the values of some cards , values scarcely hinted at in the catalogs.

The Values of Parallels

As a collector of �parallel� baseball cards , and an active trader , I need to know how much each one is worth. Unfortunately , the big fat Beckett catalog does not list them individually. Instead , in order to save space , it says something like this : �Stars 12X to 30X base cards , Rookies 5X to 10X base cards�. This does not tell me how much each card is worth. So here is my method of establishing firm values ; a method intended to make everybody happy.
Use the Maximum Multiplier.
Everybody likes to see high catalog values for their cards. Here are a few Maximum Multipliers from the Beckett catalog #24 : 1999 Bowman International 2.5X , 1994 Score Gold Rush 4X , 1992 Topps Gold 15X. For complete fairness , these values work both ways.