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Posted By: T206Collector

One way of collecting is to purchase the highest graded cards one can afford. Using the great SGC service on www.vintagecardprices.com, I was able to see that there have been no auctions for T206 cards graded higher than SGC 88 in the past year (SGC 88 is the equivalent of PSA 8, if I have done my math correctly). And there have been exactly 5 auctions for SGC 88 cards in the past year:

11/19/06 eBay White (Foley, Houston) $3,999.00
10/4/06 Goodwin Dineen $1,485.20
10/3/06 Old Judge Davis (Phila. Davis On Front) $1,853.50
6/8/06 Goodwin Killian (Portrait) $4,200.73
12/9/05 Mastro Bender (Pitching, No Trees In Background) $6,407.28

If I were the winning bidder on all of those cards, I'd have paid about $18K -- or about $1,500/month. When I was putting my T206 set together, the average of my monthly expenses in my most active year was probably about $1,000/month. But I kept my bids to SGC 60 and below, generally speaking, thus maximizing the number of cards I could get towards completing the set. I think this makes might make me a "quantity" collector, as opposed to a "quality" collector. (Of course, now having achieved the desired quantity, I am now moving up in quality; but since I'd like to do this in my lifetime, I am still sacrificing quality for quantity.)

What kind of collector are you?