[Luke]

I asked this same question about 3 years ago, and Rob gave me the same advice he just gave you. I decided to go with his suggestion that I start with the HOFers. It's a great idea, because if you decide not to follow through with completing the entire set, you'll be able to recoup your money (or close to it) when you sell off the HOFers. Initially, I bought a few SCG 30s and really liked the idea of uniformity. For the first few months, I wanted to have my whole set in SGC holders in the 30 range. That lasted for a bit, but I then realized how much space that would take up, and also decided that I just preferred the cards raw. They look better in small top loaders that you can thumb through or binder pages you can flip through in my opinion. Also, if you're patient, you can buy raw VG commons for $20, whereas graded 3s are around double that. I'm slowly plugging away at the HOFers and I pick up commons here and there. I'm aiming for GD/VG, and I don't mind a little paper loss on the reverse. For me it's all about bargain hunting. I bid on a lot of auctions, and I only expect to win a small percentage of them, but when I do, I get a great deal. There's no rush to get a certain example of the George Stovall portrait, so if you don't win this one, there will be hundreds more offered for sale. Good luck. You can shoot me a PM if you have any questions.