John, my most-fun collecting focus these days is cards of all the players who played on the 1924 Washington Senators team, the only Washington team to ever win the World Series. I'm going for as many cards as I can get (and afford!) of each player, including cards for when these players played on other teams. There are HOFers (WaJo, Rice, Goslin, B. Harris, and owner Clark Griffith), other guys that had long MLB careers and thus many baseball cards (Bluege, Judge, Leibold, Peckinpaugh, Marberry, Ruel, Zachary, etc.), other guys with short MLB careers and thus very few baseball cards ("Pinky" Hargrave, "Oyster Joe" Martina, "Slim" McGrew, "Curly" Ogden, "Doc" Prothro, "Rubberarm" Russell, "Mule" Shirley, "By" Speece, Paul Zahniser, etc.), and other guys with short MLB careers that have no baseball cards as far as I can determine (Carl East, "Chick" Gagnon, "Buck" Griffith, Carr Smith, & Tommy Taylor). Searching for and finding cards of those players that had very few cards produced has actually been the most fun!
Another of my collecting focuses is type cards. Where possible, my 1924 Senators cards also serve as my type cards. What I found to be amazing is that my 1924 Senators cards go back as far as 1889 (Clark Griffith - N172 Old Judge) and as far forward as 1945 (Byron Speece - Centennial Flour Seattle Rainiers)!
BTW, with a few minor exceptions (E222 A.W.H. Caramels, T210-2 Old Mill Va. League, & T209-2 Va. League only), I don't collect sets.
The point of all this is to say there are so many fun ways to collect vintage cards. Sooner or later (as in my case) you will discover what turns you on the most.
Val
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