Here's my advice:
(0) Don't go into debt buying cards. Don't use money you need for other necessities (like food and rent) to buy cards. Purchase your girlfriend's engagement ring first, and don't skimp on that because there was a card you HAD to buy.
OK, now that is out of the way...
(1) Prices have gone up considerably recently, where it is becoming harder to harder to flip unless you purchased a while ago. Saying that, it is still possible to find a good deal here and there. However, when you are collecting, you should try to focus in a certain area if possible. That way, you can become somewhat of an expert in that area, both in determining authenticity of those types of cards, and seeing when cards that in that area are a good deal. Then if you have the funds, you can purchase some cards for resale later. However, as before, you shouldn't take too much risk in that for example, you need to re-sell within two months or you can't pay your credit card bill or something like that.
(2) The other common way to fund your collection via cards is buying cards in lots. For example, an auction may be selling a lot of 15 cards, but you only want one for your collection. You buy the lot for that one card, but re-sell the other 14. As long as you do your due diligence in determining what you can re-sell the lot for, you can often come out ahead in cases like this.
(3) As others said, this often takes experience. Usually the best way if to have purchase raw cards, and "get to know them." That is when you see and feel authentic cards in front of you, you can get to know what is real and what is fake. For example, the paper stock is different. There are black light tests that you can do because modern paper fluoresces while paper stock from prewar does not. Some modern type fonts did not exist in prewar, and so forth. So how do you start out getting authentic raw cards? Purchase from trusted, well known dealers. Avoid sellers on ebay with low feedback. If the deal seems to be too good on ebay, it is usually because it is, and the experienced buyers are avoiding those listings because they know the card isn't real (or at best, it's trimmed/altered).
(4) Be disciplined in your purchasing, and none of this "what the heck, let's put in another bid!" Determine a price that you think is the reasonable price for a card, and stick to that price. If the card is on ebay, using a sniping tool, and then forget about the auction. Sniping avoids the psychology where you feel you need to put more bids on a card.
Good luck!
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