Posted By:
davidcyclebackSomeone said he didn't understand the set discount (price of set is less than the sum of the price of the cards sold singly).
I explained it by giving he following example: Say there is a two card set, one card is of Cowboys wide receiver Michael Irvin and the other is of Green Bay Packers wide reciever player Antonio Freeman. Cowboys fans may only want the Irvin card and may not want to pay anything for the Freeman card. The Packers fan may only want the Freeman card and have no interest in the Irvin. To whichever fan you sell, the set will go for a discounted price as each fan will only pay top dollar for one of the cards. If you broke the set and sold the Irvin card to the Cowboys collector and the Freeman card to the Packers collector, you will get more as you are meeting top demand for each card. The person I told this too was a Packers fan who hated the Cowboys, so he understood quickly.
It works similarly with large sets. No single collector wants each card in a set to the same degree. Type collectors, single player and team collectors by nature aren't interested in purchasing a set other than to get the few or one card needed.