Vintage Collecting circa 2015

[Justin88]

Hey all,

Justin here, I am new to the boards, though I was pretty active on the old board six or seven years ago. I was getting into T206 and other vintage collecting at that time, and having a great time with it, but sold off my stuff when I moved cross country, got married and went to grad school, but am now looking at getting back into the swing of things.

I am looking to start collecting again with two goals in mind:

1. I would like to be somewhat profitable in my collecting. In essence I would like to start with a $1000 or something and see if I can use buying, selling, trading, flipping to grow my collection, without having to put more of my own money in.

Does anyone have any experience doing this? I know that it's not easy and can be very time consuming, but I really enjoy the hunting for deals and re-selling stuff. What approaches have you taken that have been successful? What hasn't worked?

2. I would like to build a collection that represents my interests, that will hold and perhaps gain in value, while also maintaining focus and not going too far off track. Anyone with advice for developing a framework that allows them to stay focused on what they want.

Here are some of my interests:
19th century (N300, N172)
Pre-war (T206, Cracker Jack, 1933-34 OPC Hockey)
Black Sox + Other Banned Players (Zimmerman, Chase, Magee etc.)
Negro League Cards
Post-war (1952-57 Topps, 1953 Bowman Color)
Black Baseball Cards from the 1940's and 50's (Paige, Minoso, Jackie, Banks, Clemente, Doby, Irvin etc)
HOF'ers
Potential Future HOF'ers (Dahlen, Oliva, Allen, Grich etc)
Early 1980's OPC Hockey
WHA and ABA Cards
Defunct Teams
1951-52 Parkhurst Hockey
Terry Sawchuk
Cal Ripken Jr.

And the list goes on and on. So in essence, does anyone have advice on getting started, how to build a collection on limited budget, while also growing it through smart investing, and staying focused.

I was thinking of taking $1000, putting $500 towards starting on some aspect of my collection, and then the other $500 towards investment type purchases (for flipping etc)

Thanks in advance for your suggestions,

Justin