Lemke vs. Lipset

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Posted By: George

As a relatively new pre-war collector, which book would you recommend to start studying: Lemke's Standard Catalog or Lipset's Encyclopedia? What is the difference between the two? Are they price guides, do they have checklists, pictures in color, etc. Thanks for the help. George

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Posted By: runscott

Lemke's book is easily the most accurate and exhaustive price guide available, and also contains a lot of good information about each issue.

Lipset's book is an absolute must for candy and tobacco card collectors - great history of the cards, explanations of anomalies, and checklists.

...then add a subscription to VCBC.

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Posted By: Hankron

All the publications Scott mentioned are worthwhile, but I would recommend starting with Lemke's Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards ... I also recommend, down the road, getting MastroNet's auction catalogs, and the Barry Halper/Sotheby's catalog (3 books) .... A family friend for the Midwest was visiting Seattle once, and was looking through the Halper catalog. He was astounded by the final auction prices. I pointed out to him that the prices in the catalog were only the minimum bids, and proceeded to show him the 'final prices realized retults' sheet...

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Posted By: deepfreeze

"...then add a subscription to VCBC."

What are peoples thoughts on VCBC ? I enjoyed it back when it was called Sports Collectibles. Over time they significantly reduced their price guide listings. Also has limited pricing for sports other than basbeball and football. To me this limited it's appeal and value as a must have pub, just an opinion....

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Posted By: John Wojak

Also, add a copy of the 1991 (?) Sotheby's auction catalog for the Copeland auction.

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Posted By: Todd (nolemmings)

I would opt for Lipset's encyclopedia. For pre-war issues, it has an incredible amount of information which, while written 15-20 years ago, remains nearly complete in its depth. The SCD book is a better resource for other issues and has pricing info, but frankly, I find its pricing to be extremely limited in value--it seems I can seldom if ever find what I want for the prices Lemke's book suggests, absent some listing error by the seller. Still, if you're a newbie or if you plan on selling and need a base line for pricing, I suppose the SCD book is more what you would need.

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Posted By: julie

The Vintage and Classic Baseball Collector doesn't have price guides, exccept as the occur naturally in articles, and VCBC is all it's ever been called.
www.vcbc.com

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Posted By: Anonymous

Thanks, I was confusing the nomeclature with Beckett's monthly - my bad