Questions from a Youngster

[nat]

"1) For those who collect, do you fund any part of your collection through flipping?"

No. I don't trust myself enough to bet that I'm going to make money on a card. I treat all of them as pure consumption. My advice if you want to try it would be to only buy a card if you would be comfortable adding it to your collection at the price you are going to pay for it, should you not be able to move it.


"2) If you don't flip, do you do anything special - other than just saving - to fund your collection?"

No to this also. My collecting interests are inexpensive enough that saving isn't really necessary either. Baseball card collecting can be very expensive, but it doesn't have to be. It really depends on what kind of a hobby you want this to be. Personally, I'd just like to have fun with it; competing on PSA registries and the like sounds stressful, and I'd rather not do it.


"3) How can you tell if a vintage or Pre-War card is authentic or fake? Graded cards obviously bring more of a premium, yet raw cards can be risky for an uneducated soul such as myself."

This is really the big question. Since I buy low-dollar cards I buy raw all the time; low prices reduces the risk of fakes/reprints, but doesn't eliminate it.

On-line, you can avoid most scams by being cautious. If it's "being sold as a reprint", it's a reprint. If it's an ungraded T206 Wagner (etc.) it's a reprint. If it's expensive and ungraded, be very careful and investigate thoroughly. If it's expensive and they have limited feedback, be very cautious. Many (but not all) of the scammers on eBay won't click the "Original" designation, filtering your searches for that will eliminate lots of them.

On eBay, be very careful with people who don't usually sell cards. They will sometimes think that they have something original, and their listing won't be suspicious, and they'll have lots of good feedback, but since they don't often handle cards they might not be able to tell real cards from fakes. Sometimes they do have good stuff, but if buying raw look at what they usually sell and proceed with caution if you see lots of lawn gnomes and christmas ornaments.

The best advice when looking at the cards themselves really is to know what you're looking at. Most reprints have obvious problems, and familiarity with the set (and sometimes the specific card) will help you spot them. For others, I find a 60x magnifier helpful. Printing technologies have changed over time (and vary from issue to issue) and it's hard to fake things at the microscopic level. Under magnification it's usually easy to tell modern cards from pre-war originals. Here too you want to be familiar with the issue: know what originals look like under the magnifier, know which sections are solid ink and which use a dot pattern, etc.

A black light is also useful. Pre-war cards won't glow *brightly* under a black light. Get used to what the specific issue looks like under the light, it's not as simple as "glows/doesn't". Some post war cards will glow a lot, some will glow a little, others won't at all. For some issues the cardboard doesn't glow but the ink does (once looked at a 1986 Topps under a black light for some reason; cardboard was invisible but the ink looked like special effects from Tron).

"4) How do you organize your priorities/wants and stay on budget? Is it as simple as staying disciplined, or are there little tips and tricks?"

If you can tell other people how to stay on budget you should really write a self-help book, make millions of dollars, and buy whatever cards you want.

But one important thing to remember is that, unless you're going after really really rare stuff (which, of course, I never do), there's always going to be another one. Don't feel like you MUST buy this one; you don't have to. And the chase is half of the fun anyway, don't feel bad about missing out on a card because it went over your budget. That just means that you get to keep chasing it.