Day job/budgeting for cards

[glchen]

If you are looking to build up a nice high end collection on a limited budget, my advice is to stay focused and look for bargains. Only buy cards that you really love. If you are buying cards and then selling them again because they don't quite fit your focus, then you will be losing a lot of money along the way. Money that you could be using to buy cards. You also need to be disciplined enough to only buy cards that you really want at the right price. Sometimes you just get the itch to buy stuff. You want to see your collection grow. However, that can lead to some bad purchases. So, I would start off by making a list of cards that you would really like to own (and are realistic). Then research prices that these cards are going for in the condition that you want. Put a saved search for these cards on ebay that you can check a couple times a week or so. Then put snipes on these cards at below VCP where they would be good bargains. Putting snipes out disciplines you to only buy the cards at the right price, and not overpay or let yourself get "auction fever" where you keep bidding until you get the price, but the price is way too high. As you continually bid on these cards, you'll get a sense of what the right price for these cards are and develop more knowledge on them. If you win one snipe out of 50, you've done a good job because you're buying a card that you really wanted at a reasonable price. Obviously, as others have said, you should stay within budget and not buy cards on credit as this will lead you down a very bad slope. Good luck collecting!