Why do you collect what you collect? (+ Introduction)

[kmac32]

I have several things I collect for different reasons. First of all, I am a diehard Cub fan. I started with collecting all the Chicago Cub from Topps base sets and updates from 1951 to current with all errors and variations. Set is current so I only add new cards when they come out.

Second in prewar, I collect Cards of Elmer Miller who is my great great uncle who played for the yankees in the teens and twenties and as a side branch of this, I collect E121-80 and E121-120 Yankees and Giants. My so called 1921 World Series set.

I also collect T207 Cubs with all the back variations. Missing the cycle back Ward Miller and Several Napoleon backs.

I started collecting T205 gold border Cubs with all the back variations. Currently up to 72 out of 151 possibilities.

My final collection is a set I am working on. The W572 strip card set. Up to 107 out of 121 cards. All of these cards are raw and in pages. The other prewar cards are all in SGC slabs. I like slabbed cards because I can pick up the cards and play with them. My total prewar is around 250 cards and post war is nearly 2000 cards.

[Louieman]

I feel I collect what I collect because, first of all, it's a passion I've had since I was really young. And that passion hasn't waned as the years have passed...strengthened, if anything.

I suppose part of it is that I love the history of the game as much as the game itself. And I see baseball cards as art, art that captures that history and folklore in this super-iconic sort of way.

My collection is an extension of that. My number one priority for my collection is that the particular card in the particular set is aesthetically pleasing to me. Probably why I almost exclusively care about colors and registration over anything else. I ask myself, "Does this card encapsulate the art of baseball to my liking?" Players are secondary to that criteria. So for example even though Willie Mays is one of my favorite players ever, I don't own a single card of his, and don't plan to (at least, yet) because I've never seen a card of his that really blew me away in terms of its aesthetics.

Instantly one of my favorite threads ever, by the way

[polakoff]

Around 2000 when I was 13 my dad came home from the flea market with a bunch of baseball cards. By this time I had already been selling on ebay for about a year and been collecting cards for quite a while, but my only real collection was Marlins cards and hand collating every Topps base set. Included in this haul he got for $20 were about 100 1971 Topps cards including a few of the nicer ones (Reggie, Bench, Rose). It was the first I'd seen of the set and fell in love with it and decided I was going to complete it. A few years later when ebay and the like really started booming I promised myself I wouldn't buy lots of cards online or single cards from any sale sites (only from forums). Then a few years back when I went to a show and someone literally had multiples of every card in the set I promised myself I'd never spend more than 50 bucks in a single transaction - otherwise it would make completing the set too easy and would end the fun. Pleased to announce that as of this week I added Nolan Ryan and am now only 10 cards away from finishing the 16 year long project - for now. I have a looooooooooot of condition upgrades to make.

My main player PC is Chris Coghlan. I went to school at University of Florida and saw Coghlan play while he was at Ole Miss. I've always liked scrappy infielders and being a lefty I'm a sucker for lefty batters too. When the Marlins drafted him I was ecstatic. Later that year my buddy and I were at our LCS. He opened some 2007 Bowman Chrome and I opened some football product (didn't collect football but it was cheap). He hit a Coghlan Xfractor auto and I hit a Patrick Willis jersey card. Since he was a 49ers fan we traded and that was the beginning of an obsession. Got lucky enough to get most of his early rare stuff before he became ROY and got hot, and his later stuff came out after he dropped off again.

I also collect Duke Snider cards and other Brooklyn Dodgers cool stuff. My grandmother grew up in Brooklyn and was a huge Dodgers fan so I started collecting mostly reprint or new issue Brooklyn cards for her. Then I ventured into the real vintage. Her favorite was Duke Snider, so mine was too (plus he was a lefty). Being Jewish I also collect Sandy Koufax things, but not as much because of the price tag. When I found this site I wanted to collect T206 cards and so decided to tackle the Brooklyn team set, only graded by SGC because they're so attractive.