How Orderly is your Card Collecting? What is your Scatter Factor?

[BobC]

Originally Posted by bnorth

I can't get you any fancy numbers but I can post one corner of my card room. Yes all those big boxes are full of cards and the rest of the room looks similar.

Reminds me of my own main card collecting room, only yours is way more organized and less crowded than mine. LOL

As for the idea of coming up with some way to measure and quantify what the OP terms as a "scatter-factor", not so sure the proposed methodology will really tell you much of anything important or useful, and it definitely doesn't tell you anything about how focused someone's collection is. The idea of coming up with a "scatter-factor" formular also kind of implies you can then measure and compare one collector's supposed focus to that of another, which I don't see how the OP's formula will ever do.

First off, what does the value of cards have to do with one's collecting focus? Different cards can have way different values, yet they can all be part of someone's collection focus. Whether you collect just the '88 Donruss set, or all main Topps base sets from '52 through the current year.

Secondly, if you use your single, most valuable card value as the denominator in your "scatter-factor" formula, you are basing everything on a single card, which makes no sense at all. Say I had a collection of 1,000 cards worth $50,000, with my most valuable card worth $2,500. I'd have an average value per card of $50, and per your formula a "scatter-factor" of 20. And lets also say my collecting focus was to collect just the oversized main Topps card sets from '52 to '56, and every one of the 1,000 cards I had collected so far was a card from one of those first five years of Topps sets. So therefore in fact, my collection was at that point 100% focused on my collecting goal. Now lets say I came into some money and suddenly had the chance to acquire a really nice '52 Topps Mantle for $50,000, so I grabbed it. Well now my collection has 1,001 cards, which are all still 100% part of my collecting focus, but now my average value has approximately doubled to about $100 per card, while my "scatter-factor" has dropped to 2. So explain to me how by buying just one single card it can supposedly cause such a dramatic change to my collecting focus, especially when every single card I own is definitely still part of my collecting focus, even after buying the '52 Mantle.

And thirdly, take my original situation before buying the '52 Mantle. Lets say I didn't even buy another card, but suddenly the value of my most expensive card increased from $2,500 to $52,500 (which isn't that far fetched with what has happened during this pandemic). Again, my average value per card doubles to about $100, and my "scatter-factor" per the OP's formula again drops to about 2. So explain to me how I don't even buy or sell anything, and yet my collecting focus still dramaticaly changes suddenly.

Sorry to say, but for measuring the focus of one's collection, and then being able to compare it to others, the OP's formula is pretty much useless.

Maybe a better way to achieve what the OP is looking for is to first determine exactly what your collecting goals/focus actually is/are, be it sets, teams, players, HOFers, rookies, etc., or any or all combinations. And then figure out how many of those cards you have that match and go towards completing/fulfilling those collecting goals/focus. And then divide that number by the total number of all cards you own to determine the percentage of your collection that is truly part of your collecting goals/focus. In my examples above, the 1,000 cards (1,001 when you add the '52 Mantle) owned were all part of the collecting goal/focus, so the focus factor was always at 100%. Though by no means a perfect measure, I think this is much closer to what the OP was trying to come up with, and something that can more meaningfully be compared among collectors. You'll still have questions and issues though, like how do you account for duplicates, or what if you suddenly lose interest in something you formerly focused on, but don't anymore. And of course there's always the person that collects whatever they like and catches their fancy. Even though they are the poster child for, and definition of, a non-focused and ultimate scatter collector, if they truly only collect what they like and have an interest in, then technically they are 100% focused with their collection and its goals.