Would you rather have a low grade complete set or a high grade star card?

[jchcollins]

I would have to go with the single nicer card, but that is just because of how my vintage collecting evolved since childhood.

In 1988 or so when I really first got into "old" (nobody started calling them vintage to my knowledge until the 21st century....) cards, I couldn't afford much at all - so single card pickups here and there became the norm simply because that was the sustenance I was allowed. A '66 Koufax, later a '58 Mantle / Aaron. I cherished the cards individually, and the idea of putting together something like a complete 1956 Topps set (my favorite) would have sounded as silly to me as hand collating a current Topps set - which though some of my friends were into that, I never was.

As an adult collector who has bitten back hard into the hobby on at least 2 separate occasions - I just kind of continued with this mentality. I've always been a sucker for the stars, for good or bad - Mickey Mantle interests me a lot more than Mickey Vernon. I can get a lot of utility out of the Aaron card here and the Mays and Clemente there over having say, 100 different commons from the same set as one of those, if that makes sense. I did earlier this year rather uncharacteristically for me buy a complete '71 Topps set that was just too nice to pass up. But that is not my norm, and I don't see that happening again really - at least buying all in one fell swoop. I am slowly working on '67 and '72 sets by hand as well right now, just because I love the designs enough to want all of them. But that too is a fairly new mentality for me - and one that has only come with goal setting / direction planning / other boring adult-only aspects of the hobby - many of which I never considered as a kid.

I'd be willing to bet had I started with all of this during a time where much less actual monetary value was put on the cards - say in the late 50's or early 60's - that I probably would have wound up more of a set collector. But I was born in 1977, and by the time I was shelling out quarters and dimes for my first wax packs almost a decade later, the handwriting on the wall tying cards to dollars was already well established. Who knows...