Completing HOF Signatures of Football (371) vs Baseball (342) HOF Sets - Which Easier

[britchie911]

I'm 29 Signatures away from completing the Football HOF autograph collection. Most on cards (in fact 235 of 313 players elected are on RCS and I'm missing 13 players). The rest are expensive but available.

Looked into starting a baseball HOF collection but it seems many more of the members are very expensive (over $1000, several over 5k) and some are not even available (at least on eBay).

My question is are these sports about the same level of cost and effort to complete or is one disproportionatley harder? On the surface, it looks like baseball might be more costly and difficult but interested in what others think.

Would love to run poll but not sure if forum enables this. Lets start with "intelligent" comments from people with EXPERIENCE (and cite how many HOFers you owe for credibility please). Asking a lot I know.

[tazdmb]

I am currently at 275+ Baseball HOFers and I know that finishing it will literally be impossible as the population of certain players are 5 or less, which players-like Frank Grant are impossible-as it was believed he was illiterate.

Baseball has a deeper/longer history so finding certain autographs are just that much more rare, coupled with the negro leaguers-in which people were just not collecting autographs and died in obscurity.

Good luck

[bender07]

Baseball is exponentially harder than Football. As noted, there are a lot of signatures that are impossible or near impossible to get even if you had unlimited income. Fun journey but getting to 100% or even 95% is impossible IMO.

[rschisler]

I'm at 262 for baseball and I would say there are maybe 5 more that I can add beyond what's in my current collection for under $2k a piece. I'll be lucky to get to the 275 mark in the next 20 years with my budget. I don't know a ton about the football HOF but with the longer history, negro leagues, and more it seems a much greater challenge.

[Clydewally]

I collect both and agree with the above posters. I need less than 20 for the NFL and many of those would be under $500 and very few would be above $2,000. Even a Jim Thorpe, one of the expensive ones, only cost me $710 in 2020 (like everything else, it has probably gone up). The baseball ones I need will cost thousands or tens of thousands, like any pre-1900 hall of famer or names like Ruth or Mathewson.

[theshleps]

I am somewhere about 280 in Baseball and do not expect more except for new inductees as all go for probably 8000+ that I need. About 15 years ago I only needed 3 FB but realized I am not interested in FB and sold them. I could have completed it or got to 1 or 2. I switched from FB to Japanese Baseball Hall of fame. Don't expect to complete but I enjoy it

[Picklepete]

Originally Posted by britchie911

I'm 29 Signatures away from completing the Football HOF autograph collection. Most on cards (in fact 235 of 313 players elected are on RCS and I'm missing 13 players). The rest are expensive but available.

Looked into starting a baseball HOF collection but it seems many more of the members are very expensive (over $1000, several over 5k) and some are not even available (at least on eBay).

My question is are these sports about the same level of cost and effort to complete or is one disproportionatley harder? On the surface, it looks like baseball might be more costly and difficult but interested in what others think.

Would love to run poll but not sure if forum enables this. Lets start with "intelligent" comments from people with EXPERIENCE (and cite how many HOFers you owe for credibility please). Asking a lot I know.

Curious.. Which 29 FB are you missing ?
LMk..Thx.