Posted By:
Greg EcklundLemke's guide works fine for me, as long as the set is relatively liquid like a 50's or 60's Topps set, and as long as the card isn't slabbed.
For lesser seen sets, you pretty much have to go by what you are comfortable paying - if you collect one of those sets you can generally develop your own feel. For example, I'm mostly working on BF2 right now and I can tell you that Lemke's guide is great as a checklist, but with regards to rarity of specific pennants it is no help at all. Rabbit Maranville and Red Faber are listed at the same price, logical since they are similar tier Hall of Famers, but try collecting this set and seeing how many of each you see. Nice Maranvilles show up on EBay quite often, but good luck finding a Faber. I recently paid $600 for one, simply because I didn't want to wait another three or four years for one to show up. Talking experienced and trustworthy dealers is a plus too - Terry Knouse was very helpful to me when I first started the set, letting me know which ones were especially scarce.