My vantage point is very much a minority perspective I am sure. I backed away from higher grade cards long ago and opted instead for quality mid-grade cards within complete sets that I could more readily afford and stay married.
I collect baseball and football sets from the 1950s and 1960s. Over the last month, I have been able to acquire two nice partial sets at what I considered a good value. The baseball partial set was a 1954 Topps set 242/250. It was a largely crease-free vgex partial and all ungraded. On the other side of the coin, the football partial was 137/198 with all the major cards except for one and all graded..very nice. In each instance, I was able to pick up nearly entire sets for the price of about three of the major cards.
I haven't really thought about "the market" front and center all that often in terms of my collecting. My experience has taught me at least a couple of lessons. First, patience is a virtue. I got so tired of hearing this from experienced collectors when I was younger, but it is defintely true. The second a collector determines he must have a certain card at a certain high grade during a specific time table, that collector will likely pay more for that card than he needs to. The person I bought the baseball partial from lost patience and money and bailed on a project because he hadn't adequately planned. Second, I am reminded that most collectors I know outside of Net54 are simply collectors who have a passion for their cards. They often collect with their hearts and not their heads. I think of these folks as the secondary market. They don't even know what Net54 is, and most of them don't even acknowledge the big auction houses because they are too pricey for them. Most of these guys collect what they like and would never sell. Their cards don't come to market. If they get in money trouble, they are going to probably sell to another collector in the secondary market, and no one else will ever know. You have to remember participants here on Net54 are an extremely small percentage of collectors.
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