Type Collectors

[TanksAndSpartans]

Thanks Jeff and Matt - great replies. This is something I’ve been meaning to ask for a while.

Jeff, makes perfect sense why this would be more prevalent on the baseball side than football.

Matt, I agree with you - there's probably enough out there to keep a collector like myself interested, but for the advanced football collector, they'd probably have to supplement type collecting in some way.... Personally, from my experience, one of the things I like about building a set is that I learn about the cards, variations, history of the players from that season, etc. - when I worked on HOF rookies, I didn't feel like I learned much because I'd grab a card or two from a set without much concern to its context and then move on.

[jefferyepayne]

I just went through my checklist and counted 299 different sets that include football cards between the 1880s and 1979. I did include things like bread labels, matchbooks, premiums, inserts, RPPCs, etc. to get to this total. I'm sure there's many more that I haven't even heard of and aren't in my spreadsheet.

Would love to see a thread that tries to show as many different types as possible!

jeff

[Myachelydra]

John,

Bob Swick and a bunch of us put together a football type list for Gridiron Greats Magazine a few years back. I can't remember the specific issue off the top of my head but will look later.

[Myachelydra]

Found it.

Gridiron Greats #35, Winter 2011

It is a prewar list only but is a neat and easy reference. Let me know if you need a copy.

[Leon]

I am a life long (well, collecting life anyway) baseball card type collector. There has been enough to keep me interested but my guess is there are a lot more different vintage baseball cards than football cards. I love type collecting and have very rarely collected any sets.

[sockwell123]

I tend to put sets together, and collect different types of cards of my favorite player(s). if i'm on the same page as yall. Generally the 70's though mid 80's.

[TanksAndSpartans]

I'm glad this sparked some discussion! I really like hearing what other collectors are passionate about and this is an area I don't think we talked about before. I actually had a similar idea to what Shawn mentioned about combining building a player set and type collecting. The best example I found was Chuck Bednarik - his player set has nice coverage - he was basically a rookie at exactly the right time for football cards.

Thanks John S., Bob's great about the back issues - I'll try to pick that one up and see how it compares to Jeff's 299

Leon, nice to see you on this side of the board - I think it may have been your Heritage auction that introduced me to the term "type collector" - it stuck in my mind until I finally remembered to ask about it. Jeff mentioned 299, how many types did you have and/or were going after?