set-building approach

[darwinbulldog]

My collecting as a rule is not characterized by working on actual sets. However, there are a couple that I've been working on for a while, one card at a time, and I'm starting to think I might actually finish at least one of them. For one of the sets I'm about 40 cards in (out of 250) but don't have any of the HOFers in the set. For the other, I'm only 5 cards in (out of 60), but 3 of those 5 are HOFers, and one of them is Ruth.

I'm wondering, for those of you who have spent years putting together pre-war sets, which of these more closely resembles how you have started out your own sets?

[Cozumeleno]

I pretty much always take the same approach on any sets I've built. I start with the lower priced cards/commons. Then, I continue with those and add any HOFers/expensive cards that I find to be really good values. After those, I finish up with the more expensive stuff.

I guess I like to see progress on the sets I build and would probably get really frustrated having only a few cards after several months if I started with the high-dollar stuff. I'm about 55% of the way through my T206 set and just recently started to add HOFers. But I've had all kinds of enjoyment looking through the mostly common/minor stars I've accumulated to date.

I will say that getting value is important, though. If you think you've found a nice high-dollar card at a price that you won't be able to acquire it for later, there's no sense in waiting. I've done that in the past and ended up paying more later on. My model works for me but I'm always willing to slightly amend it when I can find really good value.

[sb1]

By far the best and most efficient way is to buy groups(large or small), partial sets, even complete sets and keep the ones you need or want to upgrade and sell the rest. It allows you to get HOFers and tougher SP's, Variations, etc at the cost of near, or barely above the commons that make up most of the group. Now this is not as easy as it used to be with the advent of grading out groups and selling them individually, but these lots can still be found in many, many auctions and even ebay sometimes and on the BST here.