New or returning to card collecting on a budget
 

The big question is where should you start? Which sport or fan favorite is hot right now? What if I only have $100 to $150 disposable income to spend a month on card collecting. This is just my opinion and I think there are a few good pointers in this thread. Experts are free to add your own views. Here are mine.

The NBA rookies have been of fire for the last four years.
From my experience Prizm basketball hobby blasters or more loaded than Donruss Optic hobby blasters and other blasters within 100-150 range. Don’t just focus on basketball years 2017 -2020. Look at rookies form early years. Say you want spend $50-100 on a blaster and then $50 on rookies. All Stars with rings like Garnett, Duncan, Rasheed and Ray Allen. Preferably Skybox EX and Metals. Find Durant, Curry, Westbrook, and Harden rookies. Everybody is hoping the top rookies from the last four years have HOF careers but you don’t want to have card lots of only 5 players form 15 to 20 years from now and they don’t have any NBA Finals appearances. Yeah Sir Charles and Ewing were the two greatest big men with no rings but they only had like three rookie cards produced. Meanwhile Luka and Zion have like 10-20 variations rookie cards per set. Leonard, Lillard and some Greek Freak base cards are still affordable in a $20 to $100 range budget.

Don’t get too caught up with searching for autographs. I’ve seen a lot of case box breaks on YouTube and it’s very risky. It’s not for people on a budget. A case can promise four autos but remember its three rounds of the NBA draft and at least a hundred of Vets. Unless you can get them cheap from amazon. So I started back last year in November too late. I wish I’ve would had kept some $20 Prizm blasters unopened. Smh.

I was in elementary school in the 80s and of course most basketball fans got sucked into the Celtics, Lakers, Detroit and Bulls hype. As a kid you wanted the top players from those teams and once you got them you were pretty much done for that season. The NBA Hoops and Fleer era was very limited in the 80’s and early 90’s. Can you believe kids threw away starters inserts because it wasn’t the base card. The infamous Upper Deck stepped on the scene in 1990 and it brought a new vibe to basketball but that faded too. Needed something new to focus on and heard of a new NFL set. I remember spending $5 to $12 on “Action Packed” NFL football packs chasing 14kt or 18kt gold plated cards. Hoops and Flair was letting us kids down.

Started back around 2005 and had a folder full of some decent cards. Heard of a Upper Deck sets that was super expensive called Exquisite and Ultimate. I was working a full-time job at the time but wasn’t willing to spend $500 for a pack X of 5 cards. Maybe a $100 for Ultimate? Brought one pack from eBay and got a auto Hakeem hit that was worth $60 at the time. Needed some money and sold my folder for $200. Smh.

Buy singles.

Flip.

Don't rip wax.

Repeat?

Save you're money and wait for the fat pitch!

What you ultimately decide on collecting will be determined by affordability and what you deem enjoyable.

Find a niche (i.e. mine, among some members on here, is 90s insert cards) or begin collecting one or a handful of players, and sparingly rip wax.

Don’t fall prey to the maligned collecting = investing mindset. For the large majority of members, it’s a passion fueled hobby —- one that brings many of us back to the carefree days of our youth.

You really just need to figure out what you want to get out of the hobby. If you are in it to just make money, then buy singles of Prizm/optic/select of hot rookies and call it a day. To me, the most fun I have is hunting down rare or forgotten cards. Some of my favorite cards are only worth $5.

With a budget of $150 a month, you are probably priced out of ripping wax. It was already very difficult to get your moneys worth but now it’s seemingly impossible.

Whatever you chose, have fun with it!

Get a larger budget.

NBA collecting is the deep end of the pool.

Are you asking for how to go about it or telling newbies?

There is still plenty of great cards that are cheap. There's even some good LeBron Heat and Lakers Rookie cards for less than $5.

[QUOTE=aaron2;15835737]Buy singles.

Flip.

Don't rip wax.

Repeat?[/QUOTE]

This.

In addition, you could limit the number of cards in your collection. You could start with just 10 cards. Just keep your favorite ten cards. When you get another card that becomes one of your 10, sell the another that falls out of the favorites. Then your could slowly increase the limit based on what you could afford, going from 10 to 15 to 20 and so on, after some months/years.

The benefits of doing these are:
(1) You can recoup some money you spend on your collection because you sell another card whenever you add one to the PC. It keeps you from burning out.
(2) You minimize remorse from selling from your PC because you know that what you have left are all cards you liked better than what you sold.
(3) Your collection keeps getting better because you are upgrading cards to your liking.
(4) You minimize impulse buys that you will regret later on.

You're an adult right? You'll figure it out.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

Since you're in a budget, go after after rookies or 2nd year player rookie cards who are not talked about much but have chance to become the next Kawhi Leonard etc. If you got a tad more, go after as many Luka or Zion cause they are the safest best for highest future investment returns. If you have more than a tad more, go after Lebron 2nd or 3rd year autos. Players you can never go wrong with are Lebron and MJ. If you can find any in your budget, go after it. Even if it is just jersey worn patches.

Buy whomever NinjaCookies is buying. He is a wise sage.

In all honesty, welcome to the boards and good luck. It’s a tough time to be a new collector with prices being what they are. Do your research, observe the boards and have fun.

Collecting can be more fun on a budget sometimes. If it were me, I'd lowball a bunch of stuff (use a free sniping tool!).

To avoid driving yourself crazy, stick to cards that don't move hands as frequently, e.g. Kope Topps Chrome RCs will always fall within a pretty narrow price range, but some forgotten 2001-02 insert card that usually goes for $100 might slip through the cracks for $20

Another tip: look for listings with bad photos, or in the wrong category, or from a seller with some negative feedback

[QUOTE=jgrann13;15835991]Get a larger budget.

NBA collecting is the deep end of the pool.[/QUOTE]

Exactly right. $100 blasters is a rough start for this segment of the card hobby.

if i was getting back into it id probably do what i do now i think

pick a player that liked growing up that's a lil off the radar or an oddball rookie for your team in this or recent years and buy the best singles you can to your budget.

kinda depends if you are in it for the love of the cards of the lust of the profit.

Some good thoughts in here already.

Here is something different. Drop $150 onto check out my cards. Browse basketball, sort by recently added. Watch like a hawk. Its fun window shopping and occasionally you will find very reasonably priced cards or even under priced cards (though not as often as a year ago :( )

Quality over quantity.

The oldest adage of all

For the newbs

With a low budget you can really get some great deals on EBay. It takes time and a lot of searching but there are more bad sellers out there than you would think who either take terrible pictures, can’t spell, or aren’t knowledgeable about cards in general. Taking advantage of that can score some high dollar cards cheap that you can flip, then in return buy what you want.

For example recently I found a Kobe Ultra RC. Poor picture and terrible title. Turns out it’s the gold medallion parallel and landed it for less than the regular version.

Like I said it takes time but does pay off.

[QUOTE=Frankp2311;15887114]With a low budget you can really get some great deals on EBay. It takes time and a lot of searching but there are more bad sellers out there than you would think who either take terrible pictures, can’t spell, or aren’t knowledgeable about cards in general. Taking advantage of that can score some high dollar cards cheap that you can flip, then in return buy what you want.

For example recently I found a Kobe Ultra RC. Poor picture and terrible title. Turns out it’s the gold medallion parallel and landed it for less than the regular version.

Like I said it takes time but does pay off.[/QUOTE]
Good hit. Why sellers can’t retake pictures of the product bothers me. Flip phones in this era can take good quality pics.

Look for nice 2nd year cards of HOFers