Things You'll Need:
- Baseball card price guide
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Step 1
Learn the basics of building a baseball card collection. Before you begin, you'll need to know about the baseball card grading system. This system ranks the condition of cards, from mint and near-mint, down to excellent, to very good, to good, fair and poor. The better a card's condition, the higher its value.
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Step 2
Pick up a price guide and browse it. You'll begin to get a sense of how the market works, which cards are valuable and which cards are in demand.
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Step 3
Identify cards that you would like to add to your collection. If you have a favorite player, like a particular Hall of Famer or covet a particularly old, rare or valuable card, find out how much the cards you want are worth.
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Step 4
Begin to build your collection by searching for the specific cards you want online, at sports memorabilia conventions and local hobby stores. You can use Internet forums to post requests for specific cards, and you can talk to the proprietor of your local hobby store. Let him know what cards you're looking for, and ask him to contact you if he gets one in stock.
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Step 5
Build your collection over time. This way, you can benefit from trends in the marketplace that might drive the price of a valuable card to a lower level. You can cash in by picking up a choice card for a good price, then sitting on it until its value begins to rise again.
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Step 6
Collect both complete sets as well as individual cards. Most baseball card publishers release complete sets every year, with cards that feature every player who played a regular role on a Major League team. Individual cards within sets rise in value as a player's on-field performance improves.
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Step 7
Keep your eyes on the prize. The world of baseball card collecting is full of very rare, old, hard-to-come-by and valuable cards that would make handsome additions to any collection. You should have a familiarity with these cards, at the very least, even if you don't intend to add them to your collection.
