How to Create a Themed Baseball Card Collection

With the world of collecting baseball cards no longer a children's-only hobby, the prices of sports cards have gone through the roof. Keeping the hobby fun, baseball card collectors create themed collections. This is when a collector picks out a specific set or group of cards to collect. These collections can take on many different forms.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Sports cards
• Card shops
• Computer
• Sports card protective sleeves
• Sports card album
• Sports card plastic pages
• Trading partners

1. Determine the theme of your collection. This will determine the focus of the collection. You can collect a certain team, player or type of baseball cards. Some collectors collect only rookie cards, or maybe even college alumni.

2. Choose a theme that you can passionately enjoy. If you are a huge fan of a particular team, then it makes sense to collect that team. If you are a fan of baseball in general, then choose one of the general themes such as collecting rookie cards or older cards.

3. Purchase your baseball cards, and then sort them into the theme you have chosen. If you want to collect a specific theme, go through your cards and pull out all cards of that team. For this example, we will use the New York Yankees.

4. Make a checklist of New York Yankees cards that you would like to acquire, starting from the most expensive to the least expensive. This checklist can be your guideline to building your themed collection. Knowing what you seek is very important in building a themed collection.

5. Pull out all of the desirable cards that are left over after pulling out your Yankees cards. Inevitably, you will have cards other than Yankees that other collectors may want. Make sure that they are in protective sleeves so that they will retain their value when you sell or trade them.

6. Gather your Yankees cards, and display them in plastic pages within a baseball card collection album. This is a practical and safe way to organize and display your themed baseball card collection.

7. Take your trading cards to baseball card shops, and see if the dealer would consider giving you trade value for more of your Yankees cards. This is especially effective if you are willing to take trade value only. Many dealers will give trade value, but not cash.

8. Go to eBay, Beckett.com, or other online trading sites, and sell or trade your cards. Then you will have money available to pursue your Yankees cards. These sites are also great to buy your new Yankees cards at a discount. Auction sites are a great way to build a themed baseball card collection.

Tips & Warnings

• Always display your cards in protective sleeves to retain value and preserve condition.
• Make sure that you pick a theme that you can passionately collect.
• Keeping a list helps you to focus the collection.
• Do not use cheap protective supplies for your collection.
• Always store your cards in dark, dry places.

Resources

• Find cards on eBay.
• Beckett.com has collecting tools to help keep track of your cards.