The Collection of a Budget Collector

8/24/2013

As a budget collector of trading cards, here is an overview of my collection to date.  Buying cards


1967 Topps 91 - 1st card in catalog

where I can get a deal makes my collection very random and very broad of coverage.  The cards that I am able to obtain vary in subject, age and set, so I never know what will come next.  Early on I decided to add cards to my collection in the same random manner that I get cards and as such I never know what I will add next.  But all that being so, here is my collection.



• Collect years 2005 and older (Hockey/Basketball 2005/2006)
• 625 sets represented (parallels, inserts, oddball, and junk added to card packs)
• Variations added as I come to them(add a card that has a variation, if I agree I add the number of variations to total cards for that set.  My set definition data table has a place for  number of variations in set)
• 625 sets = 205134 potential cards so far
• Of 205134 have 9353 = 4.5595 % complete
• Baseball 148259 potential have 7531 = 5.0796 % complete
• Football 39571 potential have 929 = 2.3477 % complete
• Basketball 13898 potential have 597 = 4.2956 % complete
• Hockey 2324 potential have 42 = 1.8072 % complete
• Gaming 196 potential have 25 = 12.7551 % complete
• Non-Sport 571 potential have 219 = 38.3538 % complete
• Cards from years 1960/1969 have 9
• Cards from years 1970/1979 have 480
• Cards from years 1980/1984 have 2125
• Cards from years 1985/2005 have 6739
• Number of Names 3604 (players and coaches/managers only)
• Terry Kennedy 17 cards
• Andre Dawson 17 cards
• Nolan Ryan 16 cards



2005 Madagascar 41 - last card in catalog



1987 M&M Star Lineup 22
Nolan Ryan

• Cecil Fielder 16 Cards

For me a want list would be any of the 195781 cards that I do not have.  And I am finding cards from additional sets regularly so the number of potential cards increases constantly.  In the near future, I see 1971 Topps Baseball, 1964 Topps Football and many others, so I will update in future posts.

Speaking of want lists, I still have a large number of cards that I have not cataloged as of yet and additional cards are still being obtained, so I cannot created a want list.  I am setting aside duplicate cards that I will offer for trade at a latter date.

Some may say  that collecting in this manner is without goals or any hope of completion.  While it is true that I will never complete this, I enjoy watching the number of cards for each year and each set increase.  I see the gap between cards numbers in sets slowly get smaller and smaller.  I see the number of cards in a given set increase and the collector in me is happy.

Happy Collecting
Jerry Yeager

Some Links That Could Be Useful

Trading Card Database  Very Nice site for creating online collection as well as resources for researching your collection and images for over half million cards so far
SportLots  Sports Card Auction Site

The Card Collector High end Software for cataloging cards

Sports Card Collector Software better for budget with fewer features