Your Collecting Focus, Evolved

Mike

TP9 | VC15
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As I'm sure most of you know, through the years my collecting focus has changed, evolved, stopped, and rebooted many times.

Even when I collected as a kid my focus was always on player collecting. For whatever reason, that's just how I'm programmed. I only collected cards of players that I liked, and couldn't get rid of the rest fast enough. It didn't matter to me who the top guy was or how much any of the cards were worth. I wanted my guys, and nothing else. My main guy was Vince Carter. He still is my absolute favorite basketball player, followed closely by Tony Parker. I also spent time collecting Iverson, Garnett, Kobe, Stephon Marbury, Jason Williams, and Steve Francis.

When I got back into the hobby back in 2008 nothing was different. I still was a player collector. At that time, though, the focus was on a single player...my "favorite" player at the time, Tony Parker. It didn't matter to me whether it was a base, insert, relic, auto, or rookie. I wanted them all. I accumulated a pretty nice stack of cards of his in a very short amount of time. When I first joined Trading Card Central, group breaks with actual team collectors were still a thing so I was able to pick up the Spurs in their monthly break. I kept every Tony Parker pulled and traded the rest to other Spurs collectors for their Tony Parker cards that I didn't have. I do still have most of those cards. Some have been traded away, or given away, but I still have probably close to 300 different Tony Parker cards. I still find myself considering starting that PC back up again, but always talk myself out of it. The biggest reason I quit that focus came down to the lack of traders I could find. Buying base cards on eBay, to me, isn't really worth it so it left me buying autos and memorabilia cards, but then the fun kinda drained out of that so I pretty much gave it up.

After that I spent a few years collecting game used and autos of HOFers in football (then baseball, then baseball and football, then back to just football). Again, I got myself a pretty decent amount of those cards through a fairly short amount of time. One day while I was looking over my collection, which is still something I enjoy doing from time to time, I realized that there were a LOT of cards of players that I couldn't care less about. Honestly, some of the cards I had were of guys in the HOF that I didn't even know existed before I started that PC. So, I decided that wasn't for me.

That brings us to current day. There might've been a few other "focuses" in there somewhere but they would've been so short lived they're not even worth mentioning. Like my Texas Rangers PC attempt, or my Dallas Cowboys PC. 🤦‍♂️

Anyways, these days I'm back to a combination of my childhood collection and what brought me back into the hobby as an adult. Since I can't afford to collect all the cards of Vince Carter and Tony Parker like I've done in the past, my focus is only on graded rookies of those players. Then, I threw Jason Williams in to keep it interesting, but the main focus is on Vince Carter and Tony Parker. I'm still more than willing to trade for all Tony Parker cards (Spurs uniform only) to add to that PC, but for the most part I'm only after the rookies, graded. I've only added a few cards to that PC over the last month, or so, but it's been fun for me just seeing what's out there and then trying to obtain them all. Unfortunately for me, most of the ones available for trade are with guys who don't collect football and the biggest part of my traders are football HOFers. But, I'll continue the search and keep looking to add more and more to the PC. With any luck, I'll still be chasing these same guys by this time tomorrow. 😜

So, that's my story. What about you? How has your collecting focus evolved, or changed, through the years? Or has it? Maybe you're still collecting the same thing you were 20 years ago. Either way, I'd be interested in hearing your story.

Until then, as my old friend Richard Bostic would say, Collect Hard!
 
Started late in life when my son started. We ripped boxes and built sets (any and all brands of football) When son stopped I went on to build/buy only Topps sets. After a few years of that I narrowed my focus to only players from Nebraska. I'm going for the cheap cards and work my way up. I have traded for a lot of nice cards. But only buy the cheaper ones unless I get a super good deal.
 
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