The 21st Century Guide to Sports Card Collecting & Investing

By Terry Wilber

This book will give you everything that you need to know about sports card collecting and investing. An overview of how to get started collecting and maintaining your sports cards collection. It will also give you the basics of what you need to know about how to get started in sports cards investing, even if you don't have a lot of money to get started. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Terry Wilber
• Release date: Apr 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393163909

Book preview

Introduction

I have been in the hobby for close to 60 years now. My personal collection originally went from 1960 to 1967. I have been an active dealer for over 40 of those years. Although I have continued to sell since my last retail shop location closed in 1996, I have neither kept up on the new issues as they came out or sold anything newer than 2002. I recently found that there is somewhat of an explosion in the sports card market. Lots of information videos on YouTube. My first impression was that my god I've missed a lot. I noticed that you could get a little bit of information from this video or that video or going to various websites but it was just a bunch of scattered information. Some of it, in my mind, was incorrect. People weren't necessarily lying but I lived through some of the stuff and the information was not correct. I read several books and watched 100's of hours of video while doing research for this book. Several books on just collecting and 2 specifically on the investing aspect of the hobby. One book went into a lot of detail regarding the scarcity of cards and what it all meant to the price of cards. The other was written in 1991 by Mr. Mint, Al Rosen. He was a legend back in the day. His book had a lot of similarities and difference from how things are today. I do an in-depth analysis of his book later.  What I was totally lost while reading was the immense number of new items that have come out since 1996.

One of the books that I read while doing my research for this book was called Investing in Vintage Baseball Cards and Other Sports Cards by Robert Jeffries. Mr. Jeffries describes 3 kinds of scarcity for vintage sports cards. 1. Card scarcity is the specific number of a specific card that receive the same grade, excluding qualifiers. How many PSA 9's of a specific card are out there? 2. Rank scarcity is the specific number of a specific card that have the same grade or higher. An example would be, a card has 5 PSA 10's. 15 PSA 9's and 20 PSA 8,5's, the card scarcity would be the total of the three, 40. So if you own a PSA 8.5 of that card, you have one of the top 40 of that card. 3. Grade scarcity is the total of number of cards that are graded above an 8. The total of the 8's, 8,5's, 9's and 10's. Dealers will often refer to a card as having only 4 cards graded higher than this one. A card that has a total of 15 cards ranked 8 or higher can be worth more than a card of a much better player that has over 100 cards ranked 8 or higher. You need to study the card scarcity profiles of vintage cards.

I guess a good question to ask is why do people collect sports cards? I was 8 when I started and what I remember was the thrill of finding out what was in those packages. Was I going to find some Milwaukee Braves cards or possibly a Hank Aaron card? I guess it is a form of gambling. Especially with the ability to get a card worth several thousand dollars in a $3 pack. Very exciting and a bit addicting.  Ok, a lot addicting. It is also much more interesting than investing in stocks and bonds. Although stocks and bonds cannot get injured, they are subject to a lot of other outside influences. Another thing that is different is that it's actually a hobby that can potentially pay for itself or make you some money.

The production levels have, by necessity, dropped since the 1987 to 1993 junk wax era. That is a very good thing. The prior levels, obviously, were unsustainable. The junk wax era made a lot of people drop out of the hobby. It appears now that there are a lot of them coming back. I think probably based on some of the prices that some cards are getting. The people that are coming back along with the new people to the hobby have a lot to learn or relearn. It appears that what we called a rookie card years ago may or may not be a rookie card today. The place where things got really weird for me was the investment information. Some okay but a lot very far off base. I am not an author and have never tried to write a book. I did put together a rookie card guide back in the early 80's that sold several thousand copies. Rookie cards then and now are a very large part of our hobby. I am writing this to give people the basic information that they need to enjoy a hobby that I've enjoyed for so many years. Although I do have an extensive personal collection of Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves memorabilia, I do not invest in sports cards or memorabilia.

What you will not find in this book is me suggesting specific players to buy, especially when it comes to speculating in peoples first cards. I very much prefer the collecting aspect of this hobby but for those who want to invest, I have laid out some guidelines regarding how to do it. There are two ways to do this, speculating and straight investing. Speculating is purchasing cards, usually new players, with the hopes that their price will increase and then be sold at a profit. Most of this is very short term. Getting in and out of items and taking the profit to move on to the next player. Investing is taking players that either are in the Hall of Fame or are pretty much a lock to get there and hold them for a longer period of time, usually for years.

I have given you all of the tools that you need to be successful whether you are choosing to be a collector, collector/investor or just an investor. Many of you may have collected before and are thinking about coming back. You should find the answers to whether or not you want to come back or not in this book. Maybe you got burned by the junk wax era and are skeptical. Why is it different now? What are the best ways to buy, sell and trade sports cards? I will tell you in depth.

Autobiography

My name is Terry Wilber. I was born and raised in Spokane, Washington. My first recollection of collecting sports cards is from 1963. I remember saving up 1.25 and riding my bike to the local pharmacy to buy a full of box (24/5 cent packs) of 1963 Topps baseball cards. Quite an adventure for a 10-year-old. I had several friends in the neighborhood that also collected cards. Obviously, Mickey Mantle and the New York Yankees were the big hits all