Advice For Getting Back Into Card Collecting

This week’s blog comes from a guest writer, Tony L., who has his own baseball card blog: Off Hiatus Baseball Cards. After you’re done reading his advice on getting back into collecting, we encourage you to geek out over at his site for more fantastic articles!

INTRODUCTION

I know you. Okay, I don’t “know” know you, but I know that you’re here at cardmavin.com. So, I probably have a pretty good idea that either (a) you are a current baseball card collector checking out this new website with free card values or (b) you are a lapsed collector who started thinking about their old baseball cards and wondered if those cards you socked away in 1992 really could pay for your kids to get through college or (c) your children/parents collected cards 20+ years ago and you are trying to find out how much, exactly, a 1991 Donruss Ron Robinson card might be worth these long 25 years later.

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Collector’s Conundrum: When was the first baseball card issued?


There’s something thrilling about tracing the history of a card and finding out new trivia. That’s part of the reason we collect. We recently polled our Twitter followers to see if they could tell us when the first baseball card was issued. Their options were 1886, 1891, 1901, and 1897. As it turns out, it wasn’t so easy to give them the right answer. The history of the first baseball card is contested, and searching for the answer will give you largely different results. Here’s what we found:

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Sports Card Price Guides

You can spend lots of money buying price guides, or waste lots of time searching online… or use this simple tool. We’ll show you how to quickly get an accurate estimate of what your cards are worth.

Collectors who are active in #thehobby have a general idea of what their cards are worth, and if they need to do a price check they usually have a go-to source for pricing information; either a Beckett magazine, a book, or website. If you’re new to collecting, or just getting back into the hobby, you’ll need to find your source for pricing information. This article the most popular ways collectors look up the value of their cards. Continue reading “Sports Card Price Guides”

How to Grade Your Sports Cards

The condition of a card has a huge impact on what it’s worth. A card that has been professionally graded at a 10 is worth many times more than a graded card at 3.5. Some imperfections in the card may be obvious, a rounded corner or a crease in the card. Other issues take a years of experience and a trained eye to pick up on. This article covers the basics… centering, corners, surface, and edges.  Continue reading “How to Grade Your Sports Cards”

What are your cards worth?

Like any other market, sports and gaming cards are governed by the laws of supply and demand. The scarcity of a card determines its price… how rare it is and how many people want it. This article talks about the factors that determine a cards value, and how to determine what your cards are worth TODAY. Continue reading “What are your cards worth?”