The Complete Guide to Starting a Hockey Card Collection
Collecting hockey cards and memorabilia is a fun (and sometimes lucrative) pastime for many around the world. If you find yourself interested in the h0obby, but you’re wondering How to start a hockey card collection, this blog post will help. In it, we’ll discuss each aspect of collection, clear up some confusing aspects of the hobby, and provide advice on how you may profit from your collection.
Deciding Your Collection’s Focus
One of the most important steps you can take when it comes to hockey card collecting, is to find and focus on your niche. Your niche is the one area of hockey where you’re collection will stand out. It could be a single team, league, type of player, type of card, or even just one player. Why do you want to stick to one area of hockey?
There are a few benefits to focusing on a single niche:
- Collecting itself will be less chaotic
- Your collection will be worth more down the line
- It’s easier to prioritize and budget
Let’s discuss each benefit a little more in depth, starting with the point about collecting becoming chaotic. Collecting without a single goal can quickly become chaotic because there are so many awesome cards to find! You’ll be tempted to keep every card you pull, and will end up with a surplus of many different cards. They likely won’t be organized in a coherent matter, so it’ll make sharing your collection with others more difficult, and will make it tougher to sell later. It also stretches your budget thin and so you’ll end up with many lower quality cards rather than a smaller, more valuable collection.
Which, factors in to the next point which is the value of your collection. By focusing on a single aspect of the sport, you’ll be able to like we mentioned earlier, prioritize and budget for the valuable cards within your niche. This enables you to build a collection that’ll sell for more down the line, will bring you greater joy, and will be easier on your wallet.
Budgeting for Hockey Card Collecting
Many first-time collectors make the mistake of not creating a budget for their collection. A budget does a few important things:
- It keeps you from overspending and ruining the hobby for yourself.
- The budget forces you to only spend on cards you need.
- It gives you an additional bargaining tactic in negotiating the price of a card.
- It helps manage your expectations.
- And it will encourage you to sell or trade unnecessary cards.
A good budget will force you to make a few tough decisions, but in the end, you’ll thank yourself for doing it. To create a budget, first decide how often you want to spend money on cards. Will you be buying on a weekly or monthly basis? After asking that question, decide how much you can spend total and then simply set that as your budget.
Proper Storage and Organization of Your Collection
This could be turned into a blog post of its own. Proper storage and organization is important for keeping your sanity and keeping your cards safe. There are two parts, the organization, and the storage. Proper storage and organization will increase the lifespans of your cards and ensure that they are worth the most money possible.
It can also ensure that you are able to get the most enjoyable experience from your collection as well. A proper display case, card sleeves, boxes and or binder will enable you to share your collection without fearing for its safety. Another thing you’ll want to consider is creating a card list or database to track your current and potential cards with.
Your First Hockey Card Purchase
For your first purchase, stick with new cards. Upper Deck’s latest card offerings always feature something to be excited about with plenty of rare and valuable cards. Click here to find the latest deals on Upper Deck hockey cards.