Sports cards 101

Let me start by giving you a little background about me, just so you're not saying to yourself "who is this guy and why should I listen to him?" My name is Dave and I've been a sports card collector and dealer for the last 16 years. I specialize in hockey but I do deal with all 4 sports.
Collecting to me is a way to connect with your favorites, it doesn't matter if it's your favorite player, team or even position. The most collected individual position in all of sports is by far the goaltender. I can't count how many customers I have that collect nothing but masked men. These are my favorite customers:)
Anyway, I'll just give a couple of introductory lessons here. Alot of people ask me "what should I collect?" My answer is always the same, whatever you're in to. There is no wrong answer to what you should collect. I'll keep my opinions directed toward sports cards right now. We'll move on to other things later.
As the business stands right now, hockey is by far the easiest of the 4 sports to collect without falling behind. The biggest problem the sports card market has had recently was no one seemed to care about the customers. The card companies let the presses run and run and run until there were so many products on the market, people didn't know what to collect. When I got into this business, there were 4 baseball sets each year, 3 football sets, 2 basketball sets and 2 hockey sets. That's 11 products for the entire year. Each product had a long shelf life. Just to give an idea of how things had gotten out of hand, in 2006 alone, there were well over 100 different products covering all sports. Needless to say, people were confused and the market suffered.
Finally, the powers that be stepped in and tried to restore order. Going into the 2007 season, baseball was limited to 2 manufacturers, football is down to 3, basketball is at 2 and hockey only has 1. There are still alot of products out there but these products have lower price points catered to the younger collector and the goal of completing a set is once again attainable.
OK, end of the history lesson. The hockey card market has experienced a real resurgence since the lock out and the 2 biggest reasons for that are simple...Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin. Things have not slowed down this year either with the arrival of Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal. As I said before, it all depends what you're in to. You may just want to collect cards of your favorite player, maybe you want to pick up everything from your local team. Do what you love. Don't worry about what's right or wrong because there's no such thing. In my opinion, the only real decision you need to make is whether you're collecting for the fun of it or to try and make some money.
The place to go for the money is investing in the rookies, just like it's always been. The big difference now is the price of those illusive cards. When I first started collecting, the #1 rookie card would start out in the price guides somewhere between 5-10 dollars. As I type this, there are multiple rookie cards of Sid the Kid that are over 1000.00. My, how times have changed. The reason for this is simple, it's all in the scarcity. For example, the most popular Crosby rookie from last year only has a total print run of 99. That's hundreds of times less than the total number of rookies The Great One had on the market.
Times have changed in the appearance of the cards as well. A Gretzky rookie was a simple blue card with a picture of Wayne in his oilers uniform. Now, rookie cards come complete with an autograph of the player and a piece of that players jersey.

The moral of the story is do what you love. Don’t worry about what’s popular. Whatever makes it fun for you is what you should do.
In the coming weeks, we will dive in to other forms of collecting other than just the cards. There’s so much out there in the world of hockey. This is just the beginning!!

If you have any questions for me or need some help finding any sports cards, drop me a line