Sets.......buy 'em or build 'em..........?

There are TONS of sets that I love out there.........N15 Allen & Ginter Generals, E2 Lauer & Suter Navy, R170 Bradas & Gheens Warriors of the World, T80 military Series. SO many sets to choose from, some SO difficult to complete. I recently purchased a complete set of the E2 Lauer & Suter Navy cards at auction after collecting the set for a LONG time. Having little luck completing it card by card, I decided to take the plunge on buying a complete set. After receiving it, I love the set but at the same time, the thrill of having it already complete kind of diminishes the whole accumulation process when trying to actually build the set.

So....how do you determine whether to build the set or buy the set? Leading off, I think, is the fact of just how available the cards are to begin with. A case in point....the R170 Warriors of the World. I search ebay frequently for these. They were made by a candy company here in Louisville, KY, and I try to collect tobacco cards and other ephemera related to products made here in Louisville. As such, the R170 set was a good tie in. I had but two single cards when a lot came around in a Mastro (now Legendary) auction a year or two ago. I was fortunate enough to bid on and win that lot with a couple other collectors and now have nine cards from the set. Still a LONG way towards the set of 24 cards. That is one set that it will be difficult to EVER complete. But I haven't ever seen a complete set for sale, so I have to assemble it however I can.

After availability of the cards in the set, you have to think of the cost of buying a complete set versus piecing together a set card by card at a time. A daunting and typically more expensive task, buying individual cards to finish a set will almost always cost you more. At the same time, however, you can be more discriminating on what condition you will accept in completing your set--something you can't do when you buy a complete set in a single purchase. Most complete sets, with a few exceptions, are in a wide range of conditions--especially the 19th and very early 20th century sets that I like to collect.

At the same time, other considerations need to be determined like what is your definition of 'complete' set. I know people who are fanatical about a single set and collect EVERY variation of the set they can find. The E2 set illustrates this with the backs having either the 'Lauer & Suter' advertising at the bottom or blank. No one knows what the ad-less backs were inserted into but it creates a couple variations for each of the 24 cards. Other sets include the R124 Sea Raiders set. There are three different combinations of backs for the first 24 cards yet a single back for the final 24 cards, totalling a 'master' set out at 96 cards. Availability and price come into play when even considering a 'master' or variation set for an issue like the Sea Raiders.

I love the thrill of the hunt but I literally have about a hundred sets that are in various stages of completion. The best scenario is where I buy a near set for a great price and finish it and upgrade it over a period of time. Unfortunately, I find myself doing this for a multitude of sets that I don't ever get finished or upgraded to the point where I'm happy. So tell me, do you prefer to build 'em or buy 'em?

How did I miss THAT.............? and other musings

Well.....I know we've all had those moments. I am incredibly anal with my ebay searches. I have literally a couple hundred of them. I don't do them daily but I do try to hit my main ones daily with the more tangent searches every few days so I hit the 7-day average ebay cycle.

But there's still stuff I miss.....and I'm okay with that. I have to be. If I saw EVERYTHING that I miss, it'd be even worse than it is now...my sniper software has hamsters running the wheel 24x7x365 as it is anyway.

There's nothing better than having a really high snipe set on a lot only to forget about it and check a few days down the road and get it for like $4.00 or something--a mere fraction of what you were prepared to pay. Unfortunately, just the opposite generally happens. You set a snipe for that REALLY odd number like $107.63, really wanting to set it for $107.63267 or something even MORE difficult for someone to figure out but ebay and the snipe sites don't allow for that Pi-like carrying out to the gazillionth decimal point, so I go with $107.63. THEN.....upon revisiting it down the road, see I've lost at at $2.50 more like $110.13 or even worse that my amount was just a hair less than someone else's snipe and it was a timing issue. ARRRGGGHHH...the inhumanity of it all! Ultimately, it's nothing more than a good case of que sera sera........whatever will be will be. Or....as my lovely bride hates to hear........"it is what it is".

So.....tell us all a little about your techniques for NOT missing THAT..........unless you don't want everyone to find it too...........

How do you price a type card?

Okay....something I've been thinking about recently and trying to really figure out. I've begun type-card collecting along with all the other various and sundry ways that I collect. Not really 'limiting' persee but I'm trying to stay with the TEN rule. Or 20th century tobacco, Early candy & Gum and 19th century tobacco types. If you've collected the issues from these ACC Classifications, you know that some of the issues can often be difficult to come by--especially some of the more obscure, rarely seen issues in the upper portions of those classifications.

The 'easier' or more pedantic stuff seems to have been reserved for the lower classification numbers--especially with the N & E cards. The N cards start with the Allen & Ginter cards in N1-N44 and then move up into the Dukes, Goodwins, Kimballs, Kinneys, Mayos, Lorillards, Buchners and then forward into the more difficult cards. The E cards start with the E1-E51 cards which, other than the E51 Hershey Fruits, are all more or less more available than the E200's and up. After the first E51's, you get into the sports issues through E107's and then into the individual companies like Cracker Jack, Ghirardelli, Heide's, Heisel's, Wallace & Co. and many more. Again, the tougher E cards are reserved for the later issues.

It is apparent that the different iterations of the American Card Catalog continued to add cards as they became available to Burdick either in checklist form from other collectors or as he added them to his voluminous collection, now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. My thoughts about the collection had always been that Burdick must have had everything in the collection that he had checklisted, but recent discussions with Bob Forbes--one of the authors of American Tobacco Cards--led me to the fact that many of Burdick's volumes in the Met are not complete nor do they even have cards from every issue outlined in the ACC. There are issues which aren't represented by a single card or are under-represented. You can see from the way card sets were added to the end of the N's and E's section that he would be presented with and add 6-8-10 sets for each update to the ACC. The 1960 version of the ACC is the last version that Burdick was able to complete prior to his death in 1963.

The 20th century tobacco or T cards are covered in the T1-T352 and then card sets issued abroad T400-T499. Unlike the N or E classified cards, the T classifications contain most 20th century tobacco organized by the name of the set and within the T1-T182 classifications of nonsports cards, many difficult types can be found. From there, into the T400-T499 cards issued abroad, these issues can also be difficult to find and often have to be found from sources in Australia, Great Britain, China, Japan and other countries where the ATC or American Tobacco Company sent the cards inside packs of their products.

So....FINALLY to the crux of the post......how do you price a type card? I recently bought a number of type cards from a prominent nonsports dealer from a type card collection that he'd purchased. When it comes to pricing issues in the N classification, for instance, there are almost daily sales on ebay that allow you to see price points for almost every type of card issued by the major tobacco companies like Allen & Ginter, Dukes, Kimballs, Mayo, Goodwin, Kinney and others. And, with that many sales, they aren't difficult, so purchasing them isn't a calculated risk. You know what you're getting for what you're paying. But that's just for the 'easy' or frequently seen cards. What about the toughies?

What do you do when you see a T90 card? An N472 G.B. Miller tobacco card of Abraham Lincoln? An E12 Hershey's Fruits card of a Banana? As there are more and more type collectors out there, competition for the really tough issues is growing daily. A $50 bid on a T90 won't do it anymore. The most recent T90 Nature Card sold for $225 or so on ebay after a group had sold for $300 each prior to that. I've never seen an E12 Hershey's card for sale on ebay. And, in the instance fo the N472 Abraham Lincoln card, you are having to deal with collector's of Lincoln, Presidential Images or memorabilia, card collectors, tobacco collectors or others. What should I bid?

So....like many other aspects of collecting cards in general or tough cards in particular, you have to develop a feel for just how difficult the issue is. Then you have to gauge just how many people you think will be interested in the card enough to bid. Sniping bids are frequently employed for tougher cards or for cards where people don't want to place a 'marker' or early bid for fear that other people are watching their bids.

Buying lots of touger cards often proves to be fruitful and using the duplicates or extra cards for trading or selling. I recently purchased a lot of N158 Spanish American War News Photo cards which aren't exactly TOUGH but they are tougher than many of the regular A&G and Dukes issues. They will make good trade bait for other cards from the set or other tougher types that I need to bolster my type collection.

When it comes to type collecting, I think it's pretty easy, although not cheap anymore, to get to 300-400 N types as there are that many that are pretty easily found on ebay within a given period. For the T cards, 250-300 is probably attainable in a short period and for the E's, 100-150 are relatively quickly found. All the numbers above are assuming nonsports cards only. Adding in the sports cards, these numbers would move up.

So....if you're a typecard collector, please drop some notes in the comments on how you collect type cards and how you figure out what to pay for additions to your collection--especially the tough additions.

Vintage Nonsports Daily

Vintage Nonsports Daily..........got the idea from the person who does the sports collectibles daily blog out there. Would like to think I'd do it daily but realistically, it'll probably be a max of 4 posts a week. If anyone wants to contribute anything, please feel free to email it to me via the email link out there.

As we all know, nonsports cards have grown dramatically in value and appreciation in the last 3-5 years and seem to continue to do so yearly. They are still, however, collected by only a fraction of the amount of sports, and in particular, baseball, cards are collected. This blog will be devoted to Vintage nonsports as defined by PRE-1970 cards...with the same slant on it as on the Network54 Vintage Nonsports forum which can be found if you click HERE.

If you have ideas or suggestions for content, please feel free to email them or post them in any of the comments sections for the blog. There really won't be any limitations to what's covered although, at first, it'll likely be slanted to 'T', 'N', 'R', and 'E' issues as defined by the American Card Catalog (ACC). If you don't have an ACC, you need to get one. It's the seminal work from Jefferson Burdick that is to the origin of cards as Darwin's Origin of the Species is to our own origins.

So.....stay tuned, check back often, drop by from time to time. There will be more on the way.....