Your thoughts and help please!
CollectorTim
Posts: 4
Imagine that you are a grandfather of 4. Each is under 5 and you are nearing 55. You want to put together vintage baseball set(s) for each grandchild. You don't have unlimited resources. You want the sets to be quality (hopefully will increase in value, graded?), feasible and fun to gather, attractive and steeped in tradition (at least to the point of reflecting your respect and love of the game and its history). The grandkids would likely know what set is theirs and as such will (hopefully) want to look at it and talk about it and maybe help shop for it. You may want to mix some modern stuff in, but that really isn't what you are trying to accomplish, although you recognize that might help develope their continued interest as they grow older. What do you pick and why? Thanks for your thoughts!
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Comments
i'm glad you posted this as it was my grandfather (who is now deceased) who got me interested in cards. rather than focusing on sets (the grading hype wasn't so big when i was growing up), he got me interested in certain players- some of the ones from his day (babe ruth, mickey mantle, honus wagner, ted williams, etc.) and i was interested in some players from my day (nolan ryan, cal ripken, maddux, palmeiro, mcgwire, etc.). my grandfather gave me his vintage cards (mainly early 50s-mid 70s) and they're the ones i treasure the most- even though they're not graded.
in terms of specific sets, you might want to start w/trying to acquire "lots" of players from certain years (say 1959) on ebay. often times, you can find some pretty decent cards in good condition- though, as you know, it's hard to find 'perfect' cards from those years. however, i've bought some lots from the 1950s on ebay and found them to be suitable for my purposes (i.e., i'd like to broaden the years of my collection to reflect the history of the game and evolution of the cards)- and often times (w/the exception of 1 purchase), the cards were better than the seller stated. 1970s sets are fairly cheap (relatively speaking) to acquire if you want to focus on sets. also, 1984 topps (mattingly rookie) and 1985 topps are modern sets which are also fairly cheap to acquire but loaded w/history (85 has mcgwire's olympic rc, clemens rc, puckett rc, mattingly's 2nd year, etc.).
to sum up, i think you should buy what you love- and when your grandkids are old enough to express interest in certain players, buy some of what they love.