How do you decide what to buy, PSA 10's?

johnny1976

Hi all,

I am having a hard time deciding how to go about purchasing some cards for a few of my sets. I am not a member so I don't sub any cards. I purchase all my cards off ebay. For a long time I was making my purchases by the price of the card (since I don't have a big budget). When I started my sets I wouldn't know the pop of the card until I added it to my sets, but now they opened the pop reports to non members. This got me to thinking and here is my question, would you buy a card that had a lower price and a higher pop, or would you buy a card with a lower pop and a higher price? Now most of the cards are not far off in price. They range from 7 to 25 dollars each in a PSA 10. Most of these cards are lower pops ranging between pop 2 and pop 10. There are so many of them that I can't decide and I can't buy them all at once. Any opinions are much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Big80s

My advice, find your focus (ie. a particular set, player or sport), and stick with it. I lose focus all of the time and it can end up costing you way more than expected.

In regards to the population of a card - I'm a numbers guy - so I'd rather buy one low pop card for the price of five higher populated cards. But I think it's a matter of preference.

Most importantly, buy the cards that make you happy.

jmmiller777

You know Johnny, I have thought the same thing as you. What to do? I think you should buy the highest grade you can afford and that you like. Todays pop numbers don't reflect tomorrows availability necessarily. There are new subs all the time being submitted, new 8's, 9's, and 10's. Prices will rise and fall by pop #'s, amount of collectors, their interest, and the economy. Like you , I rely on ebay and sites like this one to get my slabbed treasures. I always search for 10's and then check prices with the available 9's. A good example was a couple oy years back; Bonds and Griffeys were going pretty cheap. I could get 2 10's or about 6 9's (Bonds). I chose for the 9's and sure enough the 10's came down in price. Those market fluctuations may jump into play at any time, just buy what you can afford. Some of those 10's are way over priced. This cause more of those cards to hit PSA and eventually more 10's become available, sometimes less expensive. Good luck.