A place where Colorado Rockies baseball card collectors (all 3 of us) can waste some time reading about our favorite sport. The Rockies and their cards will be the primary focus, but I like to go off on tangents as well so anything and everything baseball related may be covered here.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

The Budget eBay Collecting Experiment

As a collector of limited funds, I thought it was be a service to everyone to start a new feature.  Well since the blog is only a few days old, everything is a new feature.  I gave myself a $5.00 budget and the rest of January to shop for and (hopefully) receive cards from eBay.  I have set some ground rules for myself as well.

1. The $5.00 budget WILL factor include shipping costs meaning no cheap buying of the 1 cent card with $42 shipping here.

2. I will allow myself single card purchases only.  No big lots, they would make the next rule too easy.

3. The goal of this experiment will be to acquire 10 cards that will either fit into my collections or be decent buys in general.

4. At least 2 of those must be numbered, parallel, auto, or relic cards.

5. 15 non consecutive minute time limit per day (I'm using an old stopwatch...remember kids no cheating)...this limit is in place for three reasons.  First, to make it a little challenging to select some quality cards.  Second, I don't have the time nor the desire to look more than that.  Lastly, I know myself and if I looked longer I would break my budget VERY quickly.

6. No cards from a major overproduction era set.  Quick sidebar, I hate the term "junk wax" on this blog you will see the replacement term "overproduction era." I started collecting in this time period and to me no matter how many cards were produced, I still think they are great (but don't send me all your quadruples please!).


I will post the results of this experiment either at the end of the month or when have blown the budget and received all cards.  If this is successful, this will become a regular feature here.  Not a monthly one though, because there is no way I can limit myself to $5 every month.

4 comments:

ShaneK said...

Good luck with that experiment, I know you could do it with some off condition vintage stuff.

SpastikMooss said...

Good luck to you man, I love this idea! Hardest part for me would be the 15 minutes - I know I can't do it haha.

flywheels said...

The downfall of my job is the sheer amount of time I have on my hands and having unrestricted computer access at my fingertips! I would save so much $$ if I had the willpower to stay away from eBay!

hiflew said...

Sweet I got called up to the show. Thanx JayBee.