The Five Rookie Mistakes New Card Collectors Make
First, here's the good news. Baseball cards have the potential to provide collectors of all ages, backgrounds, and budgets with a lifetime of enjoyment, not to mention occasional cash. Now here's the bad news. The Hobby is big enough, messy enough, and complicated enough that jumping in unprepared can just as often lead new collectors to disappointment, frustration, and even debt. Fortunately, sometimes success is as simple as avoiding the five common "rookie mistakes" most new collectors make.
MISTAKE ONE: Full Speed Ahead!
Walk in to your local card shop or any card show, and you're practically guaranteed to see cards selling for thousands of dollars. As tempted as it might be to start your collection off with a total banger, there are all kinds of reasons to wait a bit before jumping in the deep end with both feet.
- Real or Fake? - If you're brand new in the Hobby, how confident are you that you can tell the difference, for example, between a genuine Nolan Ryan rookie card, a modern reprint, or a total counterfeit?
- Protecting Your Purchase - The more expensive a card is, the more value it loses if it suffers even the slightest ding. Just the simple act of transferring a card from a top loader to a "card saver" when sending it off for grading can introduce damage that knocks your $1000 card down to $100.
- Finding Your Focus - Kicking off your collection with a $1500 Mickey Mantle card might seem like a great idea...until you figure out a few months later you enjoy current players like Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani much more than retired legends. True, you can always sell the Mantle, but recouping full value is often much harder than you might think.
MISTAKE TWO: Grade Everything!
It doesn't take long in the Hobby to see that graded cards typically sell at a nice premium as well they should. After all, a graded card, at least in theory, has been authenticated and examined by an impartial expert, and this offers the buyer a level of confidence and protection unavailable with "raw" (ungraded) cards.
That said, grading ain't always cheap! While there are ways to bring the price down, the standard cost of grading a card with PSA, the industry leader, starts at $24.99 plus shipping! If you know your 1982 Topps Rickey Henderson card has a shot at a "9" or "10" grade, go for it. But if the card comes back an "8" or below, you just threw away some decent cash. Even still, the new collector might wonder how hard it can be to tell if their card will "gem" with a 10 or come back with a lower grade. In truth, most PSA 8 and PSA 10 cards look identical to the naked eye.
MISTAKE THREE: Treat eBay Listings as Comps
Savvy buyers know that a great way to assess the value of a card is to check recent comps. Thanks to public buy/sell sites like eBay and subscription sites like CardLadder, comps are easier to find than ever. However, new collectors need to do on simple but critical thing when checking comps on eBay.
Standard eBay searches pull up a card's unsold listings, which should never be confused with comps. On the contrary, these cards are far more likely to be priced above fair market value. Otherwise, they would have already sold, right? Therefore, the correct approach on a site like eBay is to filter the search for sold listings only. In the case of the Mays card above, the true comps are at $3000 and below.
MISTAKE FOUR: Follow the Pack!
It's pretty easy in the Hobby to learn quickly what other collectors are chasing. What's harder is to figure out what cards you should be chasing. "Collect what you love" is about the truest Hobby adage there is, but like most words of wisdom is far easier said than done. These days, most of the action in the Hobby is around rookie cards and prospects.
That's great for some collectors, but if you lean more toward established stars who have already sown up their plaque in Cooperstown (Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer, for example), that's even better. In today's Hobby, no cards are more underpriced than those of players who have already peaked. Plus, no collector even chasing established superstars ever paid $200,000 for a Wander Franco card!
MISTAKE FIVE: Go It Alone!
While it's natural to assume cards are cards, the truth is that everything about the Hobby is better with friends. In the words of a noted Hobby influencer, "Connecting is the new collecting." Not only will you simply have more fun, but as a new collector you will be part of a community you can learn from.
2017 @nsccshow … it was my 1st time to finally meet many other collectors & key players in the industry who I only knew behind their Twitter handles: @tradercracks, @JunkWaxTwins, @PaulWirth23 w/ @WirthCollecting, Eric Norton, Chris Keller w/ @TopShelfBreaks & @topshelfcards22,… pic.twitter.com/oJ9Dx2z1fL
— SpartyHawk Cache (@SpartyHawkCache) August 6, 2025
This same advice extends beyond IRL friends to collectors you can connect with on social media and Hobby forums. And of course, another great way to up your knowledge is to check feeds like Collectibles on SI daily for the most current news and information around the Hobby.
Jason A. Schwartz is a collectibles expert whose work can be found regularly at SABR Baseball Cards, Hobby News Daily, and 1939Bruins.com. His collection of Hank Aaron baseball cards and memorabilia is currently on exhibit at the Atlanta History Center, and his collectibles-themed artwork is on display at the Honus Wagner Museum and PNC Park.