Quite simply, baseball card values are best understood by seeing what the price is if you were to buy the cards right now.  A great way to do that is by joining Ebay if you are not already a member, and checking the completed auction listings.  All you have to do is type in a card, box, set or other type of product and search for completed listings.  By doing that, you will immediately see what the item last sold for and on what day it sold for that.  That is a better indication of current market value than any other pricing system can give you in my opinion.

While I believe that baseball card values are best understood by seeing the actual cash you can get for the item on Ebay, that does not mean that I place no value on having a price guide from Beckett.  I think that if you are going to purchase a set, a lot, boxes, an unopened case, or a collection of cards that you should have a price guide handy to help you evaluate if it is a good deal.  I have been able to analyze sets and see what I think the best values are as far as bang for the buck in each particular set.  That helps me to understand where the value is in a set and whether or not a box of cards from that year and set is a good deal.  If, for example, there are only two good rookies in the entire set, that tells me that I probably will want to look elsewhere if I am expecting to get a great box with lots of good cards.  It all depends what is important to me in collecting and the price guides help to determine if the set meets my or any other collector's criteria.

Baseball cards have been around for quite some time and are quite valuable.  The vintage years are very valuable and of course, the better condition the cards are in the more they are worth.  Recently, card companies have been manufacturing exquisite products such as Upper Deck Exquisite basketball, Ultimate Collection football and many other high end products.  These have autographed cards of baseball superstars and rookies such as Kevin Maas (pictured below), Mickey Mantle, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Ken Griffey Jr. and many others.

Unopened football packs and wax boxes are great products and are very fun to open.  An unopened box can contain many great players.  Here is a listing of boxes for sale right now, get a good deal on one.  If you are not a member of Ebay, simply join for free and start getting great deals on cards.  I have been a member of Ebay for years and I certainly recommend it.  There are also rookie cards listed below at great prices for your shopping pleasure by the finest sellers around.   http://www.mybaseballcardspace.info/football_box

Here are Upper Deck Ultimate Collection items   http://www.mybaseballcardspace.info/ultimate_collection

I have collected football cards for many years, here are some pictures of my collection.  Below the pictures are some more great trading card products.

     1989 Score Football       1989 Topps Baseball     1982 Topps Baseball          1983 Topps Baseball       1983 Star Company

  Star Company Bagged Set           1986-87 Fleer                     1993 Bowman             1992 Bowman        1985 Donruss

    1981 Topps Baseball              1988 Topps Baseball           1980 Topps         1987 Topps        1985 Topps Baseball             

   vintage card                               1951 Bowman               1953 Topps         1951 Bowman Mickey Mantle      1980-81 Topps

Brett Favre has been traded to the New York Jets, check out this page for his jerseys http://www.mybaseballcardspace.info/Brett_Favre_Jets_Jersey 

 1987-88 Fleer Basketball                                                                      1981-82 Topps

Upper Deck Exquisite Basketball       

The 1982 Topps Football card set is a great one indeed.  It contains rookie cards of hall of famers and star and hall of fame cards lead by a second year card of Joe Montana.  There is still widespread availability of this set and it is recommended that collectors own this set, an unopened box or case, or some cards in the set.  I myself have a couple of the cards from the set and some commons, but do not have a complete set.  The cards, while a bit pricey, are still affordable in comparison with other sets and that is in large part due to the fact that the best rookie card in the set is Lawrence Taylor.  He is a great rookie and is in the hall of fame, but he just does not have the same following as Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Dan Marino, John Elway or names like those.  That being said, this set is jam packed with value.

I personally purchased a rack box a few years back of these cards and they were great to open.  I got many of each of the rookie cards.  The best rookies in the set are Lawrence Taylor, Ronnie Lott, Anthony Munoz, Cris Collinsworth (works in sports television now) and Matt Millen (the first three rookie cards are hall of famer inductees).  Both Taylor and Lott also have in action cards as well, as does Joe Montana, making this an added incentive to open boxes of these cards.  Also, the star cards include Joe Montana, (as previously mentioned it is his second year card) Walter Payton and Terry Bradshaw.

http://www.mybaseballcardspace.info/1982_Topps_Football

When you have a price guide to look up what cards are in a set, you can find the most compelling value in the boxes you are searching to buy.

1981 Topps boxes for sale http://www.mybaseballcardspace.info/1981_Topps_Box

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