Faced with the sheer size and scope of the hobby of sports cards, even the most dedicated and deep-pocketed people who enter it quickly realize they can’t collect everything. To stay sane and avoid going broke, they inevitably choose to focus their collections on certain types of cards.
The focus could be anything from a favorite player to a specific brand of cards. Whatever the case may be, the focus helps to define and categorize the collection – and in turn, the collector who owns it.
While collectors can and often do change their minds about what kinds of sports cards they choose to tuck away, more often than not, they tend to fall into one of a handful of categories based on the cards they prefer to buy, sell or trade. The following list is by no means comprehensive (and people can and do exhibit traits from multiple categories), but it does highlight the most common ways of describing hobbyists and their collecting habits.
Single-Sport Collectors
One of the simplest ways to limit a collection is to restrict it to a specific sport, and plenty of people choose to do just that. Baseball card collectors are the most numerous since baseball cards have the longest and richest history, but every sport for which cards are produced has its own devotees.
Many single-sport collectors specialize further within that sport. Others are content to buy whatever packs or boxes of cards may catch their eyes, as long as they celebrate the sport they love.
Player Collectors
Another simple and effective way to keep a collection at a manageable size is to build it around a single favorite player. Common sense dictates that the most popular athletes inspire the largest number of player collectors, though if one looks hard enough, it’s possible to find people who specialize in some pretty obscure sports personalities. Most player collectors start with rookie cards, adding base cards, autographs and memorabilia cards as the player’s career progresses.
The internet has helped this category of collectors more than any other, allowing people much greater access to single cards of their heroes. It’s not uncommon for especially dedicated player collectors to know each other by reputation as they find themselves competing for the same rare insert cards.
Trading is also a valuable tool for player collectors, allowing them to swap desirable cards pulled from packs in exchange for similar cards pulled by others. For example, a Kobe Bryant collector might find a LeBron James jersey card and trade it for a Bryant card in the possession of a James collector.
Set Builders
Collectors who attempt to complete entire sets of cards once looked like a dying breed thanks to the rise of serial-numbered cards with ever lower print runs in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. Fortunately, sports card manufacturers recognized that the demand for sets that would be fun and reasonably affordable to assemble by hand had not gone away, and they responded with products that catered to the set building community.
Lower end products with large base sets tend to be the favorites of set builders, who generally start with packs or boxes of cards and then supplement them with purchases of card lots or trades to fill out their checklists. Sports card stores aren’t the resource for these collectors that they once were, as the sheer number of cards released each year makes it difficult for them to stock large numbers of base cards to finish sets.
Set builders tend to be more brand loyal than other types of collectors, often putting together sets of the same product year after year.
Team Collectors
Perhaps fueled by the way free agency and fantasy sports have transformed sports fans in general, there don’t seem to be quite as many team collectors today as in decades past. They’re still out there though: people whose collections look like shrines to their favorite teams.
For obvious reasons, team collecting is regional. There are always going to be more Green Bay Packers collectors in Wisconsin, then, say, Florida. They aren't usually picky about what kinds of cards go into their binders and holders, but they often see cards as just one aspect of a larger desire to stockpile memorabilia that supports their team of choice.
Taking a broader view of this category, it can also include some other similar kinds of hobbyists, like those who collect cards of athletes who played for the same college or minor league team or grew up in a certain town.
Single Card-Type Collectors
This is kind of a catch-all description for people who specialize in specific varieties of sports cards, such as rookie cards, autographs or game-used cards. Card companies have shown increasing awareness that these niches exist and have developed numerous products with one of them in mind.
Collectors in this category sometimes share some similarities with set builders - like when an autograph collector wants to put complete an entire signed insert set. And like player collectors, many of them find trading to be a big help toward achieving their hobby goals.