To build an interesting and valuable Benchwarmer card collection it is important that you have a theme to your collection and avoid standard sets. Here we can take a lesson from the greatest of all collections, those found in the great national museums. These famous collections are always carefully constructed around a theme. It might be great works of painters from a certain period or a certain painting style, but museums never try to collect all of a painter's works. This would be nearly impossible since other museums have some of those works. Rather they build the collection around one or two very valuable pieces and then fill in the collection with representative pieces from other painters. This makes the collection much more interesting.

     Most collectors try to build full sets of cards in one or more series. This is not a good idea because it is unlikely you will be able to complete the collection and it will have far less value than you expected. Here is the reason. Lets say 500 collectors are all trying to make a full set of Benchwarmer 2002 Kiss cards. Now lets say a few of the kiss cards in that set had only 100 cards produced. Clearly not all of the 500 people can complete the set, yet they are collecting all the more common cards. Now lets say you are one of the lucky ones who are able to complete the set. The time comes when you would like to sell it on eBay. You list the cards at a price that represents a fair value for all the cards in the set perhaps with a small premium for all the work in completing the set. To your surprise you cannot get a bid anywhere near the value of the collection. The reason is all the potential buyers already have all the cards except for the rare cards. So for them the value of the whole collection is really only the value of the rare cards they need to complete their own collection. For this reason standard set collecting is a bad idea unless you care very little about the value of the collection.

     The best way to build a collection is to work on an interesting theme. All the guides I have read stress theme building, but they do not explain how it is done. I will give you a practical example for Benchwarmer cards. The key is building the collection around a few rare cards and filling in the collection with more common cards around that theme. One of the best ways to collect is individual model theme collecting, but it is far from the only theme possible so be creative. For my example I will use an individual model theme because it is easy to understand. For our theme we chose to build a collection that features Ms. Doe. Best to chose a model who has cards spread over several series and has a nice mix of card types, for example bikini swatch, kiss etc. Now we build our collection by collecting all of Ms. Doe's base cards from each series. They are very inexpensive. Now we need to add the high value card that is the centerpiece of the collection just like a museum would do for one of their collections. Depending on your budget this might be an autographed kiss or autographed bikini swatch card of Ms. Doe, but even without such an expensive centerpiece card a nice theme collection can still be constructed. The collection should have a few autographed cards, FX specialty cards, perhaps a movie card, a bikini swatch card, a kiss card and for extra interest a card signed after production. If Ms. Doe has any cards from other card lines like Playboy, Miller, etc. try to include some of them. Show an example of each type of card from Ms. Doe. The final result is a very interesting collection of Ms. Doe's cards. Since the whole collection has an interesting theme, it is attractive to collectors. Theme collections avoid the problems associated with standard set collecting. As a result you are far more likely to see the collection sell for a price well above the price of the individual cards that make up the collection.

     Now sometimes when I tell this to collectors they say, "Nobody collects that way." That is the whole point. To build interesting and valuable collections you should avoid doing what everyone else does. It is the fact that you do not see these theme collections everyday that makes them interesting and valuable. They are also a lot more fun to put together because it is your creativity that makes them so interesting. One word of caution when building a theme set, you must stick to the theme. Never add anything to the collection that is not in tune with the theme. That would weaken the collection.

     I hope my ideas are of help and good luck in building an interesting and valuable collection. Above all have fun with your card-collecting hobby.

By George V. Schubel