Check out the price of any vintage Topps Baseball Card set from the 1950's for any set, and you will see that they are out of reach for most collectors - even in so-so condition.  But, not if you build them the ebay way.

  Remember back in your childhood days - When you traded cards with your friends for the coolest players, or for those hard to find cards you needed to build your set.  Well this is pretty much the same thing, but now ebay is going to become your trading buddy.

  I started out buying vintage lots.  You can check them out at Baseball Card Lots 1950 - 1959.  When you are first starting buy the biggest lot you can afford.  Your goal is to pick out five or ten of the best cards, and then to resell the lot for at least what you paid for it or more.  What you say?  I can't sell on ebay.  Believe me - It's not hard at all.  With the help of a good scanner or digital camera, you just need to take good clear pictures of your lot - taking care to show, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  And yes, there will be ugly, bent, written on cards but, people do collect them as fillers, until they can afford something better.

  What you want to do is keep moving through lots, keeping only the better cards for yourself, and recycling the rest.  It took me six months and fifty dollars to build my first 1955 Topps set, now worth several thousand dollars.  Along the way - I probably owned almost every card in the set three or four times - some of them twice that.  The star cards were the hardest to come by.  I had to lay down hard cash for them.  But you can be assured it wasn't my money.  The cash for them came from reselling lots for more than I paid for them.

  And, I know what you are thinking.  How can I be sure I will get more than I paid for them.  You can't.  Not every time.  But, you can increase your odds by 1)  taking great pictures or scans, 2) writing great honest descriptions, 3) by buying only solid lots, at decent prices, and 4) by strategically selling the cards you find as lots, single, and team sets.

  No one says you have to do this with Baseball Cards.  It works the same with coins, stamps, comics, or whatever you collect.