Buy/Sell/Trade Forum

I know we all collect differently and different types of cards.  Most of us collect what the confines of our home will allow (at the direction of the spouse more often than not).  I know I have a large home and am mostly by myself so I can expand my collection from what it is now if I am willing to have cards all over the house (which I am not).  Yes I would like to have very baseball card ever printed but I would never imagine putting every baseball card that is listed on this site on my Want List.  I do want others to find the matches to make trades so I usually aim to have my want list around the 40k-50k.  I started off by adding sets that were 1998 or older or missing less than half of the cards.  Since then, I also added cards from sets so as to build larger trades with some members who had many matches in my traders (more to help them oout than to start another set). That 40-50K number has worked well for getting trades offered regularly.  I do have over 100k different cards For Trade so the balance is satisfactory to me.

So I ask myself, why would anyone put on their want list every card that exists in the database?  Ok maybe not all 13M but what do people think is that number where it goes from wanting to build a collection to a ridiculous venture? Do some think my 45k is too many?  Is it 100k (we have often seen Forum posts from people wondering what the upper limit is to adding to a want list - I don't think it was ever determined)? Or is it even more like 200k, 300k 500k, how about 1M? Why would you list 1,000,000 cards as wants?

I know team collectors will add everyting to their want list that they do not already have and I understand that. If you collect several teams, the total can quickly add up though not sure how high it would get. Player Collectors would be lower unless they collect an extensive list of players.  Multi-sport collectors again may have reason to be higher than many others.  But just how many cards does one add to their want list before it becomes insane?

Yes to each his / her own.  This thread is not meant to point fingers but just looking to see what people's goals are through this site.

I collect the Phillies and have over 100,000 on my want list......

Here is MY problem. I up date by team. When new releases come out, I add " all cards not in collection to wantlist". Now the issue. I really DO NOT CARE FOR SOME SETS. Museuem is an easy example. If I happen to get them in a trade great, but I would much rather have some 90's Upper DECK cards to complete my sets.  

It is just hard to add what you REALLY want....

I collect players rather than sets, and there's only a small handful of players from whom I'd like to have EVERY card ever made.

I'm also a realist, and I collect for fun rather than as an "investment". I'm very aware of my limitations regarding budget and storage space, so aside from that handful of players mentioned before, I'll only add a card to my wantlist if: 

a) I really like the player
b) I really like the card
c) It's within my budget (if purchase) or I can make a reasonable trade for it (I don't expect to trade my common $0.05 card for your rare SN1, RC, MEM Refractor PSA10 card). 

So that keeps me from going overboard with my expectations.

I have recently done this for a player I collect. I forget how many cards there are if him, but it is definitely in the thousands. Realistically, I know I am not going to ever get them all, especially the 1 of 1s, some of the patches and autos, but some of them, I just might find. I too am not an investor, but just someone who is collecting for fun. 

My want list is about 75,000 but that's because I am trying to complete all o-pee-chee sets

the hockey totals go up several thousand every year but the rest are slowly going down. 

As most know by now I appear to be the biggest Nebraska Cornhusker football collector here.  My goal is to get 10,000 diff Husker cards before quiting.  Just need a few more then a hundred cards.  So yes I add all the 19,000 + cards in hopes to find a few.  As stated many times here,  there are very few of them listed here that I need  less then 200.

On the other hand how many cards did I need to add to your FS/FT list.    I have 8,000 but can add over 150,000 more if needed.   The 150,000 cards are not a collection to me they are just cards to get rid of.

I ahve tried to remain realistic on my want lists. I collect A LOT of things.

I started out doing sets in the 1970s, so I still do sets. If I'm working on a set, the missing cards go into the want list.

After collecting a couple years, I began to collect extras of the Phillies and the "superstars". Those stars eventually became the HOFers (for the most part). I have only base cards of Phillies in my want list, although I will take just about any licensed Phillies card (some oddball unlicensed, but not the Panini stuff). I have addede inserts to the eant list when making a trade so that the matching is easier, but I generally only put very easy to pull inserts on the want list.

For the HOFers (and other players I like and collect), it's the base set cards. I know I'll never get the Ryan RC in a trade, but it's truly a want. I realize I'm more likely to get a 1993 Topps Ryan (if it was on my want list), but it's still a base card. Again, I'll put easy inserts on the want list and an occasional item that will wind up in a trade.

I tried to make it a want list that is easy to navigate and easy to match. I'm sure when I fonally load in my entire collection and all that I have available to trade, I'll have room to expand the want list as I'll have quite a lot of matches on here.

I'm probably the biggest TCU Horned Frogs collector on Earth. I truly would love to get an example of every different card depicting a Horned Frog Alum that exists. My official collection is around 18,000 TCU cards and that's about half of all the cards I know to exist (not counting 1/1's which I don't count towards the collection) so yeah, I have an enormous wantlist. Of course I also collect some non-TCU related cards so that just makes it bigger.

I guess for me, I'm just an obsessive completist so if it's a card that falls in the scope of my collection, I'm going to add it to my wantlist.

This is an interesting thread... my two cents...
I believe:
1) A "Want List" should be relative to the Collection Size.
2) The size of a "Want List" should roughly match the number of cards available "For Trade".
For example, I have 159,000 cards in my current Want List.  This may seem ridiculous for some people.  But, I have over 281,000 unique cards in my collection and I have 185,000 listed in my "For Trade" List.  The numbers are roughly relative to each other.
What I can't understand is why someone would list 50,000 cards on a Want List while only making 2,500 cards available for trade?  That makes no sense to me and I think most serious traders know the frustration of seeing that desparity play out in the trade wizard.

I'm attempting to document the history of the three main sports I collect. My main goal is (at least) one card of every person to ever get one in the history of those sports. The wantlist doesn't really work for that, because it doesn't matter what card I get from that person, as long as it fits the parameters: 

1. It must be a card of that person alone. No shared card, no team cards, league leaders, etc.
2. It must be a professional card. No college cards are accepted, and if a player's only cards are college, then they are treated as having no cards. Now that I'm doing the NHL I'm more willing to accept lower level cards, whereas in NBA it must only be NBA. Part of that is that it's possible to collect/document a full hockey career on cards, part of that is because when I was documenting who I had in my collection I didn't differentiate between NHL and other leagues- all were labeled as hockey. I made the list before I began officially collecting the sport, it's something I will revisit in the future. 
3. It cannot be a Multi-Sport card. It must be a release from the specific sport it represents.
4. It does not have to be licensed, but it must show the team logo or the player not in uniform. No generic or airbrushed uniforms. An extreme close up from a set like that IS acceptible but not ideal, not sure it's ever come up yet. 

With that said, I'm still a set collector at heart, from 1988 to roughly 2016 that was the only way I could comprehend collecting, and I only shifted away from that because modern sets are so small, there's so few of them, and for two of my three sports, the sets that are produced are of low quality. I will generally only add a set to my wantlist if I'm too close to make buying any in pack or box form a bad idea, OR if it's something I've done a box of and know I won't do another, OR if it's something I really, really want. 

If money was no object, I would collect every card from my three sports...but that's not likely to happen. There's no better way to document history than covering literally all of it. As such, I want every card from every set, which means ANY card I get is a good card, I'm never unhappy with whatever new cards I get.