General Forum

I am a long time baseball card collector and am fortunate that my 9yr old son has started taking an interest in the hobby as well.  He is interested mainly in basketball, of which I am completely unfamiliar.  His favorite player is Steph Curry and I wanted to start him his own collection.  Based on my son's preference I wanted to start him with all of Curry's Panini Select cards over the years, which I am well on my way to completing for one of his Christmas presents.  I am running into an issue that prior to the 2012-13 season, I can't seem to narrow down what the the primary/flagship sets were.  I was hoping to keep the brand/set consistent and obviously Select wasnt around prior to 2012, but I need some suggestions on the brand/sets I should be looking at prior to 2012 for his Curry collection.  Thoughts from avid Basketball hobby collector's. 

I would suggest Hoops

Curry had rookies in the final year of Upper Deck, SP Game Used and Topps, but by his 2nd year, Panini had the exclusive NBA license at that point, so it would need to be Hoops, Donruss or any of the various Panini sets.

Panini has been really inconsistent with sets so there isn't any one set you can get for every year for Steph. Hoops is the best bet because it's been produced every year since 2011-12. Prestige was one of their main sets from 2009-10 through 2017-18 but has now been relegated to a subset inside of Chronicles, it also wasn't produced in 2011-12 due to the lockout. 

Prizm has been made since 2012-13 and is also a popular set, and has not missed a year since it was created. 

To add on to what has been said above, Hoops would be a solid way to go for 2011-12 forward.  To keep consistent with Panini, I would say Panini flagship for 2009-10 and Donruss for 2010-11.  In general I feel like the most consistent Panini releases are Hoops and Donruss, with Prizm and Donruss Optic being the premium of the more usual sets

A really great way to break into a new collection/set is to look at places like Facebook market place or craigslist or anywhere you can find people selling bulk lots of cards.  You can sometimes find huge boxes of unsorted cards for very cheap (under $50).  Help your son sort them and identify which sets they are and then he can start listing duplicates here for trades for the sets he really likes.  At least for me anyway, the sorting of big boxes like that is the real fun of collecting.

Last time I went looking, I was able to pick up a collection of baseball cards, around 10,000 cards in total, for $40.  Actually found several stars and rookies in the mix too.

Yes Facebook marketplace is great. My last buy was an ad that started at $200. I bought it for $75 after it sat online for awhile. Sorting with him is great bonding and will create memories 

Thank you everyone for your help, it is greatly appreciated.  I'm looking forward to taking several of you up on your advice.