New to collecting?
Start collecting football cards
Do you want to start collecting football cards, but you don't know where to start? Here we will give drakendavid's tips and tricks on what might be good to know and think about to get started.
1. First you want to decide if you want to collect retail or hobby?
Sports trading cards, and especially football cards, can be divided into two different segments. One is called retail and includes products like Topps Match Attax and Panini Adrenalyn . The second is a hobby where products such as Topps Chrome and Panini Prizm are available.
What is the difference between retail and hobby?
- Retail , When collecting retail cards, the biggest goal is usually to collect a full set (i.e. have all the cards that are in that year's edition). The probability of getting highly valued cards in retail products is low. Unlike hobby products, retail products do not have a guarantee of x number of autographs or numbered cards per box. An easy way to distinguish retail from hobby cards is that retail cards usually have many different numbers on the front of their card. So-called stats. These are used to be able to play against other collectors.
- Hobby , When you collect hobby cards, the goal is usually to collect cards of specific players and preferably that their cards are numbered and have autographs. Most hobby products (boxes) come with a guarantee of x number of autographs and numbered cards in a box.
If you are unsure which product is a retail or hobby product , please do not hesitate to contact us under Contact .
2. What is the goal of your gathering?
Do you want to collect all the football cards that exist for Lionel Messi? Or all the football cards that exist for a specific team? Or do you want to make money? Let's stop at making money. We do not recommend that your main goal is to make money from your collection. Although we at drakendavids think that trading cards and especially football cards have a relatively low secondary value where you can often find bargains on football cards, there is no guarantee that your football cards will increase in value. We ourselves choose to collect something we are passionate about with our hearts and see a potential increase in the value of our cards as a bonus.
We at drakendavids collect all Mohamed Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold cards where they have a Liverpool shirt. We also collect a special card variant called Merlin Gamers. We recommend that you decide on one of the suggestions below to be able to collect more economically sustainable.
Tips on different ways to collect
- A special team
- A specific player or more
- One or more specific card types
3. What do I need to start collecting football cards?
You don't really need anything, but our recommendation is that you first and foremost have sleeves and toploaders for your cards. A sleeve is a single plastic pocket that you put your football card in, once the card is in a sleeve you then put it in a toploader. A toploader is a hard plastic case for your football card. Once this is done, you have protected your card from damage. We therefore recommend that if you are a new collector and don't have sleeves and toploaders, you buy this at the same time as you buy your first box.
4. Join some of Sweden's collector communities
We at drakendavids have our own community that currently has more than 300 members. Our community consists of many experienced collectors who have extensive knowledge of trading cards and often share their expertise with new collectors. Join our Facebook group to become part of the drakendavids community .
We also recommend that you join two other Facebook groups: Football Cards Sweden and Hockey Cards and Collectibles .