How many player collections is too many? I'm not sure. I have three at the moment and it does not feel overwhelming at all. In reality I've been focusing mostly on one of them, but they're all there and always give me something to search for on eBay and what not.
The only real limitation for any of them is the time period in which the players were active. Hasek has me covered for most of the fun 90's sets that I've always enjoyed collecting. Patrik Stefan has a good number of cards between 1999 and 2006 for me to chase. Jimmy Howard has regularly had cards from 2005 onward so I'm pretty well covered until now.
With Howard's future uncertain and Hasek being included in newer sets only occasionally, I'm missing someone that will allow me to chase some of the cool new cards being released right now. I'm talking stuff like the newer OPC Platinum parallels.
I know I already have team collections going for Detroit, Vegas and Nashville and I could always just grab cards for those as they come along, but there is just something more fun about player collecting for me. It seems to make collecting more enjoyable.
That said, I've decided to add Viktor Arvidsson to my group of player collections. He is still my favorite current Predator and he's always been fun to watch. While he isn't in the realm of McDavid and Matthews as far as cards go, he seems to be included in most of the sets I've been interested in lately. If anything, his stuff appears to be pretty affordable too.
This works nicely with my already started Nashville Predators collection. I will just pull the few Arvy's I already have from there to get me started. After a quick search through my Preds binder, I was able to find six. My favorite is probably the 18-19 Upper Deck base.
A quick check of the Trading Card Database shows that Arvidsson has just shy of 500 total cards so far. That's quite a few less than my other PC players. Howard is around 1500, Hasek is around 5500 and Stefan is around 700 total. I know I will never have all the cards for any specific player, but at least I'll know how many are out there to chase.
I've also been checking eBay and COMC lately to see where I can get started. There are some really cool Arvidsson cards available. Hopefully he continues to improve with Nashville and will be featured in plenty of new card releases in the coming seasons.
Howard, Stefan, and Arvidsson shouldn't be budget-busters so I'd say go for it. Arvy probably doesn't have any/many high-value cards so you should be able to gobble up loads of his singles. Good luck with your new player PC!
ReplyDeleteThanks! This has to be one of the more odd foursomes of PC players out there. I like it though, it definitely give me a good variety of stuff to chase.
Delete