Let me ask you guys....I collected cards as a kid in the late 80's. I lost interest until there was that resurgence in the early 90's with Upper Deck, Score, etc. I also quickly lost interest when the market was just flooded by these new cards. If you were to start collecting cards today, what is the best type of card to collect?
The best way to collect (IMO) is to choose a player, team, or subject, and just buy cards on the secondary market of that player. You'll get exactly what you pay for without gambling on packs/boxes. Packs/boxes are fun to open since it is essentially gambling, but the return on them is incredibly low. For example, I very rarely buy sealed product, I bought a UD Series 1 blaster at one point last season for 23 after tax (which is a great price in season), the combined inserts/rookies I pulled would have probably cost me 10 bucks including shipping to buy straight up on somewhere like COMC, and I considered that a pretty good return based on what you should expect from sealed boxes
If you specifically want to collect via buying boxes/packs and want to dip your toes in, consider buying UD Series 1/2 and collecting the 'Young Guns' cards. The Young Guns are basically the main rookie card in the hobby and range in value from a few cents to a few hundred dollars depending on the player. With most products, you want to get the hobby version, but UD Series 1/2 is one of the rare products where the retail can be just as good or in some cases a better value. If you specifically stick with retail for series 1/2, you want to buy whichever box/blaster/tin has the best ratio of Young Guns to dollars spent.
Specifically in respect to UD Series 1/2, the reason hobby boxes are more expensive is because with hobby boxes, you're paying a premium to have an opportunity to pull some extremely limited versions of the Young Guns cards like the exclusives (/100) and the High Gloss (/10) or the clear cuts (very limited, but not numbered). There are some other hobby exclusive short prints that aren't in retail, but the variations of the YGs are the big draw. IMO, unless the price of the hobby box is very close to the price of retail, with respect to Series 1/2, it's not usually worth paying 50-100 bucks extra for a 6 YG hobby box vs a 6 YG retail box. If you are looking at older stock such as products from 13-14/14-15/15-16/etc, the difference in price between series 1/2 hobby and retail will vary from year to year though.
