I'd like to piggyback on a few excellent posts that Gellman has put up recently. In them he has advocated smart and tasteful spending to really help your collection grow while cutting out the fluff. This is a theory that I strongly subscribe to and I couldn't have said it better myself. I know that we all go through "cleaning" phases and focusing our collections (I know I did), and this is a perfect time to do so with yours.
However, an excellent article in the New York Times today makes another point that is not being appropriately recognized. Not everybody is hurting for cash right now. In fact, many people are in the same financial position that they were in last year or the year before. For those of you who have a little extra cash, this is a great time to pick up a few things that you might need. While the article advocates spending discretely and privately, with suggestions like in-home renovations and the like, I would say that adding a few key cards to your collection fits that definition to a T. With Demand languishing, prices are down and you can probably find a few good bargains out there for cards that you'd like to own.
I'm hardly advocating reckless spending and I realize that not everybody is in the position to do this, but if there was ever a time when your country needed you to collect baseball cards, this would be it. So treat yourself to a couple nice cards for your collection--maybe just wait until this whole economy thing turns around to blog about it.
