Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards 2007: The Hobby's Biggest And Best Price Guide (Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 1848 pages
• Published by: Krause Publications; 16 edition September 29, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0896893723
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0896893726
• Book Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.3 x 2.8 inches
• Weighs: 6 pounds

Product Description
Appeals to passionate and casual collectors alike, including the 33,000 readers of Sports Collector's Digest and people participating in the more than 185,000 continuous online auctions

Features large-type format, allowing collectors to easily evaluate the cards in their collections

Contains 10,000 large, detailed photographs for accurately identifying baseball cards from the mid-1800s through 2006

Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards covers baseball card collecting like an all-star shortstop, giving collectors the largest price guide on the market with accurate and realistic values. Every-day collectors can boost their collecting average and compete with the big money collectors using the insider information included in this all-encompassing reference. Within this guide collectors will find:

*Baseball cards of all varieties, including tobacco, bubblegum, and specialty items including team issues and regional promotions
*Current market values and descriptions for more than 500,000 baseball cards, the most data available in one source
*Listings organized alphabetically by company, making the book easy to use

From the glory days of Ruth and Gehrig to the rookie craze of Bonds and Jeter, this is the one guide collectors can confidently turn to for their card collecting needs."

Reader Reviews
This is, bar none, the best baseball card reference of them all. For vintage (defined by them as pre-1981, a pretty good break point) cards, the small information blurb on each set is great, and the card by card breakdown (including the best error and variation compilation out there) is fantastic. I collect cards mainly from the '60s on back, so this is the part that's most important to me. It also has the best compilation of regional cards I've ever seen. The pricing has always seemed to me to be a bit low (i.e., if you use it as a guide for buying cards, you'll rarely get them at the prices listed in here), but I think that's because Beckett prices are more of a driver of the market for pre-1980 cards (see below for more on this). Still, it's a good reality check on your collection's true value. For modern cards, it's certainly comprehensive. Even with the ridiculous amount of sets and subsets and parallel sets and subset parallels and other detritus made each year, they pretty much keep up. The big plus here is that the pricing is MUCH more realistic than Beckett. For example, I put together a complete master set of 2000 Ovation (I guess I was bored that year) and did it for - no exaggeration - about 10% of Beckett price. Lo and behold, I looked it up in a later year's SCD Standard Catalog, and the prices were 10-20% of those in Beckett. This SHOULD be your guide when buying modern cards. You're paying way too much otherwise. My only complaint (as a vintage collector) is, guys, WHEN are you going to separate the vintage and modern sections? At 1800+ pages, with only about 500 devoted to vintage cards, it's getting to be a chore to lug the thing around when I don't care about 75% of it. Other than that, this is the one reference you SHOULD have whether you're new to baseball card collecting or an old kid like me.