To all beginner baseball card aficionados out there, welcome to an article about the why, where and how of collecting.

So, first question: why collect?

1. As in any sport, collecting gets you up close to love for the game's best and greatest.

2. You get to have a tangible remembrance or token of your favorite players.

3. The biggest reason, they say: the more rare a certain card is, the higher its price. The higher its price, the hotter your collection is, if you own one of them! There's always a high-value investment waiting for a smart sports fan.

4. Buying a pack now and then in the bid to get that set-completing card needs a stable investment, but hey... at least this is less hazardous compared to high stakes gambling, right?

5. You meet people who, surprisingly, have lots and lots of wonderful memories of bygone glory days just like yours. They're all over the world now: from the local shop, to the dealer fairs, to the Internet forums...

Look for the lowest prices of your favorite hoop stars' cards! Compare prices with confidence at the hassle-free eBay site, www.e-mlbcards.com/!

1. Card Shops

2. Retail stores

3. Baseball Card Shows and dealer fairs

4. The Internet (secure forums like http://www.beckett.com/, http://www.naxcom.com/ , http://thepit.com, and eBay sites like http://www.e-mlbcards.com). Plus, see more of Beckett's price guide—the authority in the industry—by clicking here.

Since card collecting is all about doing something that you love, how it progresses will actually be up to you. This means a lot of important things: among others, that it reflects personality; that collections cannot be compared; that collectors have their own way of collecting. All of these things will be in your hands: how much of what, and how much time and money goes to collection. Let's go over the ways that'll ensure maximum fun out of this hobby.

Since it is next to impossible to collect all the cards out there, you need to specialize and start collecting according to some pattern as intermediate and advanced collectors usually do.

You can try challenging yourself to achieve the following:

a) complete baseball card sets that concentrate on certain years (e.g. all the years since their childhood days or when they became a big fan);

b) all the baseball players during a specified period of time (one interesting project posted online is the fabled 1952 Topps set;

c) a certain superstar player;

d) the rookie cards (check out this suggestion about rookies and what to do as a beginning collector);

e) by team;

f) holders of milestone statistics (e.g. List of major league players with 2,000 hits);

g) Hall of Famers; and

i) Award winners: high achievers of such awards as Most Valuable Player, or Rookie of the Year.

Look for the lowest prices of your favorite baseball stars' cards! Compare prices with confidence at the hassle-free eBay site, www.e-mlbcards.com!