Okay long story here....I grew up in LA in the 70's and 80's. My father is from NYC and a baseball fan so that was our connections. I loved the big red machine and he took me to the HOF so I learned all about the greats of the game. So then I just started collection HOF cards. 

In the summer when I was 11-12-13 I worked and made $50 a week. Then every Saturday I would take the bus to Adco which was a card store in West Hollywood owned and operated by Goody Goldfaden one of the hobby pioneers. I think someone you may all know Anthony Nex worked there I believe. Goody would let one person at a time in the store. You would tell him what player you wanted say Ty Cobb and then he would go in the back and come out with a stack of about 100 cards wrapped in a rubber band. You would go through them mostly T206's and T205's and choose the ones you wanted at $4 each...then on to the next player. The most I ever spent on a card in his shop was $35 for a T206 Plank. Goudey Ruth's cost $25 each......He had tons of Playballs and a lot with the SAMPLE back. So each week I would go there and get DiMaggio, Ed Walsh, Addie Joss, etc...did this for 3 years so I built up a nice collection. And of course all my friends were into cards so we would get together and trade and flip against the wall.......not the best idea to do with T206's. We went to the first ever National in Anaheim with about 50 vendors which was amazing and opened my eyes to more cards.

Fast forward to graduating High School and like so many others I sold my entire collection for $2000...guessing that same collection would have to worth about $500K now. 

Another jump in time now at 35 and making some money decide to collect again now that it was so easy to get them on eBay and PSA graded cards so you felt safe buying real cards. PSA had their SMR and at that time they valued T206 PSA 5 commons at $70 and PSA 6 for $85, I wanted to do the whole set. So I put in about 100 bids using PSA valuation but went a little higher $85 for PSA 5 and $100 for the 6's. I did not even come close to winning a single lot. So I figured there is a better way and that is when I created VCP and meet my business partner Carlos. We started getting data in Spread sheets and built out VCP and launched in May of 2007. I ended up selling the cards I acquired so I could never be accused of any funny business. It was hard at first but almost 20 years later and we are still going.

Bobby
theVCP

Ash sorry for putting this in your thread...new here so trying to get a hang of it