If you were restarting your collection in todays market, would your approach be:
Top down - most expensive to least expensive.
Bottom up - least expensive to most expensive.
Neither or no real strategy - just buy whatever’s cool and matches with funds available at the time.
Something else?
A friend wanted to start their collection journey so I’d appreciate genuine opinions to pass along. I already told him to run away, but he’s not having it 
I think this depends on how patient you are. For certain sets, it makes sense to go after the most expensive cards first. But depending on how long it will take you to actually buy your first card from the set it could be a long time and end up being extremely boring.
Personally I would try to strategize as much as I could while still having fun actually collecting. Save for the big cards while periodically sniping deals on the lower end.
The biggest thing i like to suggest is to know what your collection goals are.
After that its a cost vs expectation, quick and high price vs low with potential jumps.
Knowing that 99% of pokemon cards and products will be around for many years. There is little incentive beyond price to jump on specific product when you see it.
Personally id buy what i am able to find and watch values for a bit to make sure i paid what i was comfortable with.
There was a similar thread last year and if I read through the replies, I think the general consensus was that a lot of collectors would find it difficult to start over again, given the current market conditions.
Maybe this can provide some insight besides the other replies.
Cheers!
Forced to do top down, born to do bottom up.
I would say top down if possible, but as others have mentioned, it really depends on the card/set and some other factors. With certain cards, your opportunity to buy them could be much less than others. With this in mind, you’re faced with greater opportunity cost as time goes on potentially. But, your timing can only be so good, and only with time and experience in the hobby can you start to read the trends better and make the best decisions you can at any given point.
In my experience thus far, I would say being patient will pay off with 99% of the cards in the hobby. However, even with cards that are more accessible, you can still ‘miss out’ by not stepping up at certain opportunities that come your way. For example, I had a chance to snag a PSA 10 1st Ed Bulbasaur at a good price recently in the past couple months, and now all of a sudden they seemed to have climbed back up in price a lot and I missed out.
I think the key thing to keep in mind is that no one really knows the ‘top’ with any card or part of the market. So even if you pay a big price, I think if you believe in the hobby and what you’re collecting in the long term, it sometimes doesn’t matter as much as we think. What’s important to me is getting the card in your collection at the price you can afford. You can almost always upgrade or move up, no matter where you start (top or bottom).
In today’s market, I am not buying anything. To answer the question - bottom up to give time for the top to cool off.
I started my collection years ago bottom up, wish I did top bottom because there are cards that rose thousands of dollars in value by the time I got to them
Whereas in the past it was best to start with the most expensive as there were few catalysts to spike a cards price in the short term and steady growth was a reasonable expectation, nowadays it’s hard to tell because the more expensive “grail” type items often receive unsustainable hype and growth.
If I were to start a brand new sets goal now, I can’t say I’d do either of these things but rather really study each card and determine for myself what feels reasonably priced based on rarity/scarcity/popularity and buy those and any that fall under that threshold first (underpriced/underappreciated). People have been highlighting vintage stonks but it really appears to be focused on set chase cards and 95% still remains steady or normal.
If the chase has had big movements recently it doesn’t mean to avoid it, but it only means you need to be extremely careful and do more research.
I was also wondering this when I started collecting again. Definitely consider the whole overall goal like others mentioned.
My own reasoning made me end up buying bottom/middle to top, only because the top expensive cards I’m looking at haven’t moved much, and if they do, 10-20 bucks on top of 100-something isn’t a lot. And, there are only maybe 5 expensive-ish cards I want for my current goal. (Yes, I know $100 may be chump change for some collections here, but I have a specific binder I’m working on)
But, some mid priced cards, if they jump from 10 bucks to 20 each, and if they make up the bulk of the holos, it adds up faster.
Even worse, lots of set cards that I had initially bought for cents, are now a minimum of a dollar or two. Multiply that by a hundred cards… I ended up replacing a JPN jungle seaking because the borders were too L-R heavy. I had first bought it last year for like 20 cents, just paid 100x that to make sure the condition was something I’d be happy with. Luckily I only needed to do that once.
Also, have to consider shipping. I ended up buying almost all the commons and uncommons I wanted at once to avoid paying shipping on a hundred separate, cheap cards.
Lastly, it may be smart to buy the most expensive card first, but then you only have one card sitting in a binder to look at. I would make a bulk purchase of some cheap cards to start, to have something to enjoy, and do the expensive ones next.
I have a gengar, charizard, and lugia collection
I could potentially see myself starting over with gengar among others but i singled these out because of values
Lugia though 2 of the cards would be a nightmare. Aquapolis psa10 really has jumped over time and even my psa9 lugia 1st is now 2k. I wouldnt re-do my lugia collection its too much money
and Charizard? thats a pipe dream. Even the cards that I didnt think were even valuable at the time like Arceus 1/99 cracked ice, somehow is now 4 figures? At the time people didnt even like the card lol.
Even if i was legit rich I wouldnt redo my zard collection. In fact if anything I might sell off a couple to fund my new card goals
Historically top down is the approach. Its also not exclusive to pokemon. The cards that have less copies can jump higher and faster. Even if there is decent movement in certain common cards, the overall dollar cost is significantly lower. For example I’ve been putting together a MTG Alpha set for awhile, and the price I bought the Black Lotus at is probably double what I paid, but most the common cards are the same.
Smart: Top-Down
Fun: Bottom-Up
Collecting is supposed to be fun, so I would say bottom-up. But the better approach will always be top-down if you are hoping to reduce costs.
I screwed myself this time last year by procrastinating on PSA 9 Masaki Gengar which was sat roughly around £900-£1k. Within a matter of months it doubled and has pretty much stayed there since, pricing me out. Ah well.
+1 to this, I started my current binder with the most expensive card, but then carried on filling out the rest of the binder instead of saving the cash to get the most expensive cards out of the way for the next 2 binders. Part of me regrets not doing that, but then again putting the binder together with financially accessible cards has really kept the joy alive.
As much as top down makes sense from a financial stand point, I think a lot of people don’t realise that peaking too early isn’t as great as it sounds.
If you spend a long time saving up before you even begin your collecting journey to just buy the one main chase card or holy grail, once you’ve got that out the way, will you really be satisfied buying lesser cards forever? You’ve taken away time and joy of collecting to buy one card and possibly ruining every other card in the process as you’ll not get that same rush like you did buying the most expensive one.
I’d just buy cards you actually want more sporadically when you see things at good prices.
That’s another very good point. Spending all your capital on that one grail might be sensible in the longer term, but may also forsake those opportunities to get other cards at great prices in the short-medium term. There’s been a few no-rarity base auctions I’ve won in the last few weeks at below market, but wouldn’t have been able to if I’d bought the shadowless charizard to start my next binder. This is all starting to sound like a classic case of, damned if you do, damned if you don’t 
Depending on what your friend is looking to collect, his/her financial situation, and how active he/she wants to maximize every dollar spent, there are multiple options as others have mentioned:
Fun: Bottom → Up
Easiest: Top → Bottom
Maximizing dollar: Mid/Top (identify highest potential growth rate during the collecting period) → Top → Bottom
But quite frankly, if your friend is just starting out again, I’d recommend just starting small, picking up interesting finds at reasonable prices, and then building out from there so he/she can fully enjoy the process 
Hope this helps,
cpbog1
I do a mix, but my “top” is like $50 lol
I like to do Top down. Once the most expense card of the collection goal I am working on, I feel like I can complete it. If going Bottom Up, there’s always a chance that I might not be able to get the top 3 cards because of funds or they are priced out.
As others have said, the top cards will move up in price faster than the bottom cards. Securing the top cards helps me build a good foundation for the goal.
Assuming I had to rip all the money from my paychecks, I would put a bit aside to start getting singles I like, just to keep it fun, but put another larger chunk towards the big items I want most.
As a general rule of thumb I would say top down but given the current market conditions I wouldn’t recommend that approach to a new collector (or anyone for that matter).
I would recommend making a list of cards they are interested in, researching the price history and prioritizing the ones that have risen in value the least over the past year or so.