The cheap end of any category is where you should start, and not for the reason people assume.
The expensive mistake
Spending your first real money on your best piece.
You do not yet know what you are looking at. You cannot tell a good example from a mediocre one, a clean original from a restored piece, or a fair price from an enthusiastic one. Everybody pays that tuition; the only question is whether you pay it on a ₹500 item or a ₹50,000 one.
What to do instead
Buy ten cheap things in one narrow area. Not ten categories — one. Ten coins from one period, ten cards from one set, ten pieces from one studio.
Narrow beats broad because it is the only way to build a comparison. The tenth tells you what the first one actually was.
Buy a couple deliberately flawed. A chipped one, a trimmed one, a reprint. Having the bad example in your hand is how you learn to see it on a screen — and it costs almost nothing, because nobody else wants it.
Watch more than you bid. Shows are free. A month of watching one category is the cheapest education available and most people skip it because it does not feel like progress.
Where the value actually hides
The unfashionable adjacent thing. Every category has a neighbour nobody indexes — the lesser player, the second printing, the regional variant. Less competition, more interesting, and you learn the main thing by learning its edges.
Condition that photographs badly but handles well. Flat lighting makes a good example look ordinary. Live, you can see it is not.
What not to do
Do not buy for resale before you can value. Do not buy the "complete set" as a shortcut to knowledge. Do not spend to keep up with the room — stopping at your number is the one habit that compounds.
More: collecting as a habit.