Listed receivables manager Collection House has added to its portfolio of collectable debt with a $50 million face-value purchase.The portfolio is credit card debt from a major Australian bank, with varying portions received monthly for twelve months beginning from July.The actual cents per dollar cost of the debt is not made publicly available, but total funds paid for debt in financial year 2008 is approximately $65 million, more than double the previous year and better quality, according to Tony Aveling, chief executive officer."In our case it would be better quality. But that's partly because what we were collecting in the past was not particularly good quality."In previous years Collection House had suffered from not purchasing sufficient new debt. Without more debt, it is difficult to collect more money, as older debt becomes increasingly difficult to collect.In financial year 2005 Collection House purchased around $43 million in debt. This reduced to around $33 million in 2006, and further declined in 2007 to $29 million, with $13 million of this purchased in the last month of the financial year."This year we have been more selective, and we do focus on the major banks and GE - a major consumer player, and we haven't done much else."We have stuck to the top of the market, and therefore the quality of the book is very acceptable."Aveling adds the choice of debt purchase is not that credit card debt is easier to collect than personal debt, but that there is just more of it."On this occasion it happened to be credit card debt, it's all they were selling."I would give a small preference to credit card debt as it's more fluid; personal loans are usually a longer term arrangement - say with a commitment entered into two years ago maybe marginally harder to collect than something just run over your credit card 180 days ago."Aveling said there is not significantly more consumer debt to be purchased in the current environment than there was twelve months ago.