The Joy of A Completed Set Run

For quite sometime now I've been working on adding each Topps baseball set from the time I was born to when I jumped out of the hobby during my teenage years. 

I started collecting cards in 1988, but I didn't finish that set until the summer of 2019. It wasn't that it was that difficult, but I never really took the time to see what I had until decades later. For the record, the first set build I managed to complete was the 1989 Topps set the summer it came out.  

Anyway, immediately following the completion of the '88 set I started on the 1982 set, one which I was pretty excited about. Older sets have star names which are not frequently on my radar and other players to learn about. Overall, it's a fun learning experience collecting an older set, but one that was interrupted by Covid. Also, I came to find not many collectors build sets from the early 80's so most card show dealers leave their inventory at home. Womp-womp.  

This past summer I thought I tracked down the last cards for the set, but after double checking I found I was missing card #600. Ouch. A double zero card number!  Thankfully, it was an 18 cent purchase from Sportlots, plus shipping of course. The card arrived early last week. 

Woo-Hoo! Now I have all the Topps sets from 1978 through 1993 Series 1. It's not the longest consecutive run on the blogosphere, but it's something I'm definitely proud of. 

A few set tidbits: 

• I have one set in a binder (1978) so I can flip through whenever the mood strikes. 
• Once upon a time I had three 1989 and three 1992 hand-collated sets. I busted a lot of junk wax during my youth!
• My favorite set build was the 1987 set, or better known to me as the 1987 Topps Project. I started the project on January 12 of 2014 with a modest stack of roughly 200 cards and finished the set in NINE days through blogger trades. That was a lot of fun and a lot of trades! (I later came to find I was missing five cards when double checking. I'm noticing a trend here.)

Well, that puts a wrap on my set building for the most part and this post also closes out 2021. 

Thanks for reading and I hope 2022 is a great one for you!