I've hinted at it before but I am fully preparing to wrap up my sports card collection as much as possible. It will be hard to know exactly when my collection will be "done" but the most obvious way to see the finish line would be to complete sets. As a result I've become more of a set builder than ever.
This is the first in a short series (probably five parts) focusing on my set building progress. I'd planned to start with basketball, until Greg of The Collective Mind contacted me about some 2015 Panini Prizm football cards he had for trade. I sent him a PWE full of cards for his set building projects and received these:
Eddie Lacy was the only Packer of the bunch. He was not the only running back.
Not by a longhsot, lol. For some reason I always assumed Bishop Sankey was a tight end.
Mostly wide receivers here, headlined by HOFer Cris Carter.
2015 Prizm is a 300-card set, and the last 100 cards are rookies. Hunter is the best of the bunch here.
Greg, thanks for the nice boost to my set build!
I started this set from fat packs I purchased on Blowout Cards for the pre-pandemic price of ... $5 each? Really?!? (This is why I note the price I paid for things in each blog post. Sometimes I don't believe it myself!)
They're now $39.95. Which is a shame because these fat packs came with a pack of exclusive Red White & Blue parallels. Plucking singles off COMC is better for my budget, but it's less fun.
2015 Panini Prizm
205/300 cards (68.3% complete)
key cards (needs in red)
#34 Walter Payton
#201 Amari Cooper RC
#221 Darren Waller RC
#244 Jameis Winston RC
#264 Marcus Mariota RC
#288 Taylor Heinicke RC
#298 Tyler Lockett RC
I have been working on upgrading some singles from 1986 and 1987 Topps. '86 in particular is a very condition-sensitive set. Some of my '87s are off-center, gum stained, and have black ink lines dripping on the white border. '86s have major centering issues, and a number of mine have fuzzy corners.
Future Projects
If I decided to pursue another football set build it would probably be either 1990 Pro Set or 1985 Topps. I could be temped to buy back my childhood with a couple cheap boxes of Pro Set. '85 Topps is growing on me slightly, and it was the first football card set I ever saw. (I was five.) But that would be another very condition-sensitive set and I'm not sure my OCD could handle that, lol.
Are you working on any football card sets? What was your favorite football card set as a kid? Or now?
I love helping people finish sets where I can, so I'll see what I can do to assist you with these at some point, not that I love the idea of putting you closer to being "done"!
ReplyDeleteWrapping up your sports card collection? I can't conceive.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite football card set then and now is 1977 Topps. I'm currently building '79 Topps but there are so many baseball sets in front of it.
'86 football was the first sports card set I completed. With that and '87 baseball, there were certainly two great designs to kick off my collecting.
ReplyDeleteI've got a bunch of '90 Pro Set and '85 Topps when you're ready. :)
ReplyDeleteMy favorite football card sets as a kid were the 1989 Score or 1990 Pro Set sets. I still like both of those sets... as well as the 1982 Topps football set. I'm building a few football sets, but most are insert sets. The only base card set I'm attempting is the 1981 Topps set.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of calling my collection complete has gained a lot of traction with me since the boom got going.
ReplyDeleteWrapping up card collecting should immediately come with thunder or a dun-dun-dun. Say it ain't so!
ReplyDelete