Baseball Cards                                   Home

                                                                                                Updated March 27, 2008                                                                          Home

 

I am an occasionally avid baseball card collector.  My two sons (age 13 and 8) nudged me back into collecting last year after a typical couple year hiatus.  Here is a list of major needs for sets I’m working on.  Would love to trade straight up to complete these sets.  Have lots of extras for most of them, particularly the later years.  When I’m down to a small # of cards, I have listed the player name to make it even easier to find cards at shows.  Email me at [email protected] if you’d like to trade.

 

 

Other Collecting Notes:

 

 I have zero interest in game-used stuff, autographs, or super-rare cards.  I collect cards that are attractive and players I like.  I don’t keep up with the hobby too closely for awhile, then I’ll get interested in a few sets and learn about them. There’s just too much product out there to have any desire to keep up with it all, and I don’t want to chase “valuable” stuff anyway, so it makes it fairly easy for me to just focus on a few sets I like.

 

I started collecting circa 1971 as a 5-year-old, although I think I just had a couple of packs that my mom likely bought me at the local Handy Andy convenience store.  At about age 12 (the ’78 Topps set), I really started collecting, buying 2 packs a day on many summer days, and trading with friends.  I collected for a couple of years, then didn’t do much after 1981.  I missed Upper Deck’s first year, but saw the packs in a local grocery store in 1990 and plunked down .77 to try a pack.  I immediately fell in love, and jumped headfirst back into collecting, going all over the place to buy UD wax from that ’90 set, and starting to fill holes in my collection from the 80s and earlier.  Collected pretty steadily for several years, then went into my intermittent pattern that I have today!

 

I like to put sets together from ‘wax’ (as we used to call it!), unless it’s just too expensive, in which case I’ll buy the set.  One of my goals is to assemble a complete run of Topps base sets from 1980-present, and Upper Deck from 1989-present.  For Topps, I have all the 80s except 81 and 82 (don’t know why I haven’t just bought them yet!).  Also have mostly completed 90-91, have ’92 set, mostly completed ’93-94, and lots of wax to open for ’95-06.  I have the ’99, 00 and ‘04 sets. 

 

I collect the sets in boxes or sometimes in sheets and binders.  One of my favorite binders is simply my “favorite cards” binder, based solely on the appearance of the card.  The first sheet or two is in ranked order.  I love the vertical cards, and ’73 Mike Andrews quickly comes to mind as being near the top of the list.  I think ’74 Hank Aaron #1 is in the first pocket.  However, I haven’t updated this binder in well over 8 years, so it will be very interesting at some point to update it with all the cool stuff that’s come out in the past 8-10 years.

 

Following is a summary of what I’m working on.

 

Topps Base Sets

1967 – love this set.  Have a bunch of commons only at this point.

1970 – not really working on this one, but like the set and will someday

1971 – started working on this one in ’07 and now have over 500 cards in the set.  See list above.

1972 – ditto 1967. Lots of commons, few stars, will be costly to complete.

1973 – have been working on completing this Topps set for over 10 years; got mid-grade Schmidt last year! Only 17 cards needed.

1974 – working on completing as well, 2 cards needed!

1975-76 – many cards needed to complete these sets

1977 – made lots of progress on this one in ’07, only 21 needed!

1978 – almost complete!

1979 – may finish assembling this set or buy complete set

1980, 82-89 - have complete sets. 

1981, 1982 – have handful.  Will likely buy completet sets someday.

1990 – 81 needed to complete

1991 – 5 needed to complete.

1992 – have complete set

1993-1994 – recently opened remaining wax, need 81 and 127 to complete, respectively.

1995-1998 – have wax, need to open and assemble!  (Need ’97 series 1 wax)

1999, 2000, 2004 – have complete set

2001-2003, 2005-2006 – have wax, need to open and assemble

2007 – need 2 (see list above), assembled from wax with my kids, a blast.  Love the ’71-ish black border design.

2008 – have 2 series 1 boxes to open and assemble

 

Topps Other

2001 Archives – would love to trade extras to fill holes in my set, mostly need Series 1

2002 Archives – ditto above

2003 Fan Favorites – complete

2004 Fan Favorites – would like to buy set or wax

 

2002 Heritage – like this set, just have a few commons

2003 Heritage – ditto above

2004 Heritage – have many commons and many duplicates to trade; need all stars

 

Upper Deck

1989 - have set (minus Griffey)

1990 – need 4, assembled set from wax (this was the set that got me back into collecting after a 10-year absence; bought .77 packs at Sack ‘n Save)

1991 – lots of wax to assemble set

1992 – ditto

1993 – ditto

1994 – ditto

1995-1999, 2001 – have some wax but needs lots more to put sets together

2000, 2002-2006 – have much wax, need to open/assemble

2007 – need series 1 wax

2008 – need to assemble ‘needed’ list as I have ~400 cards

 

2001 Vintage – many packs to open to work on this set

2002 Vintage – ditto; love this ’71 style!

2003 Vintage – have few cards; need to find wax to assemble set; love the ’65 style!

2004 Vintage – was a bit disappointed in this design, which led me to look into Heritage

 

Fleer/Donruss

 

Have many 80s sets, but don’t really collect these brands as much, although I love the Diamond Kings and some of the Fleer stuff (e.g., Tradition) is neat.

 

Other

 

Like all collectors, I have a ton of various stuff (Leaf, Ted Williams, Bowman, etc.) that I don’t collect consistently.  Topps is my #1 brand, followed by Upper Deck, and occasionally I’ll pick up Fleer/Donruss/Other, or the big box of commons to see a good cross-section of what’s out there just for kicks.  Love retro style sets and archives/reprint style sets.  Picked up two boxes of the UD ‘70s set last year.