The completist in me

I admit, I don't really know what "completist" means when it comes to our hobby. I suppose it could define anyone who collects cards in an attempt to complete something, whether that is a player set, a team set or just the set, period. But I've always associated the completist term with my first example, collecting the player.

Although we have lots of player collectors in the blog community, it's never been an aspect of collecting that I've truly understood. Sets I understand. Teams I understand. Players? One specific player? Only one? Umm, no. As much as I am interested in cards of my favorite player, Ron Cey, I really don't care if I get them ALL.

But if you expand that definition of "completist" to sets, I am guilty as charged, especially when it comes to one. The 2006 Topps set was the first current set I collected upon getting back into the hobby. And it remains my mission to obtain every base card, every update card, every insert card, every flippin' home run card of Mantle, and every flippin' home run card of big-headed Barry.

It's been a slow go, because I'm really not the super-obsessive type. And this kind of collecting takes obsession. Fortunately, there are readers who are happy to help me with my obsession. I believe that's called "enabling" isn't it?

Reader Voltaire, who is an Indians fan and has traded with our favorite Indians fan (well, one of our favorites), David, of Tribe Cards, sent me a couple of 2006 Updates & Highlights cards I needed. Kevin Thompson, at the top of the post, and Jamey Carroll mean I'm 16 cards away from completing the Update set, and then it's on to tracking down all those pesky inserts.

You can forget about asking me whether I'm ever going to try to find one of those Alex Gordon cards. I'm not. The Gordon cards, if you can find any, are impossibly priced. So I'm just going to have to hope that someone pulls one of those deals in which he's handing out $100 bills on the street corner, except instead of cash he's flipping people 2006 Gordons. And I've also got to hope he's on a street corner near me. Because not only am I not all that obsessive, I'm a little bit lazy, too.

Anyway, the reason why I'm attempting this task on the '06 set is because it symbolizes my reimmersion into the hobby. As I've mentioned before, I pretty much stopped collecting in 1994 and didn't pick up more then one pack in any single year until 2005. I got back into the hobby in 2004, collecting the old sets I had as a kid, then bought some Fan Favorites cards. I don't even think I would have started collecting the 2006 set if Topps wasn't inserting vintage '80s cards into their rack packs.

Which brings me to a side point about those '06 rack packs. Most of those cards were from the '80s, but I pulled cards as recent as 1993 and as old as 1979. Did anyone pull anything older than '79? I'm just curious.

I remember collectors that I knew at the time, when they found out that old '80s cards were being inserted into the current product, asking if that devalued the '80s cards since Topps apparently had all these extra cards from that decade lying around. My response basically was, "1980s cards don't have any value," which is true -- monetarily speaking anyway -- unless you're a rookie named Ripken or Bonds. And I wasn't pulling any of those cards out of the rack packs.

I'd find some Mattinglys and Gwynns, which were cool. But mostly it was the same guys over and over, which meant I ended up with this:

Yeah, a whole lot of Andy McGaffigan. And Lee Tunnell and Jerry Dybzinski. Those aren't even all of the McGaffigans that I pulled. The rest don't fit on the scanner.

But those old vintage cards sucked me back into the hobby. And now I'm back trying to complete Dodger sets and sets like A&G and Stadium Club and a couple of others. But I'm not bothering with the no-numbered Fukudomes and who-knows-how many variations of the Stadium Club rookies.

There is only one modern set I go "completist" for, and that is 2006 Topps.

So thanks, Voltaire, for getting me two cards closer to the goal. And, also, thanks for the Dodgers! Your Indians have been shipped!