There is a full cart over at sportlots that is just waiting for me to have time and money. Veteran readers know that this is not a great period for spending cash on cards for me, but the wallet loosens by mid-March.
One of the first things I will do when that time comes is click that ship button. The majority of my sportlots order is set needs and in a couple cases will finish off sets I've been chasing the last few years. Happy, happy, joy, joy!
I've mentioned before that set collecting makes the most sense to me, even in this age of Topps playing head games with the few set collectors who remain. While other kinds of collecting feels a little disjointed or scattered, collecting a set comes with a goal: finish the set. There is a defined end. And I've gotta have goals.
This brings me the most peace in collecting and even if that sportlots order feels like it's stagnating, I'm still working on those sets. Not too long ago I finished a TCDB trade with Mokolai that brought me quite a few cards for my set pursuits.
The most cards arrived from 1985 Donruss:
That is 101 former needs in that stack. I'm up to 555 cards for the set, meaning I need 105 to finish it. Of course the Clemens and Gooden cards are still on the want list, but I at least got some notables in this trade.
Very nice. The Cal Ripken card is interesting because that's one of the cards I pulled out of the few packs of this set I bought in 1985. I think I sent it off in some trade several years ago when I didn't think I'd be trying to complete any Donruss sets ever.
I now need to get my act together and find a binder for this thing. Half the fun of finishing a set is filling the empty slots!
Moving forward 20 years, here is one card from Mokolai for my 2005 Topps chase. Not a lot of enthusiasm for this set lately so I expect to still be trying to complete a year from now, maybe a year after that. But I'm 90 cards away from finishing it.
.jpg)
I also received four needs from the 1981 Fleer Star Stickers set (this is my kind of trade!). All of the other needs from this set are in my sportlots cart, in fact I got to remove the Morgan and Lynn cards from my cart -- always a thrill.
Finally four needs from 1986 Topps Traded, including the Barry Bonds card! I won't have to surrender any coins for Barry! Super sweet.
As I anticipated, it didn't take long to close in on completing this set. I am down to needing one card to wrap it up.
But it's not the Bo Jackson card.
That's because that card showed up in another TCDB trade with sometimes blogger Steve, who I've traded with many times before I knew what TCDB was.
It's a very nice example and again I'm pleased I won't have to chase his card on ebay or somewhere else. I still think all 1980s cards should be free. None of them are scarce.
Except the '86 Traded Billy Hatcher, apparently, which IS the last card I need to finish that set.
Steve also sent this "artist's rendering" Luke Appling off my 1990 Pacific Legends want list.
That was all the recent damage from TCDB on the set-finishing front but there is one more set I'm chasing that isn't really conducive to TCDB trades, at least in my experience.
These are two former needs from 1970 Topps. The Cleon Jones was a nice send from JJ, who is on Twitter. I landed the Ernie Banks myself.
I'm now down to the final six cards to finish this set. There are still three biggies (Gibson, Mays and Kaline) but I've landed tougher cards from this set so I hope to have a nice Completion Post at some point in future months (I just grabbed the Ray Sadecki card!).
And you know those kind of posts make me the happiest. Because I've finished a goal.
Comments