2024 is already a collecting success

 

At the start of the year the last couple of years I've mentioned that it'd be nice if I completed the 1982 Donruss set.

It hasn't been much of a priority because I like other card things a lot more, but '82 Donruss is one of the few traditional sets from my collecting youth that I had not finished. It's seemed like a must-do for awhile.

I knew the best route to get the set finished was to just buy it all at once. Fifty or sixty bucks ought to do it. To get myself focused I placed the stack of 1982 Donruss I already had at the corner of my card desk, where I could see it every single day.

There it is. I see that stack as soon as I walk into the card room and I walk into that room multiple times a day. You can see that it's a healthy stack and that's one of the reasons why it's taken me so long to do anything about it. With more than half of the set already in my possession, that's a lot of dupes if I order a full set.

So, that stack has been sitting there for two years. More than two years.

But I had started doing some research online and had finally placed a complete '82 Donruss set in my ebay cart ... where it sat for three or four months, maybe more. I'm not in the habit of buying complete old sets online and I always worry that some cards will be missing -- key cards -- and then how will that conversation go when I find out?

This is where my friend Joe stepped in, totally by coincidence. I've traded with Joe a few times in the past and he's sent me great cards a bunch of times, all documented on the blog. He reached out to me a week or two ago on Twitter, mentioning that he had acquired a bunch of cards from the 1970s and 1980s, including complete sets. He asked me if I needed any sets from the early 1980s.

 

I've finished all the sets from the early '80s ... except 1982 and 1983 Donruss. "How about a complete '82 Donruss set?" he asked. Well, that's a sign! Let me just delete it out of my cart!

 

The set arrived secured in the best wrapping job I've seen in my life.

 

There is the set after the box was opened, with the Cal Ripken Jr. rookie on top for all to see. (All the puzzle pieces, too!)

I went through the whole set to make sure all the cards were there. It turns out there were 7 or 8 missing. I was able to cover all but three with what I had in my collection already and then Joe instantly sent the final three.

 

And the set is finished! So much easier than haggling with an ebay seller you don't know.

There are a lot of mentions about early Donruss sets in the early days of this blog and I wasn't kind to them. Growing up, Donruss did not impress me, especially after collecting Topps for the previous six years. The '82 set in particular looked childish to me, I was still in "buy everything that is being sold" mode at that time, but 1982 was when I started applying the brakes a little and my reaction to Donruss had a bit to do with that.

However as the years went on and I started "collecting online," I noticed a lot of social media affection for Donruss, especially late '80s Donruss, but virtually no mention of the early '80s sets. Looking at those later '80s sets, well, I think I like the early '80s ones better. At the very least, they contain photos of the players I grew up watching.

And that's why I want this set -- I need to see never-before-seen-by-me photos of those guys. It's always a rush. That card of Larry Parrish for example. Wow.

 

So these are all stars of this set that I didn't have in my collection already and with a few exceptions, I had never seen until the cards arrived at my door late last week.

 

A whole bunch of notables from that time period who are rarely mentioned these days but I followed them well and all these cards are new to me.

 

A few more favorites. All new.

 

 

 Some action cards I had never seen before.

The early '80s sets were always good to managers. These were fun to see.

I also got the corrected version of the Shane Rawley card (left) after owning the error version ever since I pulled it out of a pack in 1982. (That's Jim Anderson).

 

Aside from featuring the Cal Ripken rookie card, 1982 Donruss is also known as the first set to include a Diamond Kings subset.

I could always take or leave these cards, but the '82 version are my favorites. They look big and accurate, for the most part. I knew right away which ones I had never seen before including the Pete Rose.

 

I got all the unnumbered checklists in the set, too ... er, pardon me, Check Lists.

 

So, there. That is the first large completed set of 2024. And since I measure my collecting success in terms of completing sets, I think 2024 is already a collecting success no matter that there are still nine months to go. (I've still got to get myself a binder for it ... and find a spot on the binder shelves).

 

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with around 370 1982 Donruss duplicates now. They'd be a good starter set for someone, I was treating my cards with respect by '82 so they're all in decent shape.

 

As for that other early '80s set I'd like to complete -- that one with the pesky rookie trio in it -- that will be more difficult. I have the Gwynn rookie already and I might have the Sandberg one. I don't feel like paying the price the '83 Donruss set goes just for the rest -- although I collected way less '83 Donruss than I did '82 Donruss back in the day.

But that's for some future concern. Today is about completing a set! The greatest thing that can happen in this hobby.