Saturday, January 2, 2010

State of the Collection, Part I

The President gives his State of the Union address in January, so I thought I'd do the same with my collection. Today, I'd like to focus on my Cubs team sets and what I've done with them over the past year.

When 2009 began, I had complete team sets from only five brands: Topps, Heritage, Kelloggs, Fleer, and Donruss. In fact, in one of my earliest posts, I was looking to you for help in trying to decide what to get next. Your suggestions pointed me towards Upper Deck, Pinnacle, and Score.

I got those done and then went a little crazy. I went after....
  • Allen and Ginter
  • Bowman
  • Collector's Choice
  • Cracker Jack
  • Flair
  • Goudey
  • Leaf
  • Pacific
  • Select
  • Studio
  • Stadium Club
  • Topps Chrome
  • Turkey Red
  • Ultra
That puts me up to 22 different brands of complete Cubs team sets. It has been a productive year (but lets not talk about the cost!)

Actually, the cost wasn't too bad. I found a huge chunk of the team sets on ebay, and many were in the $1 - $3 range. When I had to build the sets, Sportlots and their 18 cents cards was a big help, with Beckett Marketplace or ebay filling in any missing holes. I also got several sets from Teamsets4U, which not only is a great source for team sets, but also a great place for team set checklists.

In addition to the older sets, I also added the 2009 cards from a number of brands including:
  • Allen and Ginter
  • Bowman
  • Goudey
  • Heritage
  • O-Pee-Chee
  • Topps
  • Topps Chrome
  • Topps 206
  • Turkey Red
  • Upper Deck
When 2009 started, I had 3,174 Cubs cards in my collection. Today, I'm at 6,099. That means I added 2,925 cards over the past 12 months. Wow, I didn't think it was that many! And I know I can't keep that up for another year.

5 comments:

  1. Are you going to try to collect Topps Cubs sets dating all the way back to the 50s? That would look so cool in a binder. I guess it's too expensive. Maybe back to 1970 is possible. I dunno.

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  2. Actually, Topps was the complete brand that I finished. I have all the Topps from 1951 - 2009. However, the 1952 cards and the 1954 Ernie Banks are reprints. The originals are a little out of my price range! And yes, the look very cool in a binder! I've got a binder for each decade.

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  3. Do you have the Cubs Surf books from the late 80's? They are kind of cool. I think they did them in 1987 and 1988.

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  4. Do the team sets include subsets and inserts, or just standard base cars?

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  5. Section 36 - My sets are just the base cards and any traded/update cards. I started collecting as a kid in the late '60s'/early '70's...before there were all of the inserts/parallels/etc. of today.

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