Fleer Finally Finished II

The featured set today is Fleer's 1961 Baseball Greats Set. The set almost doubled in size over the previous year, going from 79 cards to 154. The number of Cubs doubled too, from nine to 19. Once again I used the checklist from Teamsets4U and based the team designation on the uniform shown. Because of that, you'll see some famous names that you may not associate with the Cubs.

Before I get to the cards, I'd like to talk a little about their condition. These are 50 years old and all have yellowed over time. Some were also a bit dirty. There were several that had wax or gum residue on the fronts, too. I decided to try to clean that off. An old collector trick is to use a nylon stocking (no, I don't wear them....I borrowed one from Mrs. WW) to rub off the residue. It does a great job and really made a difference in the look of the card.

Does anyone else do this? Does anyone have a problem with me doing it. I know some collectors won't touch a card...the way it is is the way it is. My opinion is that I'm not changing or altering the card, I'm just removing something that was added to the card. Anyone else clean their cards, or try to remove creases (I haven't tried that yet)? Is it wrong?

Back to the cards! Fleer used a variety of background colors, so I thought I'd arrange the cards by colors.