100+ & COUNTING

                        Tonight after I got done with my second job I decided to count how many sets in my baseball wantlist am I currently working on. Well......short story I am over 100 sets that I am working on & that's just baseball. As a set builder of all 4 sports I know that its well over 150 of them.  I have talked about the struggles of being a set builder in the past on this blog.

 
My Current Oldest set I am not making anything older.

                   My oldest set that I made was the 1960 Fleer Baseball Greats. After completing it last summer thanks to a friend of mine whom I call Marvelous Marv after the Yankee/Mets first Baseman Marv Throneberry. He located an expensive Ruth card to complete my set. I am not even going to even bother to try for the Pepper Martin card #80 cause it would be hard to locate at reasonable price let alone I would have to try to locate all 3 different fronts of that card so I am happy with 79 of them & most people whom made the set also stopped in the same spot. Now Marv & his brother Jay have been great friends of mine through the last I like to say at least 7 years now.

 
Marv is in the orange shirt, Jay is in the plaid.

                   Both guys have great vintage stock & it was Marv who convinced me to do the 1960 Fleer set. He said it would look nice to go with my 1967 Topps set its easy to make. After completing it I figured I might as well try to do the 1961 set as well to go with it since I like some of the old time greats of the game & at the time I am posting this post I am down to 16 players from completing my set. Both guys are from Zeeland, Michigan which is the hometown of Hall of Fame Pitcher Jim Kaat. So if your from the west end of my home state you might have run into these guys at shows. Now Marv last summer surprised me after constantly trying to convince him to attend at National Sports Card Convention with me & Greg I was surprised to see Marv sitting at a table going through a binder of 1955 Bowman finding the missing cards he needed. Marv has top notch condition on all his cards plus he's never cheated on me in getting a great deal on the vintage I need after all he gave me 24 out of the 79 1960 Fleer for a great price. Plus I introduced Greg to Marv & well Marv has been his hook up for some of his vintage set needs. So if you like me to see if Marv would like more trading people on older stuff lmk in the comments & Ill check with him the next show I see him at which will be this Sunday in Livonia, Michigan at the VFW Hall.

                                Roy Campanella once said about the game of baseball "....You have to be a lot of little boy in you to play baseball for a living...." I guess both Marv & Jay like me have a lot of little boy in collecting cards of our heroes. I haven't got a clue what sets I want to make for baseball in the future other than flagship Topps like I mentioned before I got a complete run of 1971 to the present I have no means to make a 1970 set cause the Grey borders don't scream out to me another reason I didn't do the Heritage of that year when it was released cause the again it didn't call me to make. I might in 2 years try the Heritage design of the 1977 but that's way off in the future for me to decide on after all I am still trying to finish some of the other Heritage sets that I have made through the years only to maybe completed just the 2004 version. 

                     I can only hope that I can knock out 3 more sets of baseball before the year ends. Also hopefully that people that read my posts can help me out too. I know its a plea that seldom is asked but, I know my lists are outrageous weird like I just hope not to go another 5 years trying to complete a 2024 set of the Heritage Box toppers still. So with that as always I am reminded of the great Rogers Hornsby quote about signing for kids. "Any Ballplayer who doesn't sign autographs for little kids ain't an American. He's a communist."