The return of You Complete Me! Part 1

If you've followed me for a bit you know in the past I've run a feature called "You Complete Me" where I show off purchases (usually SportLots, occasionally COMC and eBay) or trades that finish up sets I've been working on.  I haven't done one of those posts in a while, but I'm happy to announce that thanks to a bunch of SportLots buys and a few on COMC, I've made major headway on quite a few of my sets from all three wantlists.  That didn't keep me from buying other stuff this month, (and pretty much blowing my budget until August) of course, but I decided I wanted to make large gains towards some projects that have been sitting around for a LONG time.

Before I show off today's pickups, I thought I'd give a quick "before" look at my needs so we can all get a better idea afterwards of how well I did:  (NOTE:  this doesn't include the three baseball complete sets I'm still looking for--just the ones I'm building by hand)

Baseball:  9 sets left, 151 cards needed
Football:  12 sets left, 457 cards needed
Hockey:  1 set left, 20 cards needed

Ok, on to today's haul:

Envelope #1 (SportLots):

2001 Stadium Club #187, 189, 196

I'm an unabashed admirer of Stadium Club, as I think I've implied or stated a few (hundred) times on this here blog.  I also happen to think that 2001 is one of the best versions of that set ever.  Combine excellent photography with a gorgeous full-bleed design, shininess out the wazoo, and a nice color scheme and you get one of Topps' better offerings.  This was a 200-card set that featured 150 vets and 50 rookies, 25 of which were short-printed to 1:6 packs, which was really the only downside.

As you might imagine, since it took me 12 years to sew this one up, all three of these cards were SPed, and I had rarely seen any of them on COMC, much less all at once.  My luck changed earlier this week when I found one guy that did in fact have the trio I needed.  I had to spend almost $6 shipped to get them, but it was easily worth it in my mind to finish up what had been the oldest set on my baseball wantlist.  This becomes one of my favorite all-time completed sets, and I may be inspired to write up a more detailed post on it in the future.

# of cards:  3
# of sets added to:  1
# of sets completed:  1

Stats for the day:

• Packages:  1
• Total cards:  3
• Sets added to:  1
• Sets completed:  1

Total You Complete Me stats:

• Packages:  1
• Total cards:  3
• Sets added to:  1
• Sets completed:  1

Well, that was certainly a great way to start!  Stay tuned for more as each package arrives.