Sunday, July 28, 2013

The return of You Complete Me! Part 4: go big or go home

Today will be my last YCM post from this latest bunch, though I have to say completing more sets, as usual, as inspired me to finish more, so I may be hitting up SportLots and the like again before long!  Here are the last two packages, plus the results from my several purchases this time:

Package #1 (SportLots):
These actually came from a slightly larger package that also included a bunch of Michigan baseball PC guys, which you'll get to see eventually on the other blog.  Still, while it's only two cards, this pair closes the book on the 2010 Score Football set, including the large rookie subset.  I know one of you that I've traded with before hit me up with a HUGE chunk of that subset, a gesture that made this possible, but I'm sorry to say I can't find who it was now; thank you if you remember doing that!

# of cards:  2
# of sets added to:  1
# of sets completed:  1


Package #2 (SportLots): 
I can't be positive, but I'm pretty sure this large package spawned from the number of 2002 Topps Totals this seller had.  Once I noticed just how many of my wants were in his inventory, I made sure to search each and every one and add everything he had that I could use.  From Topps' debut "ALL THE PLAYERS" set, he helped me knock off a very productive number of 14 cards, meaning I'm down to just 28 from the massive 990-card offering.  I'll definitely feel a great sense of accomplishment when this one is done. 
A few months ago I received a ton of help with 2009 Topps from a few bloggers, which I still appreciate very much since I didn't end up buying a ton of packs of that product.  This time I made a bit more progress with it as I was able to add seven cards I needed, putting me at just 13 to go.  That's the most recent Topps flagship set I'm working on since I have 2010 all set and haven't pursued any since.

I also managed to find a pair of 2010 Bowman Chrome Prospects I needed.  That's a set I've kind of stalled on for a while since I don't feel a big rush to complete it--it's not like I'm missing any big names at this point.  Since the scans make them hard to see, I'll mention that the two I added were Simon Castro and D.J. LeMahieu.  The latter is actually a Michigan native whom the Tigers drafted in '07, but he ended up playing for a different Tigers team--LSU.  The pair gets me down to 12 cards left in this set known mostly for card #1, which is a Strasburg.

Moving on to football, here's another pair that helps a little.  I've been working on 2005 Topps Draft football since before I started this blog, and I still need a good amount of the set, but since this seller had two I needed, it made sense to add them.  In this case it was a pair of veterans, though most of what I need at this point falls in the group of rookies.  Fortunately I've long had the big gun, Aaron Rodgers, out of the way.  Some day I'll get the 31 cards I still need to finish this one up.

A month from today will be this here blog's third anniversary; three days from now is the third anniversary of my first box break post, in which I busted a jumbo of 2006 Bowman from Dave & Adam's Card World.  That gives you an idea of how long I've been working on/neglecting this set.  Well I was fortunate that this SportLots seller had a solid 15 cards I needed from the 275-card strong set, including a nice number of rookies, none of which was an especially big name.  10 more cards and I can finally close the books on a set with extra special significance to TMV!

This Chrome set actually also came from that same box with cards #1-55 inserted in packs of 2006 Bowman.  In that break I pulled 39 of those 55, and apparently I hadn't done a lick of work to make more progress because I still needed those last 16 up until a couple weeks ago.  You saw one of those in last week's post, and today you get the final 15, completing the set for good!  Among the players I decided to highlight are former Wolverine TE Tim Massaquoi and Hank Baskett, the "favorite" player of the main character of the novel The Silver Linings Playbook, which I wholeheartedly recommend since the outstanding movie did a great job of bringing it to the big screen.  Anyway, woohoo, another completed set!

Continuing the theme of "ALL THE 2006 FOOTBALL SETS," here's '06 Topps flagship.  This is another set where the names don't scan very well, but among the players here are Lions Megabust (sorry for the redundancy) Mike Williams, retiring Bear Brian Urlacher, and a RC of former Western Michigan Bronco/current Viking Greg Jennings.  All told I added 22 cards, besides the ones you saw last Sunday, and therefore that's ANOTHER completed set today!

The guy only had a pair of 2008 Topps, one of my favorite sets, but since I've been working on that for so long I'll take any help I can get.  Better yet, one of the pickups was former Michigan QB Brian Griese in his second go-round with the Bucs in his final season.  I need just 10 cards to knock this one off, and count me motivated to get it done before long!

And finally we come to a single card, and maybe the one I'm most excited about, strange as that may be.  Again, you saw some of these cards last week, and I kind of explained how I've had this set on the back-burner for about 10 years.  Well NO MORE--this set is DONE with the addition of this here card, a RC of Stars goalie Dan Ellis.  That was the only hockey set wantlist I had, though I'm not killing the page in case I get interested in something else.  Another completed project and another thing to celebrate!

# of cards:  80
# of sets added to:  9
# of sets completed:  3

Stats for the day:
  • Packages:  2
  • Total cards:  82
  • Sets added to:  10
  • Sets completed:  3
Total You Complete Me stats:
  • Packages:  7
  • Total cards:  185
  • Sets added to:  14
  • Sets completed:  4

As a reminder, here's how things stood on day 1:
Baseball:  9 sets left, 151 cards needed
Football:  12 sets left, 457 cards needed
Hockey:  1 set left, 20 cards needed


Thanks to this project I picked up 185/628 set wants I needed, impacting 14/22 of those sets I was working on and completing four of them.  That's just the kind of progress that keeps me motivated enough to keep at it...you know, eventually.

That's all for YCM this time, though keep an eye out in the future for more of these as I attack my dwindling set wants.  Stay tuned for other stuff this week!

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