The "OMG what did I get myself into?" lot part 3: all set

While I hadn't planned on finishing up covering my enormous Facebook Marketplace collection purchase stuff before everything else, I figured I might as well go ahead since my next most recent post, technically part 2 in this series, went over the trade bait I had available since I wanted to include what I could in Christmas Cards shipments. So here we are!

Most of what I have left to cover is the complete and partial sets I pieced together from the multiple unsorted boxes of commons and inserts. And I'm not kidding when I say "unsorted" because most of those monster boxes had sets mixed in them like they got hit by a tornado. That's why it took me so long to sort everything out, such as an almost full 5000-card monster box of '96 Score!

Anyway to remind you, the haul looked like this:

I did hold onto a few non-card items I'll show off later, but first I'll give y'all a look at the sets:

1994 Finest: well here's a great way to start! As I think I've mentioned once or twice here, one of the boxes was filled up quite nicely with base and inserts from 1994-97 Finest, putting me in a good position to chase some of them when that would have been unlikely otherwise. The set that reminds me of Fruit Stripe Gum has 440 cards to chase and I ended up at a healthy 388 when combining the ones in the box with what was already in my collection. (Wantlist link)

1994 Ultra Series 2: this one really takes me back to when I was around 10 or 11, and I especially remember the Award Winners insert. The base was quite cool too and portended some good things that I think came to fruition in the '97 version, one of my favorites. The collection pretty much only included Series 2 so we'll see if I ever try to track down the first, but it wouldn't be the only set in my collection that's halfway done! At least I only need three cards to sew this one up. (Wantlist link)

1995 Donruss Series 1: another partial set and there's a couple more to get to as well. I kind of like how Donruss changed things up a bit back in their heyday like this version with the home plate inset photos and foil. As you'll sometimes see the two series here weren't split down the middle but instead the one I'm working on is 330 cards and the other is 220. With what I had already in my collections I came up a reasonable 10 cards short so this one shouldn't be bad to finish. (Wantlist link)

1995 Finest: didn't think I'd have much chance of owning this one for quite a while either! There weren't as many of these in the box as those from the other years of Finest but I still ended up with a lot of the first version that came with protectors. On a related note, you might remember from my first post about this collection pickup that I grabbed all the dupes I found of my PC guys so I'd have peeled versions of them as well. I'm just shy of 75% of this set at 246/330 when including my existing PC cards. (Wantlist link)

1995 Leaf Series 1: another half set, this one includes probably one of the more divisive designs in the hobby, but I've always liked it so getting to chase it is fun for me. The 400-card complete set was split in half and the first series includes some of my PC guys and favorite Tigers to collect like Dean Palmer, Cecil Fielder, Kirk Gibson, Greg Maddux, Cal Ripken Jr., and Lou Whitaker. I fell just one card short of the series, needing Dante Bichette's card #135. (Wantlist link)

1995 Score Series 1: I'm not the biggest fan of the infield dirt-colored backgrounds Score went with in '95 but this is still kind of a fun set otherwise. This is (sort of) the last of the partial sets, at least in the sense that it's the last one I only ended up with one series of. Once again this one comes in at 330 cards while #2 was 275. There's plenty of stars to see here plus a few prospects, season highlights, and, interestingly enough, dual team checklists. At some point in the new year I'll try to track down the 22 cards I need to finish this one and then maybe eventually figure out if I want the second series as well. (Wantlist link)

1996 Donruss: this one didn't take too long to grow on me and I was glad to see it among the boxes I was sorting through. The full bleed photos are quite nice though I understand the criticism of the placement of the team name/logo box. Like others here this one was issued in two series but both of them were plenty present in what I pulled so I'll be able to work on completing the whole thing, which is nice. And that shouldn't take long since I just need five of the 550 base cards! (Wantlist link)

1996 Finest (Common/Bronze only): man is this one exciting! I think '96 and '97 are my two favorite versions of Finest from the 90s and the box stuffed with the brand had plenty of the former--enough to put together two more complete Series 2 sets and two more of those that both needed fewer than 10. Oh, and in my case I'm shooting for the whole shebang, at least when it comes to the bronze base cards (also called Common on the backs). Though I came away with a surprising number of the silver and gold cards I'm more than happy to stick to the 110 cards from each series that could be found most often. That means I'm just chasing #21 (Eddie Murray), #101 (Tim Wakefield), and possibly a decently expensive Derek Jeter (#92) to close out the set with Series 1. That I'm this close to it is awesome, and plus I added more peeled cards to my collection! (Wantlist link (includes rarer cards of PC guys))

1996 Flair (Silver base w/ gold foil and Gold base w/ silver foil): I'm handling these together since they were apparently produced in the same quantities, though I tend to consider the cards with silver backgrounds and gold foil logos/names the "true" base. There was one monster box almost full of these and at first I thought there were five complete sets but instead they were mixed between the two versions. That led to an enormous TCDB project to get both variants correctly on the checklists (many thanks to those that did the bulk of the work, though I helped!) and now I'm chasing each 400-card variation. Considering how high-end it was at the time it's pretty cool that I seem to be a total of 25 cards shy of owning both silver and gold sets! (Wantlist link)

1996 Leaf: this is a fun, colorful and foil-y set with some cool photos so I was happy to end up with all 220 cards with enough dupes to put together a second set minus just one card (Jason Isringhausen's #26). It's got a good mix of Tigers and PC guys I collect while not being huge so it's right up my alley in a 90s kind of way!

1996 Score: and the final set today is a textbook entry from Score back when they still produced baseball sets. The 1996 version weighs in at 517 cards and I had absolutely zero problem pulling a whole set from the mess that was the boxes after stuffing a monster box full of commons. In fact, I ended up with three complete sets, a fourth missing just one card, and three more Series 1 sets, plus lots of extras! I still like the relatively simple look, decent subsets, and cool photos like Hal Morris' card above, so it was great to land one more full set here.

And now here's a quick look at what else I kept, generally for future TCDB trade bait and other deals:

Inserts part 1: 1994-97 Finest. This will be true of all three groups of inserts I show here but considering how many I kept for my PCs and included in Christmas card packages, it's absolutely bonkers to me that I have this many cards left, and some really nice ones too! I'm hoping I can turn some of the Refractors and Silver/Gold cards into similar ones of the players I collect.

Inserts part 2: 1996 and '97 Donruss. There's still a nice pile of Press Proofs (Gold and Silver) from both years giving you an idea of just how many there were (again). There's also a handful of examples from four other '97 chase cards, with Power Alley and Rocket Launchers being numbered. I still remember opening '97 Donruss boxes, especially the Rookie Update (essentially series 2) version fondly.

Inserts part 3: the last of them, from '96 Bowman and Score. That includes a few Bowman's Best previews and their parallels (though most got traded), ROY Candidates, and a Mantle reprint. Score includes Gold Stars, Future Franchise, Diamond Aces, and Artist's Proofs. I also mentioned the bevy of Dugout Collection parallels I had left in the last post listing stuff for trade, and those will also make their way to my TCDB trade bait at some point soon.

This plaque of Junior Griffey was one of three in the lot and one of two of this exact player, though the others ended up in Christmas packages. I already had something similar but since there were two up for grabs I kept the one that was more useful to me as it also included a card I didn't own, a fun 90s insert!

And finally, I kept a pretty large number of souvenir cups from a family that obviously loved them some Tigers and Wolverines. I'm more likely to store these than display them but couldn't convince myself to get rid of them, other than the duplicates, some of which I redistributed.

Well, that's pretty much everything I wanted to show off! As a reminder, I still have a good amount of stuff available from the last post that I'm willing to make deals for until I get sick of seeing it and list it on TCDB or dump it on Facebook/elsewhere.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas (I sure did!) and look forward to showing off the December trade packages and other pickups I keep promising.