The wait is over, the wantlist is smaller

As I promised and overhyped and promised some more, the stragglers of my set completion bonanza arrived today.  Here, then, is a look at what a few hours on Sportlots, COMC and eBay did to significantly shrink my set wantlists, as I finished the following sets:

*NOTE:  some sets are accompanied by scans, but they may not include every card I needed, just a select few

Baseball:

1996 Sportflix:  well, it only took me about 15 years to put this one to bed....
1996 Ultra Series II:  I bought a box of these way back and, again, it took me a long time to get it done.  No plans to build Series I--I'll either buy a set or get rid of Series II.
1997 Fleer:  Just a fantastic looking set, definitely one of my favorites.  Hooray for a new Tram!

1997 Score Premium Stock/Hobby Reserve:  Bought a couple boxes of these back in the day, never had the motivation to finish it up until now.
1998 Pinnacle Mint Bronze Cards:  I only needed one freakin' card (Jose Cruz Jr.) but I had a hard time trading for it anywhere, so on my wantlist it sat.
1998 Score Rookie Traded:  Same as Pinnacle Mint, different player.
1998 Studio Portraits 8x10:  No scan of the last four I needed (which started this whole process, actually) as I'm going to do a gallery of them soon!  I originally was going after these with my eBay bucks, but Google searching led me to SportLots and the rest is history.
1998 Upper Deck:  A spiffy looking set that lacked only four cards, but included some of the more expensive needs on my list.  A couple of those came from COMC.
1999 Skybox Thunder:  I randomly won a box of this set from Beckett way back, and for some reason, though I didn't care for the look, I chased it anyway.  I just probably wasn't motivated to finish it thanks to its lack of appeal.

1999 Stadium Club:  Another hard-to-find single card!
1999 Topps Series II (set 2):  I think I got an extra box of just Series II a while back, or had a bunch of doubles or something because I had most of a Series II set.  Of the pair of cards I needed, the Sosa was definitely more expensive.  Remember when these were huge?

2000 Bowman:  One of the few I needed in this set was former Mariners bust prospect Ryan Anderson.  Remember him?  Man, these sets make me all nostalgic....
2000 Fleer:  Just needed the Big Hurt, no problem thanks to Sportlots.
2000 Ultra:  Kind of a cool looking set, if not much of a standout for me.
2000 Upper Deck MVP Set 2:  I'd needed this Richie Sexson forever but just couldn't find it easily until now.  Good riddance.
2001 Donruss Retro 2000:  You either love it or hate it.  While it didn't make for an easy-to-complete set (along with the Retro 99s), I thought it was a fun idea.  Of course I still needed the Ripken.

2001 Fleer Triple Crown:  Add this to the "bought the box, nothing special, chased the set anyway" pile.
2001 Upper Deck:  One of my favorite UD sets for some reason.  Definitely a good rookie year (Pujols and Ichiro, of course).
2002 Donruss Rookies:  I needed a scrub and...Cliff Lee.  COMC to the rescue!  I love Donruss' rookie sets, and I'm glad to have this one done.

2002 Topps Archives:  I enjoyed some of Topps' reprint offerings, until they offered them ad nauseum.
2002 Topps Total Award Winners:  The base set was fun to chase so I busted a lot of packs and of course pulled a ton of the various inserts.
2002 Topps Total Total Topps:  These too.  I think in doing so I'm working on a master set, but I could be wrong.  I do still need help with the base set!
2004 Bowman:  A year or three ago I found a guy on eBay that wanted, I think, $1 for a pair of these (why would I want two?) plus a ridiculous shipping fee for two cards.  Screw that!  SportLots gets another one done.
2004 Fleer Hot Prospects Draft Edition:  Got a load of mid-'00s Fleer packs on eBay a few years ago, which covers the next few sets as well.  I liked the look of this one for sure and now I'm rewarded with another completed set.
2005 Flair:  Not quite premium but not plain either--just right.
2005 Fleer Patchworks:  Solid, if unspectacular, base set.
2005 Skybox Autographics:  The facsimile sigs are kind of cool.
2006 Topps:  I either finish Topps flagship sets quickly or let them linger for a long time--no middle ground.  Hooray Rich Hill rookie!

2006 Ultra:  A group of blasters and packs didn't get it done but SportLots did.
2007 Topps:  Willie Randolph completes this set for me finally!
2010 Bowman:  A pair of cards put this one to bed--now on to the Prospects, Draft and stuff!

Football:

2001 Topps:  Yeah, that took quite a while considering I did buy the box that year.  I slowly chipped away at it, but it still took a while.  A-Train RC!

2005 Topps:  A set whose design I liked and whose packs I liked more (rack packs!).  I needed a few more here, but surprisingly, only Cadillac Williams among the RCs.
2007 Bowman:  Interesting note here:  this set is the reason I went back for seconds on SportLots--I thought I had included Le'Ron McClain's RC in my first purchase, but I missed it.  So I went back and snagged it, and since I needed to make shipping and the overall purchase worth it, I completed a few more sets, which worked out nicely.  Breaston RC!

2007 Bowman Chrome:  Just the first series that came with the base set, not the whole thing, to clarify.
2008 SAGE Hit:  I'm not sure how I still needed one of these, but I was happy to knock it off the list for sure.
2008 Upper Deck Rookie Exclusives:  I almost bought another blaster of these, but since I only needed a handful, I just completed one set by hand instead.  Great looking photography, and I picked up a Jake Long I didn't have.

2010 Absolute Memorabilia Retail sets 2 and 3:  A bunch of stuffed rack packs plus a small set size equalled a few sets for me.  I'll be making my surplus sets available soon.

2010 Topps:  I probably could have had this done sooner, but whatever.  I spent my couple eBay bucks on the Suh, my only eBay contribution to this quest.  A nice pair of Lions RCs:

This has nothing to do with set completion, but it's an appropriate time to mention that along with my 2002 Donruss Rookies Cliff Lee from COMC, I got the seller to include this:

a 2006 Press Pass Jason Avant autograph.


In case you weren't counting, I completed 40 sets thanks to these purchases, which totalled about $80 shipped at Sportlots, $15 on COMC and $2 on eBay.  While I prefer trading and hope to complete some of my remaining conquests that way instead of throwing money at the problem, in this case, every penny was worth it.  This simply made an enormous dent in my wantlist and helped give me more focus on that instead of buying useless blasters/boxes.

Thanks for looking, and stay tuned for the aforementioned gallery of '98 Studio 8x10s, a trade package from Tim of the GSNHOF, and more.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have 40 sets worth of cards to put away in some sort of organized fashion....

2005 Topps Chrome Series II packs (120)

As promised, here's the result of my huge 120-pack purchase of 2005 Topps Chrome Series II.  I purchased a similar (but smaller, I believe) lot of these groups of 24 shrink-wrapped retail packs from the same guy on eBay and was interested enough to complete the set to do the same with these recently.  It doesn't hurt that I got a pretty good price on each of the five auctions to the point where I paid less than $1/pack for packs that used to go for $3 just a few years ago.  How did I do?  Read on to find out.



Purchased from/price:  eBay, $79.60 (including shipping)
Packs/cards:   120 packs / 4 cards
Set size:  220 base cards (including 5 SP rookies)
Key features:  They're chrome!  Also, autographed RCs, Refractors, Black Refractors and A-Rod Throwbacks
Key cards:  Autographed RCs of Billy Butler, Justin Verlander, Nate McLouth, Glen Perkins and Chip Cannon

Base card front

Base card back

Set completion:  186/220 (85%)
Extras:

• Doubles:  127
• Triples:  59
• Quads:  30
• Quints:  9
• Sextuples:  4

Inserts:   

Refractors:  32, all different (1:5, 24 expected)

     















Black Refractors (#'d to 225):  5, Vicente Padilla, Ryan Drese, Nick Green, Tony Armas Jr., Corey Koskie (1:36, 3-4 expected)

A-Rod Throwbacks:  29 (1:5, 24 expected), including five "sets" of the four-card insert

Autographs:
Base card autograph:  Glen Perkins, Landon Powell (1:55, 2 expected)
Black Refractor autograph:  Tyler Pelland (1:508) 

Relics:  None (none expected)

Best pack:  Manny Ramirez, Landon Powell AU RC (also Eric Hinske and Brett Tomko)
Worst pack:  2 doubles, 1 triple, 1 quintuple (my first at the time, Brett Tomko)

Quality control:  8/10  Minus a point for a card with "roller marks" on it, and another docked for some off-centered cards.  Everything else was fine--all packs had the right number of cards, nothing else was damaged 
Collation:  8/10  I'm making sure to take into consideration that this was basically 120 random retail packs, not a standard hobby or retail box of 24 packs.  Getting only 85% of the set was pretty disappointing, at least in light of all the triples, quads and so on that I pulled.  More importantly, in terms of the five base RCs, which are pretty difficult to pull, I got nine and only four were different.  That wouldn't bother me as much, but I pulled FOUR Bobby Livingstones.  I would have traded all of those for one freakin' Yorman Bazardo.  Still, I absolutely killed the insert odds; I would have considered two autographs a success, but getting the black Refractor was icing on the cake.  And I got way more inserts than I was due.  That makes up for the deficiencies of the base card pulls a bit
Value:  10/10  Remember, I judge this relative to the price I paid, not what it originally would have cost.  I paid less than $1/pack and got THREE Auto/RCs (all of which were some of the better ones in the set), including one $40 hit.  Throw in 32 Refractors, five Black Refractors, five sets of the A-Rod insert (and a few more to boot), and most of the set, and I'm very happy
Set design and player selection:  8/10  There's a large number of players that seem out of place in a higher quality set like this, even for 2005, but when you get into a set of this size I guess that's bound to happen.  I'm not the kind of collector that obsesses about Chrome, but these cards look nice, the Refractor inserts look great as always, and the autographs are excellent (on-card autos!) 
Inserts and extras:  10/10  I got sick of the A-Rod insert pretty quickly since there were only four and I was pulling them at better than a 1:5 pack clip.  But the Refractors and Black Refractors are great, and the RC autographs are outstanding 

Overall score:  44/50