First You Complete Me post of the new year is a big one

You Complete Me is already back for 2014, so you know what that means:  I completed more sets!  I should note that quite a few of these cards arrived in 2013, but I waited until now to show off everything now that their sets are finally complete.

It took multiple purchases from Sportlots, COMC, and eBay, but I can happily knock two more sets off my baseball wantlist:

2002 Upper Deck Victory Update:

 

I needed 15 total cards, all of which you see here.  Four of them came from Sportlots, but the real story was the 11 I landed on eBay.  One seller had all but one I needed for $1 apiece (plus shipping) as it turned out I had JUST missed out on the Finley.  Fortunately he found that one in another box and threw it in with the others while also accepting my request for a small discount; see that?  Not everybody on eBay sucks!

Victory is one of the three 2002 UD Rookie Update sets I've been chasing, with Honor Roll and Ovation being the other two.  I finished up the minuscule Ovation set a while ago but am still chasing three from Honor Roll.

Still, Victory is the story today.  2002 Victory ended up as a 660-card set, and Update comprised 110 cards of that.  #s 551-605 are generally traded players and guys that didn't appear in the original iteration while 606-660 are the Rookie subset you can see above.  The rookie class isn't terribly inspiring as the best of the group are Jose Valverde and...Aaron Cook, I guess?  Maybe Freddy Sanchez?

Victory was a decidedly low-end product but that didn't mean it wasn't interesting to collect.  I was more hooked by the fact that it was an update set anyway, and just didn't realize how difficult it might be to find some of these in the future!  No matter, now it's done, and I'm one happy collector.

2005 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites:

Regardless of how small my set wantlist was at the time, this was my favorite set I hadn't yet completed.  I own a few other years of Topps' Archives/Fan Favorites offerings and I sure as hell wasn't going to skip this one.  Again, Sportlots furnished most of the cards thanks to, I believe, three sellers.  One of them shipped my cards only for the USPS to lose them (what a shock), but he was good enough to get me a refund, and I was able to grab the same two from a different seller.  COMC had a better price on the Ozzie Smith and possibly one other card I can't remember.

When all those arrived I was left needing just one card.  But I couldn't find it on COMC or Sportlots, Beckett's Marketplace prices with shipping were laughable (plus it's Beckett--screw them, even if the sellers aren't really affiliated with their nonsense), and eBay was hit or miss.  Thankfully, waiting until this month worked out as I got some free money in eBay bucks and didn't have to pay a dime of the $3 shipped for #107, Walt Jocketty--the former Reds and Cardinals GM.  Don't ask me why it was so hard to find, I have no clue!

Like some of the other versions Topps made, this was a great looking set.  I don't believe many of these were done as straight-up reprints, so most of the time you get a player on a random previous Topps design.  In the positive column, Topps made the numbers on the back easier to see, incorporating them as they would have appeared on the original design.  My biggest annoyance continues to be Topps mutilating the multiplayer rookies, making them into awkward single-player versions like the Ryan and Schmidt above.  Honestly, if they were going to go that route, why not use hindsight to make versions that include other stars that didn't appear on the originals?  Whatever, we all know Topps doesn't care.

This was one of my larger recent projects as I had to acquire a crazy 46 (of the 142) cards to complete the set.  Still, based on some of the stars and others included (a new Jim Abbott!  That awesome '75 Bench!) it's great not only to check off another project, but have something else fun to look at.

And then there's the best result of this flurry of purchases; want to see what's left of my baseball wantlist?  Here it is:

2002 Upper Deck Honor Roll Update: 131 179 185

Did you miss it?  Wanna see it again?

2002 Upper Deck Honor Roll Update: 131 179 185

Yep, I literally have one set missing three cards on my set wantlist.  I can't remember it ever being this low, and now that I'm focusing more on player collections, I think that's a fantastic development.  That's not to say that I won't add to it once again in the future, but I can almost taste the awesomeness of a completely empty list, which now becomes a major goal for the year!

2013 eBay pickups: Topps slips me a Mickey

One of the last purchases I made last year came in mid-December as I was wrapping up my spending for 2013.  I'd been searching for this particular card for a while and finally scored one at a price I liked, $7.50 shipped on eBay:

Mickey Tettleton 2013 Topps Archives Fan Favorite auto

Tettleton really WAS a fan favorite in Detroit, at least for this Tigers fan.  From 1991-1994 he clubbed 112 HR, almost half of his career total, while appearing as a catcher (mostly), DH, first baseman, and outfielder!  In fact, his '91-'93 homer totals were 31, 32, and 32 respectively.  While he wasn't that great when it came to batting average, the pop he provided behind the plate more than made up for it, and the 1991 trade that landed him in Detroit from Baltimore for scrub pitcher Jeff Robinson was a flat out steal.

The card is done in the style of 1992 Topps, though his actual card from that set features a dugout shot; I like the one Topps used this time a lot more, and I can think of several collectors who will agree with me.

This solo (on-card!) autograph pairs up nicely with the Tettleton/Tanana dual I scored a while ago,

and now it looks like I just need to pick up Mickey's 2013 Hometown Heroes auto to get back to 100% of that collection.

2013 COMC pickup: a Black Jack for the 21st

I totally planned out putting up this post today on purpose, for reals.  Of course, I could have posted other stuff in the meantime, but who wants to do that?

I'm way behind in posting two packages worth of COMC pickups on the sister blog, but over here I have just one to show off, and it's a doozy:

Jack Morris 2007 Sweet Spot Classic Signatures Red Stitch Black Ink auto (#069/175)

For about $6 during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales on the site, I scored this awesome Sweet Spot Jack Morris auto!  I believe I've yet to meet someone who didn't like this series, one of UD's cooler innovations.  I'm not sure what the story is with this one since it's supposed to be black ink, but the gold looks great, and Morris simply has one of the best signatures in the game.  Of course, I already knew that since I have another Black Jack auto in my Tigers PC.  By the way--the shot of old Tiger Stadium is also a nice touch (for some reason I just assume Topps would use Comerica instead).

This is also somewhat of a timely post since, as I've said in the past multiple times, I believe without a doubt that Morris belongs in the Hall of Fame.  It's not worth re-hashing those arguments again, but I sure hope Jack finally hears his name called after years of slowly-increasing support, and gives the '84 world champs their first member of the Hall!

Complete sets: 1995 Topps (Series II)

In what should likely be my final complete set purchase of 2013 (and for a while, for that matter), I scored a full set of 1995 Topps baseball on eBay for $4.25 and another $10 shipping, which excited me since I hadn't seen sets anywhere near this cheap.  I actually already had Series I and got this just for the second, which I never got around to chasing after I somehow ended up with the former.  No problem, now I have an extra Series I set for trade--anybody want it?

'95 flagship Series II includes a pretty good group of stars, not to mention four current HOFers:

The photography on the Griffey, Gwynn, and Ripken issues is fantastic, featuring three of the game's best hitters in mid-swing.  Bagwell, Piazza, and Jones include some great posed close-ups.  In the center square position is one of the Kirby Puckett-est Kirby Puckett cards you'll ever see.  Rickey looks like he's heading home again, which he did a mind-boggling 2295 times in his career, good for the career MLB record!  And finally, Nomar makes his flagship set debut after appearing in '92 Traded, '93 Stadium Club Murphy, and '94 Stadium Club Draft.

And of course I wouldn't do a post like this without including the Tigers from the set:

In any other year, Boever and Moore would have seemed like scrubs, but the former won 9 games with 3 saves out of the 'pen while the latter led Detroit starters with 11 wins on an awful team in a strike-shortened '94.  Tram had a bit of a down year but was still ok, and '84 World Series teammate Gibson, who returned to Motown the previous year, chipped in 23 homers as a DH.  Gaspar, Bergman, and Penn never amounted to a damn thing, with Gaspar a typical waste of a 90s first-round pick.  Finally, Phillips and Tettleton continued to be two of my favorite Tigers journeymen.

Because the set is relatively small at 264 cards (especially compared to Series I's count at 396), I didn't dig up as many cool photos, but here's a few I did like:

Walker and Alomar each get a very cool posed shot, with Walker bringing to mind the Guerrero in yesterday's post--maybe that card was an homage to Vlad's predecessor?  Meanwhile, Yankee 2B Pat Kelly catches some mad air flying above sliding future Tiger Dean Palmer!

And again I'm including a card back for completeness:

Junior was a tough out in Little League!  Topps' gimmick this year was "Diamond Vision," which I could take or leave, but I think in general Topps did a nice job overall with the backs.

And finally, I ended up with just one Michigan Baseball PC card again, this time one of pitcher Steve Ontiveros, who was back for his second tour of duty with Oakland:

With the addition of this set I now own a complete run of Topps' flagship offerings from 1994-2010, a streak I'm fairly proud of!  While I have a small handful of additional half-completed sets (e.g., only one series), I'm not necessarily motivated to chase those, and will instead devote time and money towards completing the minuscule baseball wantlist that remains!

Complete sets: 1998 Topps (Series I)

I've mentioned a couple times recently that I lost track of a couple of my complete sets over the years I've had my collection, possibly due to the fact that it's had to move with me a few times.  One of those was an entire set of 2000 Topps baseball, while the other was 1998 Topps Series I.  In the case of '98 Flagship, it was just Series I I couldn't find since I had an extra Series II on hand somehow.  Regardless, having already picked up the 2000 version and wanting to restore my pretty decent run of complete sets, I threw down $20 even on this guy:

My judicious spending the last few months gave me some money to play with, so I scored this '98 Topps Series I set on eBay last week.  I don't recall seeing these in retail stores around me, but I do remember other boxes being packed this way. 

I think Vintage either was or continues to be a big distributor of retail stuff, probably especially repacks.  Make fun of it all you want, but the "Card Guard" totally did its job!  It also made for a big, ugly hunk of plastic garbage to toss.

Here's how the set was packed inside, with a cardboard insert holding three shrink-wrapped groups of cards.  They obviously didn't lead with the best players on top in two out of the three piles!  By the way, because I know at least a few of you collect empty boxes, I've hung onto this one for now, so if anyone wants it, please let me know!

Here's the bottoms of each wrapped pack.  I'm mainly showing these off to point out that they're not in any sort of order, so you know what that means:  I got to sort the set!  That's something I'm still fond of doing in the rare cases I buy boxes these days, and I have fond memories of doing so lots of times over the years.

Ok, enough about that, let's talk about the set:

First up is a group of nine legends, all of which should be in the HOF eventually.  As with Aaron in the 2000 set, I'm glad Topps didn't retire card #21, but did a card tribute instead for Clemente.  He was also the subject of that year's reprint set, which I have.  Leading off with Gwynn at #1 was a nice touch too.

There were exactly nine Tigers cards that I saw, and if you're having trouble telling them apart in the scan, they are, in order:  Tony Clark, Brian Hunter, Deivi Cruz, Mel Nieves, Todd Jones, Damion Easley, Bob Hamelin, Raul Casanova, and Juan Encarnacion on a three-player prospects issue.  I'm glad Clark showed up because I'd been meaning to highlight the fact that he's been appointed the new head of the MLBPA since the unfortunate passing of former leader Michael Weiner (cancer).  Clark wasn't universally loved in Detroit because some thought he never reached his lofty potential, but I remember him fondly and think he did about the best he could on some abysmal 90s Tigers teams.  I wish him well in his new position, where I anticipate some success since he seems to have been a well-liked guy.

I did one more 9-card scan to capture some of the fun and interesting cards in the set.  Wagner and Montgomery didn't win awards in '97 but were "fireman" bullpen aces at times in their careers.  The Guerrero is one of his more noteworthy base cards thanks to a nice use of perspective.  Baerga, Gonzalez, and Alicea are notable for some nice acrobatics.  Ausmus made the cut because he's the new Tigers manager and got a nice horizontal card featuring his awesome mask.  Finally, the Bell and Lofton cards showcase players and photographers having a great time.

I wanted to include one card back for completeness' sake, so I went with Eck's card #200 since it shows stats from the career of a pitching legend.  By the way, Eck would pitch one more season in '98 with the Red Sox, then call it a career with 197 wins and 390 saves in 24 seasons en route to the Hall.

'98 Series I isn't a huge set by any means, but I was surprised it only included one card for my Michigan Baseball PCs, that of Hal Morris.  Hal signed with the Royals at the end of '97 before heading back to Cincy in '99.

Ok, if you've made it this far, you're probably like "Hey, what about those four bonus cards!"  Or maybe not, since my blurry photo of the box makes it kind of hard to read that note.  In any event, this box comes with four bonus cards!  I wasn't sure exactly what to expect, but was pleasantly surprised by ending up with these four regular inserts:

The Kotsay is from a set I already own and is therefore available.  The Tomko and Lou-Gon hail from Topps' Minted in Cooperstown sets, kind of a precursor to the gold parallels they eventually went with.  If you weren't collecting then, I'll point out that the gimmick with them is that they were actually stamped in Cooperstown, NY.  Finally, the Clemente is reprint #6, and again, I already have all of those, so that ones up for trade, as are the Tomko and Gonzalez.

All in all, this is a set I remember fondly back when Topps didn't suck at everything, so I'm not so annoyed by having to spend a bit to reclaim it.  It takes another item off my baseball wantlist, too!  On a related note, I'll shortly have a few more additions to make that list even shorter, so stay tuned.

Take the A-Tram!

I haven't made a ton of purchase over on Blowout this year, but I did recently pick up some cards I'm pretty excited about from a seller there, and I'm showing off one of them today.

I noticed a guy with a sale thread and he had a number of cards I was interested in.  For most of them the price just wasn't right, but I scored a pair I really wanted for $20 delivered.  One is a Chris Getz you'll see over on the sister blog soon, and the other one is this, which I think will make some of my fellow Tigers fans drool:

Alan Trammell 2004 Topps Retired Signature auto

Wow.  Just wow.  I don't know what it is about the Retired Signature autos I like so much.  That they're encased an "uncirculated" is a bit of a gimmick, but nothing that's really ever swayed me either way.  So I have to assume it's something about the design.  Seeing some of my older favorites on a modern Chrome-style design to go along with a sweet signature does have its perks, and I really like how Topps went with black borders for this set.  Black is a color that just doesn't work with base cards because it makes it so much easier to spot defects, but on a chrome card it can actually enhance things.

So here you have it, my seventh Trammell hit and third autograph, which is easily my favorite and will be very difficult to top, though that's a challenge I'm definitely up to!  I hope to add more high quality Tram autos like this, not to mention other Tigers mainstays, so I'll be on the lookout for more like this soon.

11/10 card show report: wait, that's it?!

I made the trip down to Taylor, MI, once again this afternoon for a card show, and if I expected it to be even more disappointing than usual, I wasn't disappointed!  The lack of quantity and quality is just apparent from the moment you walk in.

Still, it wasn't entirely fruitless.  I made two purchases for a ridiculously low total of just $25 (plus a bit more for some top-loaders, which are supplies and don't count towards my card spending).  The second haul can be seen over on TMM this evening; here's what I got for $5 from another dealer:

They're the six 2013 Score rookies I still needed, leaving me just 39 base cards short of the set (not taking into account the contents of a trade package yet to be posted!).  The guy basically quoted me $1 per card I needed, and since he had all six, I snagged them for his $5 price.  On a related note, I tried to package in a 2013 Topps Denard Robinson variation auto, hoping to bundle everything up for $15 or $20.  This guy's older, more clueless partner explained that "It books at $40, so I'm asking $24."  I don't know on what planet that card goes for $40, or even $24, but it sure ain't this one.  I think the highest eBay price I found was $10 or $12, and that was in the minority.  Congratulations, clueless card show seller, you're an idiot.  Anyway, it's great to have that rookie subset completed.

Since I spent so little at the show and had to stop at Meijer, where cards at 20% off this week (as well as around Black Friday again, fellow midwesterners!), I decided I'd finally get back into the retail pack game:

These three 2012 UD Football racks set me back just $9.58 on sale, which I thought was decent considering the number of cards I was getting.  Your highlights:

Up top you have Wolverine David Molk (I think I already have one or two of those) as well as young standout QBs Case Keenum and Russell Wilson.  Next you see four of my guaranteed six (two were dupes) inserts of Tim "Megabusting for Jesus" Tebow.  Finally, I landed a pair of SPs, both '93-style:  one of Arkansas WR Joe Adams and the other of former Oklahoma QB and Heisman-winner Jason White.  SP featured some cool designs back in the day so those are a nice touch.  And of course I love the college unis, which is why I skipped over everything else in the card aisle today.  I may put together the Star Rookie set, you never know!  The inserts and SPs are all available, though, as are any doubles I pulled if you have a wantlist handy.

As I mentioned, please check out TMM for the bulk of today's card show haul.

2013 Bowman baseball, completed Homer Simpson-style

As in,

Although I don't scan the Blowout Buy/Sell/Trade boards as much anymore as they've gotten junkier (and worse with spelling and grammar, YEESH), I happened to check it out the other day and saw a guy selling a bunch of complete 2013 Bowman baseball sets--#s 1-220 for the base and Prospects 1-110--for just $9 delivered, which, by then, he'd lowered to just $8.  That was good enough for me so I jumped on it, then came home today to find a USPS medium flat-rate box sitting on my porch.  That's right, he'd spent more than $9 to ship me a set I gave him $8 (minus Paypal's cut) for.  Still, I'd lean on the side of generosity and not stupidity here--it's pretty obvious he's a box-breaker since he used a bunch of 2012 Bowman base to pad the box--and just smile and enjoy the set.  Before I show off the goods I figure I'll link y'all to it in case you want one of your own, which you can get from this thread here.

All right, we'll start with the most relevant cards to this blog, the Tigers from the base set:

That's definitely a fantastic group, I'm just surprised they didn't include Verlander, but it's fine.  Garcia was one of the "RCs" you'll see more of in a minute, but since he's pictured as a Tiger I'll include him here.  If Jose Iglesias had a card I would have included him too.

Detroit also had four guys in the Prospects set:

The Rondon is the base version of the parallel I just got from GSNHoF.  Castro is an up-and-coming 2B, which is good since Infante won't be around forever.  I have to admit I know nothing about Moya.  As for Thompson, I got to see him in-person, as well as Castro, when I took in a Lansing Lugnuts game vs. the teammates' West Michigan Whitecaps (he wasn't all that great).

Before I get to the rest of the stuff to show off, here's a couple card backs:

This is Torii Hunter's from the base set.  As often happens with Bowman, yearly stats are replaced by more info about the player, which seems reasonable enough.

And here's Rondon's back from the Prospects set, where the extra analysis becomes more useful.  Not a bad look overall, I think.

To close things out, I thought I'd show all of the base set's "RCs" and a few higher profile Prospects.  I always have to put "RC" in quotes these days because the term has become meaningless for reasons I've beat into the ground.  Anyway, I counted 24, including Garcia's card above, and I filled out the last scan with a few top prospects many of you may already know.

 

 

Twins fans are surely geeked to have one of the game's consensus rising stars in Buxton.  Giolito was the Nats' first-rounder last year.  Schoop isn't as high-profile but has an awesome name.  And Correa was the #1 overall pick last year for a team that might have a few of those in a row.  But hey, Sam, at least they included an Astro!  (By the way, Jose Altuve's in the base set).

So while I'm no prospector (good luck making ANY money off Topps' crap anyway!) I'm happy to have landed my first 2013 set for just $8.  By the way, if anyone needs some 2012 base cards for their set, please let me know, and I'll be including some of those in future trade packages to get rid of them.

Stay tuned for another exciting TMV/TMM trade package this week!

9-15 card show report: pack busted

I hit up my usual card show location in Taylor this afternoon since I had a bit of breathing room in my monthly budget and hadn't gone to a show for a bit.  Although I ended up spending under my average--around $64 today--I still ended up doing pretty well.  You can see the rest of my haul over on TMM this evening, and this post won't include a bunch of cheap but very useful trade bait cards headed elsewhere, but here's what I scored today:

Am I dumb for dropping $28 on these three packs?  I'd wanted to try the RA hockey pack ($9) since it has a couple Michigan guys I'm chasing and looks pretty good regardless.  Score '13 football jumbo ($9) was a repeat from last time, but my pack then was so good that I thought I'd give it another whirl, plus I'm still working on the set.  And although I remain annoyed with Topps and their anti-collector ways, I was curious enough about the '13 Topps set to grab a jumbo of that ($10) as well, hoping to find Denard Robinson, not to mention a hit.  Here's how I did with each:

RA proved to be the best of the trio:  not only did I pull Wolverine Max Pacioretty, I also landed a nice #d rookie and an autograph.  The two goalies will be heading north of the border in a trade, but if any Nash fans would like his base card I'll be happy to send that out.  The autograph is of the Sharks' John McCarthy, a Boston U alum.  Since he played college hockey he's ok in my book.  That's also available for trade for now, though I might try to sell it elsewhere before long.

This time I got nothing exciting in my Score jumbo pack, but I did knock eight more cards off the wantlist, so that was a positive development.  Two of them were even Calvin Johnsons, and regardless of my shunning of the Lions I'm happy to get anything of his I can.

I also landed five more Rookies, none of which I needed, (so they're up for grabs for you guys building sets, and as a reminder I still have a decent amount of base left!) and a couple uninteresting inserts:

Having seen the baseball edition of 2013 Topps, I pretty much knew what to expect from the football edition.  I pulled nine RCs (none of guys I wanted!) and thought I'd show those off:

I also ended up with seven inserts, only two of which appealed to me:  the Gold parallel (as usual) and the Mini, which continues to be fun.  I don't know if I'm going to chase this set, but for now, everything from the pack (included the base not scanned) is available.

Just because I spent most of my money on trade bait, packs, and Michigan PC stuff doesn't mean I didn't buy a couple Detroit cards, though!  A guy from whom I scored some trade bait had some interesting stuff for $1, $2, and $5, and from those I managed to find a Red Wing and Tiger to bring home:

Ray Sheppard 2012-13 ITG Motown Madness auto

I never have been able to explain why Sheppard was one of my favorite Wings, but it probably has something to do with the classic Sega NHL games (especially '93-'95) my brother and I would play for hours on end.  This is my first card from Motown Madness, which sounded like a fun idea as soon as I heard about it.  The guy had a pile of autographs from the set for just $2 each and Ray was the only one I found interesting, but I look forward to finding more.

Alan Trammell 2002 Stadium Club World Champion Relics bat

I usually don't like spending this much on relics at this stage of the game, but I had no problem throwing down $5 for this Trammell bat celebrating the '84 World Series win.  After all, he was the Series MVP, hitting .450 (9-for-20) with two HR and six RBI.  I have to say that Topps came up with some cool relic ideas back when they were the flavor of the month, and these further highlight the hole the company left when they ditched Stadium Club in favor of the crap we get today.  Anyway, I now own four Tram bat relics to go with a pair of autographs, and this one moves to the top of the relic heap.

Not bad, not bad at all.  Please head over to TMM for the rest of the day's recap.  As for this here blog, stay tuned for some more trade postin' and other features whenever I get around to them!

You Complete Me, eBay edition: 2005 Topps Series II baseball

This is sort of an unorthodox YCM post, but I feel like it fits the theme.  My very last August pickup from eBay was a complete set of 2005 Topps Series II baseball for about $17 delivered.  I'd wanted one of these for a while since I'd completed Series I quite a while ago, but I was too busy flip-flopping between buying a set or hobby box to figure out what I really wanted to do.  After killing so many of my set wants this year, I thought it would be a good idea to attack the few complete sets I needed, and in this case the price was right.

Here's a look at some highlights from the set, since I've never really had the opportunity to show off 2005 Topps here otherwise:

Here we have all but one card for a Tigers team set.  Ah yes, Eric Munson and Rondell White--thankfully those days are over.  And Urbina proved his worth by letting the Tigers flip him for Placido Polanco BEFORE he was charged with attempted murder.

Here's a few of the stars and better photos.  Jeter's is a gorgeous horizontal shot that gets used for all the right reasons.  Sadly, much of the photo is obscured by Topps' huge borders; still, this card is definitely a winner.  So is the great shot of Jeff Bagwell's signature batting stance, one that's sorely missed since the slugger retired.  Still, for my money, the coolest photo in the set belongs to Tim Hudson, going into a windup from the seats.  Well done, Topps!

Hmmm, I really feel like I'm missing something.  Let's see, there were the Tigers, the stars, I counted everything to make sure the set was complete, but I KNOW there was another reason I grabbed this set.  OH YEAH:

Justin Verlander 2005 Topps RC

It's a pre-pair of no-hitters RC of some guy named Verlander.  This card by itself is responsible for the rising cost of hobby boxes, not to mention complete sets, and almost always sells for more than I paid for the entire series plus shipping!  It's a fantastic rookie that I'm thrilled to have as part of multiple PCs since it can be filed under rookies, Tigers, and JV's player collection.  Blog namesake represent!

One quick request to you readers before I put this one to bed:  does anybody have checklists 3 and 4 from Series II?  The seller included the first two, and I'm not OCD enough to worry that much about not having them, but if anyone feels like including them in a future trade package, I'd surely appreciate it!

You Complete Me is back again...again, Part 5

Well here we are again, the last day of YCM pickups from my most recent purchases.  Since this is the final post, you can expect a nice payoff, and I hope this post delivers!

Envelope #1 (SportLots):

This is the package I saved for last because it was pretty much the least interesting, featuring 11 cards from 2002 Topps Total plus a single 2009 Topps entry.  Still, it got the job done as it put me a single card away from each set!  This seems like a good time to highlight Pat Neshek, despite his recent demotion to AAA, because he's a friend to the hobby and all-around good guy.  I'm sure collectors the world over are rooting for him to come back with a vengeance; count me in!
# of cards:  12

# of sets added to:  2

# of sets completed:  0

Envelope #2 (COMC):

Like I said in a previous post, my COMC package showed up to save the day!  It made more financial and/or logistical sense to pick these up there instead of SportLots.  No problem for me since I was already putting together another shipment with them anyway.  To start with, Jeter finally completes my 2002 Topps Total set, which I consider a huge accomplishment since it encompasses all of 990 cards.  It'll pair up nicely with the same set from 2003 in my collection.  Next up, the Pujols was the very last card I needed from 2009 Topps, a set I pieced together entirely from retail rack packs, trades, and the one-two combo of SportLots and COMC!

Next up is a trio from 2010 Bowman Chrome Prospects.  These last three guys--Aroldis Chapman, Dustin Ackley and Anthony Rizzo--were understandably a bit higher in demand than some of their set-mates, especially the Rizzo!  It's possible that taking this long to knock those out cost me a bit more than it would have closer to the set's release, but whatever, it's done and I'm thrilled.

Lastly we have a single card from 2006 Bowman football, a second-year issue of Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers.  As a reminder, 2006 Bowman was the first box I broke for this blog, which in three days will have happened three years ago!  So the math is relatively easy to do if I want to figure out just how long I dragged my feet completing the set!

Like I said, today was definitely the payoff day with the COMC package completing all four sets it touched on thanks to the grunt work of the previous packages.

# of cards:  6

# of sets added to:  4

# of sets completed:  4

Stats for the day:

• Packages:  2
• Total cards:  18
• Sets added to:  4
• Sets completed:  4

Total You Complete Me stats:

• Packages:  11
• Total cards:  78
• Sets added to:  6
• Sets completed:  6

Once again this was a very productive endeavor.  When I started this time, I was working on 16 sets missing a combined 419 cards from my baseball and football lists.  Today those numbers dwindle to just 10 and 341, making me shake my head as I remember when those lists were almost as long as my reasons for wanting to fire Jim Leyland.  Hooray for set-building!

I'll be back tomorrow with another celebratory post for an entirely different reason.

You Complete Me is back again...again, Part 4

Just one YCM envelope today, but as you'll see shortly, it was a doozy!

Envelope #1 (SportLots):

Just a pair of '02 Totals, which is considered a break from those around here.  A sextet of '09 Topps makes for a decent change-of-pace, including a still-weird Maddux Dodgers card and Birther/idiot Luke Scott, and those leave me needing just a pair!  Today's trio of '10 BowChro prospects is Ranger Tommy Mendonca, Yankee Slade Heathcott, and Braves future star Julio Teheran; a trio of cards, though not from SportLots, will sew up that set.  Today's final baseball offering is a 2012 Topps Archives of Mike Schmidt, and on that HOF note I can complete my first set in this series of posts!  Thanks again to all of you who helped me complete the vast majority of that set through trades, I appreciate it as always.

Moving on to football, this package added four more cards to my 2006 Bowman tally, shorting me just a base of Aaron Rodgers that I didn't pick up on SportLots due to undesirable pricing.  Those four are joined by six more from 2008 Topps (home of my constantly-mentioned favorite draft class of all time), including the oft-overrated Tony Romo and another pair of RCs from a New York Team.  Hmmm, wait a minute, according to my wantlist, I needed six cards from 2008 Topps...hey, cool!  That set's complete now!

This definitely had to have been my most productive package, which included cards from all six sets I decided to attack, and completed two of them thanks to my completely arbitrary order of posting.  One SportLots package remains, along with COMC set to swoop in and save the day soon after!
# of cards:  22

# of sets added to:  6

# of sets completed:  2

Stats for the day:

• Packages:  1
• Total cards:  22
• Sets added to:  6
• Sets completed:  2

Total You Complete Me stats:

• Packages:  9
• Total cards:  60
• Sets added to:  6
• Sets completed:  2