Earlier this year, a fellow blogger commented on one of my posts and suggested I look at TCDB to confirm my checklists. I'm glad I did. Somewhere along the way, ninety-nine cards got lost in the shuffle and weren't on my checklists. Oops.
Bo of the always great Baseball Cards Come to Life recently helped me on my never-ending quest to complete these Dodgers team sets and make up lost ground by sending me several needs from the '78, '79, and '80 sets.
Steve Garvey and Manny Mota are names I know, but Bill North is a new one. He played just a single season in Dodger blue, batting .234/.371/.266 in 1978. These additions put me just eight cards away from completing the 1979 set.
Flash forward a year to 1980, and we get another trio of new cards, inlcuding another appearance from Mr. Mota. Manny ended his career with 150 pinch hits, a record he held until 2001 when Lenny Harris of the Mets broke his record. Harris ended his career with 212 pinch hits (still the record) and only Mark Sweeney (with 175) has surpassed Mota's 150. I'm now halfway (14/28) to completing the 1980 set.
Oh look, it's another Manny Mota sighting! And Tommy Lasorda! And Davy Lopes! And Rick Monday! A lot of Dodgers legends here, and they're all welcome in my binders. Bo added nine new cards to my 1978 set, leaving me just eight away from completing the set.
I'm fairly confident I can complete the 1978 and 1979 sets this year, which world technically make them the earliest sets completed to date. "But what about the 1975 set you completed a few weeks ago?" you ask. Well, those darned incomplete checklists hit 1975 hard, and what I thought was a completed set was actually nine cards short. Bummer.
The checklists have since been adjusted, though now I wonder what cards actually constitute the team set. League Leaders? World Series recaps? For now, my checklists have 'em all. But now I pose that question to you:
What cards should be (or should not be) part of a Topps team set?
If I were a team collector, I'd probably chase any and all cards that feature guys from my team on it -- including league leader, checklist, etc. cards. As a player collector, however, I don't go out of my way to track down those kinds of cards (the only Ichiro cards I catalog, for example, are the cards that feature Ichiro and only Ichiro, none of the multi-player ones).
ReplyDeleteIntersting strategy, Nick. For awhile, I pretty much did the opposite of this. Back when my Matt Kemp PC was king, I probably had close to 50 cards with Kemp and some other players--certainly inflated my card count.
DeleteNice going Alex! I'm so glad TCDb has been a big help to you. As with regular sets, it's really tough to figure out error cards, variations, SSPs and even SPs should be part of a set.
ReplyDeleteAh. Forgot about the errors, variations, SSPs...my head hurts. I should mention that I do not have any of those on my checklists...maybe I will adjust that, maybe I won't. (It's probably easier not to!)
DeleteGlad you like them. More on the way!
ReplyDeleteI'm not one who chases down complete team sets... but if I did, I'd go with the base player cards, any multiplayer rookie cards, a manager card, and the team checklist card. I'd add league leader, record breakers, all-stars, and other subsets if I acquired them, but wouldn't consider the team set incomplete with out them.
ReplyDeleteThat being said... when I built my 1972 Topps Oakland A's set, I went for any card featuring an A's player on it.
Is this contradictory? I would consider any card with a Met on it--including, say, a multi-player league leader card--to be Mets cards. But if you ask me about a Mets team SET from that year, I wouldn't expect those cards to be included. I'd expect that to be the base cards of each player, the rookie cards with Mets on them (if applicable), the team and/or manager cards (if any), and maybe any other cards which are ONLY Mets.
ReplyDeleteI definitely should be able to help you with some of your wants.
ReplyDeleteI chase down anything that has a Dodger player on it. I'd like to reverse that strategy and ignore anything that does NOT have a Dodger player on it. That would help me avoid inviting multi-team cards in my binders with A's and Phillies and Giants and Tigers on them.
I problem now with player collections and team collections is the shear number of cards produced annually with all the numbered, parallels, colors etc. you can't possible collect them all. I've personally gotten away from sets, team and player collecting and focused more on autographs. PCs are down to Tom Seaver, Dan Marino & any player with "Dion" in name and I only pick them up as I find them. Example in this is 2018 Shohei Ohtani has 2,722 cards according to TCDB so to even collect just him is unrealistic.
ReplyDeleteI include all the cards - record breakers, league leaders, postseason, etc- in my dodger team sets.
ReplyDelete