Biggest Set Collector's Nemesis
 

Every set has a select group of cards that you need to have to complete the set. They're usually difficult to find, expensive, and not especially rewarding.

I'm curious to know what's the worst offender. Ignoring one-off rarities, my instinct goes to the 1952 Topps High number commons, and the T206 southern Leaguers with Old Mill backs. Is there another worthy entrant?

1949 Leaf High Numbers is the first one that comes to my mind.

T222 shortprints/high numbers - John Henry, Jack Lelivelt, Wildfire Schulte, Nemo Leibold, Red Smith, George McBride, etc - For the most part, not exactly household names, rarely come up for sale and when they do they're generally in horrible condition and cost more than most HOFers in the set. IMO, these are actually pretty nice examples.

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Any hard to find checklist cards would be a tough pill to swallow ($$) for me. I think 1957 Topps has some expensive ones?

1963 fleer checklist

Paying E98 Cy Young prices for an image of Irv Young, or any other bum player misidentified on a card.

1955 Topps Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial. Can’t seem to find either card :D

Diamond stars high numbers same image as the low series but much more difficult to find and much more expensive. 1967 topps high numbers for post war much more difficult than 52 highs.

T207 Broadleaf class
 

The 50 Broadleaf-class T207s - 25% of the sets, many unrecognized players, some with only a cup-of-coffee in the majors, most more expensive than warranted, all needed to complete T207 ... makes it a drag to the average collector. On the plus side, they are the best looking cards in the set, so that's something, right?

Great example, easily belongs with the other two.

1968 Atlantic Oil SSPs. The ten cash money prize winner cards barely exist. They are 20% of the set, so it isn't a small % of impossible cards.

I'm starting to think I may never complete any of my sets because I only buy perfectly centered cards and I only chase sets that are notoriously difficult to find centered.

1972 Topps hi #'s. Worst collecting endeavor ever.

I must be the odd man out. I prefer to collect sets and really enjoy chasing the no-namers which are so much harder to find..and make the hunt a challenge.

I think most of us love the challenge, it’s what makes set collecting so rewarding. I just happen to think there are a few challenges in the set collecting game that leave people questioning their sanity.

I've been wanting a T222 Fatima Jack Lelivelt card for over 20 years... It's easy to get a few of the Fatima cards. Forgetting about cost, just finding one of each seems seldom accomplished.


T206 Southern Leaguers in Old Mill are doable. You just have to throw money at them. The 1952 Topps high numbers are a bit more of a finding challenge, and it takes more money throwing. And with even more money throwing and a fair amount of hunting, I guess a fella could find Hindu backs for all 48 of those T206 southern leaguers.

T207s, I think few of us focus on completing those, because those Broadleaf's cost a bit and there's no accompanying sense of accomplishment by picking up another un-noteworthy player to get a step closer, when there are over 4 dozen such steps. (I know that approximately equates to the 4 dozen southern leaguers in T206, but at least there are some noteworthy players in there, Shaughnessy, Perdue, and Harry Bay come to mind.

When I was building my 1967 baseball set. I had a hell of a hard time finding a Don Clendenon card with decent centering.

I think the 1966 Topps high-numbers are the toughest. When I was working on my LA Dodgers 1958-1990 team sets, it took me years-longer than any other card before I finally found a Bart Shirley/Grant Jackson RC; it was the last card i needed to finish the run. I'd ask every dealer I saw at card shows (mainly the big Tri-Star Houston shows that drew dealers from throughout the country; along with looking on ebay, and no one had the card. Finally, a dealer from Florida who set up at one of the Houston shows, happened to have one in ex-mt/nr mint and I snagged it.

Steve

All the E sets with Wagner and Cobb. All the R and W sets with Ruth. Anything with Jackson.

T227 - need one card!
 

the Bruce Brown auto driver is impossible to find to complete my T227 Master set :-(

Cliff

Attachment 549050

Eggs
 

T205 was my first prewar set. And it wasn’t too bad to collect the basic set many years ago. Inflation makes that harder now, but for most sets that’s the case.

But if you want to keep going and do the variations and create a Master Set (The EGGS), you are going to have a hard time!

Even the Kraken E90-1 with its tough cards are actually easier than the EGGS set.

Expensive, rarely seen and a very daunting challenge!

My big nemesis are the 62 Jell-o short prints.

Any Topps set that has the All Star subset included in the high series.

"Wait, I've somehow managed to finally track down all of the HOFers' regular cards...but now you're telling me I ALSO have to shell out all sorts of dough to get their high number AS cards????? Shoot me, shoot me now!!!!!"

1916 M101-4 and M101-5 Master Set List
 

The 4 short prints in the 1916 M101-4’s and M101-5 sets are incredibly tough. Single digits tough. Oscar Stanage portrait (m101-4) variation only 3 ever graded (Blank backs at least.) doing both master checklist is a huge challenge.

Lucky enough to own all 4 and both sets.

The Jackson was hoarded, mainly by a dealer from West Virginia, and another guy. The West Virginia dealer had around 300 of that card at one time. Last time I spoke with him he told me he was down to about 75, so he started selling them when the price was right!

For me it's going to be '67 high numbers. I think those should merit at least an honorable mention alongside '52 Topps - which let's face it, ain't happening for me. I can see '66 being tough as well, but '67 I think takes the cake from the decade if you consider both the Carew and Seaver RC's are north of #534. The Carew at least isn't a SP...

I agree
 

They are extremely tough, and very rare. Definitely my biggest problem, also.

14 CJs #85-#96
 

1914 Cracker Jacks #85 to #96 take the prize for me
This group has some real tough cards to get your hands on
85 Herzog
86 Shotten
87 Cady
88 Mathewson
89 Cheney
90 Smith
91 Peckinpaugh
92 Demaree
93 Pratt
94 Cicotte
95 Keating
96 Becker

This was the one I was thinking of too Phil. Can't understand why people keep ponying up for this Irv Young card. SMH :confused:

And, Adam, this was my second thought. I've only ever seen 3 of the SSPs from the Atlantic Oil set. I consider my set complete without them (although I am still working on the set with both backs now and haven't completed them that way yet.)



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Turning the hobby into an investment industry!

The constant market exploitation coupled with the TPGs, AHs, vault providers, and the like pushing the collectors out and making it a more business or investment-like endeavor for the newer dealers/flippers/investors entering into the market or industry every single day that goes by, has succeeded in driving up the prices for many cards to the point where people trying to complete many vintage pre-war sets can't do so anymore unless they are independently wealthy. And since this thread was started in the pre-war, main page forum, I am keeping it on point and responding to it in the same regard.

A lot of the pre-war sets included cards of the all-time, iconic, big name, HOF, superstars that we have all learned to admire and long to possess cards of. For the flippers/investors, as has been noted time and again in many threads talking about what cards will hold or increase their value, thereby making them the best investment decisions, set collectors have had to compete with those types of people to acquire those cards in many of these pre-war sets to complete them. The resulting astronomic price increases to many of these cards, has caused many true collectors to be unable to finally complete their sets, without possibly incurring an unaffordable expense, going into unreasonable debt, or maybe having to sell off other portions of their collections to fund such a new purchase. The latter of which kind of runs completely counter to the idea and concept of being a true collector,

There are a number of pre-war sets I had started working on at one point or another that I will likely never now finish because there is a Ruth, Cobb, Wagner, Jackson, or some other unbelievably priced star/HOFer card now in that set needed to complete it. And I'm not talking about the extreme rarities that exist in some sets, like the 1933 Goudey Lajoie card, or the 1911 T205 Hoblitzell "no stats" card. To most set collectors, they realize that extreme rarity and value, and consider completed base sets without them. The T206 set is probably the most classic example with many collectors accepting 520 different player cards as a completed set, and not worrying about the Wagner, Plank, Doyle N.Y. Nat'l, and Magee cards. Same goes with the 1933 Goudey Lajoie or the T205 Hoblitzell "no stats" cards. You can have a complete set in the majority of people's eyes without having those particular cards. But in the case of a set like the 1933 Goudey set, you can't have a complete set without all four Ruths, and both Gehrigs. The costs of those six cards, versus the costs/values of the remaining cards in the set, make it extremely unlikely that many new collectors will ever want to take on the completion of such a set, unless they are wealthy. And let's face it, the average person/collector is not going to be wealthy. For now, we still have a lot of old-timers in the hobby that were lucky enough to have gotten into collecting long before these cards were turned into a new investment industry, and still remember collecting sets as kids back in the day with Topps, Bowman, and so on. And they were lucky enough to acquire many of these now extremely high-priced cards when they were still somewhat affordable. As these old-timers start to leave us, the newer collectors who don't seem to be anywhere near as interested as the old-timers were in actually trying to collect and complete sets, will become the main force driving the hobby. As a result, I can see in the future that values for many common pre-war cards will fail to rise, or even drop, due to a dearth of new set collectors entering the hobby. The baby boomers that initially sparked the boom of the card collecting hobby back in the 80s and 90s, in conjunction with the rise of Topps and Bowman when they first started collecting cards as kids, will eventually leave us, and the hobby. I feel the hobby will still do well as a whole, but the set collecting aspect of it may take a huge hit. Unless you're ridiculously well off and don't care about spending money on common cards simply to check an item off a want list.

To me, this slow changing of the hobby into an investment industry and therefore pricing most collectors out of ever being able to afford certain cards, is the biggest overall nemesis to being a collector of pre-war card sets.

On my first collection type set, which was a few cards away from complete, I had the D355 Niagara Baking, as a stumbling block. I hadn't seen one for sale in 15? years. Then, within a few months of me selling my collection, another type collector sold his collection and sold one. It went for about half of what I would have paid if I were still doing that set.
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Leon, your post made me think back, did anyone ever figure out what eventually happened to that group of 4 or so D355s including Cobb that was posted on the PSA boards years ago?

I only vaguely remember that. So no, don't remember. For those that don't know, the Niagara Baking is a stamped E101.

A pic from the internet.
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Toughest
 

Definitely my toughest set.

Wow BobC could definitely see you writing the tax code

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And I thought I was bad. His ability to turn a 20-word response into a 2,000-word essay is unmatched.

4 "different" T205 cards (errors etc) of one Richard Hobllitzel[l]...

I didn't see the T201 Fac 30 rarities listed for a master set.

1949 Bowman high numbers. Hard to find the last two series and while there are a couple high dollar stars (Paige, Snider, Doby, Ashburn) the rest of them are a lot of just "guys"