I started collecting sometime around late 1986, early 1987. I'm not entirely sure why, but I gravitated toward Dave Winfield. Around that time, cable TV still carried local stations from around the country, so I could watch the Braves on WTBS, the Cubs (and later White Sox) on WGN, Rangers on KTVT, Mets on WOR and Yankees on WPIX. And this was all while living in Huntsville, AL. Watching all those Yankees games, I also started collecting Roberto Kelly and Hensley Meulens. Other players have come and gone, but I still collect those three.
I'm not really sure how "sets" apply to player collecting, but a few years ago, Sports Card Forum started building their own alternative to Beckett's database, and when looking for new staff, I joined up specifically to be able to add in all of the cards and sets I knew of that Beckett was lacking, and also to help build a real international database. The bigger dream is basically dead as there is virtually no leadership there from the site's owner, but I still keep the part of the database that interests me updated with new issues. So I basically use it to track my collections since Beckett is way behind on including the more oddball and foreign issues. I started my blog after seeing all the others out there talking about their collections and trading amongst each other. After seeing the gaps available information on certain areas of the hobby, as well as the rapid demise of the quality of the traditional hobby media, I expanded my blog's scope to cover those gaps and try to provide information about the largely unknown areas of international baseball cards. Writing the blog has been a great way to maintain my interest in the hobby and my collections.
I have "completed" my Hensley Meulens collection a couple of times, but once "complete" something else has turned up or been issued. Thankfully, he and Kelly have had consistent yearly issues from the Giants for the last several years in their SGA team sets to keep those collections going. Using the SCF system as a baseline, my collections stand as follows:
Dave Winfield: 1228/2444
Roberto Kelly: 396/422
Tuffy Rhodes: 298/492
Hensley Meulens: 133/142
Bernardo Brito: 38/38
Dann Howitt: 32/33
Steve Howard: 20/20
These numbers change constantly as new cards are discovered or new sets are added. I have also finally started collections of players with variations of my last name, so that has added another dozen or so players of various sports to chase when things get slow on my main collecting subjects.
Among the various players, the coolest items are probably these:
1994 Chiba Lotte Marines menko
It's tough to pick one item out of the 1200+ Winfields I have, so I'll just go with the earliest:
1973 Dean's Photo San Diego Padres
For Kelly, I have to go with his only (as far as I know) Mexican League card:
2012 Diablos Rojos
In general, I try to keep to a self-imposed $10 limit on how much I spend on an individual card (which keeps me out of the running for almost all of the hign-end stuff), but occasionally I'll push past that for something extremely rare, like the menko or the Dean's Photo item. I don't relax that limit for most modern, mass-produced junk. I've managed to land a surprising quantity of Winfield autographs at that $10 point, but I doubt that will hold much longer. Besides, with all the sub-$10 cards left to track down, I can't work up much interest in the mainstream pricey stuff.