Posted By:
Frank WakefieldHey Phil, and welcome.
What if you backed up and reconsidered your approach. My thinking is that if you're goal is completing a set, then you'll have missed a significant aspect of the charm of the old cards. With set completing as a goal, you may well end up hunting down a few cards at the end that are elusive, a bit expensive, and ones that you don't really care that much about.
Read a bit about the old game. Get an affordable used copy of the fine book by Mr. Bill James, The Historical Baseball Abstract. Look for one of the original editions, not the newer one... you can find them on ABEbooks or Alibris. Or read Fleming's book, The Unforgetable Season. That would be 1908, and it really gets you grounded into what was in the heads of whoever was contemplating who to include in the white border tobacco cards, T206, or those nice American Caramel cards, E90-1.
Then, with that in mind, figure out some players or a team you're interested in... The Cubs are popular. Same for the Giants. Modern day Yankee fans gravitate toward the then Yankees or Highlanders. Even if you were chasing Cubs in T206, settle for one card of each player, that way you don't have to chase all of the Tinker cards, one will do.
I think that approach is quite satisfying, you put a team together, not a set. But then that is collecting, instead of merely pouring money onto the amassing of a bunch of slabs and slips.
One possible consideration would be a bit of a type collection... 8 or 10 T cards, 8 or 10 more E cards... It is neat to have one of each of the E145s, the 1914 and 1915 Cracker Jacks. Then, when you're sharing your collecting interests with someone who wants to see the old cards, you can hand them both, they can feel how paper thin the 1914 cards were, they can see how the backs of the 1915 cards were inverted.
Set completion of new stuff is doable. A fellow can eventually gather in the 1967 Topps. Not quite so easy with T205s, 6s, or 7s, or with E90-1s... few folks have enough money to pour the dollars on the collection necessary to assemble all of them, and to some extent the more elusive cards aren't always readily available. A 518 set of T206s is possible for folks, especially if they're patient, and chase the Monster for a dozen years. And a 520 set is within the grasp of some folks. After 520 it is beyond me... even if I had the money to spend, I don't think I'd be comfortable spending it on each of those last 4 cards.
Patience, perseverance, stay the course.