[Bliggity]

Lots of good advice for set collectors in here, but the best advice I received about set collecting (which unfortunately came too late for me with some sets) is to always buy the highest-$ cards first. If you start with commons and lower-mid HOFers first, by the time you get around to the Cobb or Wagner, it will have doubled in price, and either (a) you're never going to finish the set, or (b) you're going to settle for a lower-condition card just to complete, and you'll have an unbalanced set you won't be happy with.

I am 2/3 done with a T205 set in PSA 3 and have most of the HOFers, but I didn't get a Cobb (or Young or WaJo) while I could, and now it's out of reach except in 1/A grades. Same experience with '34 Goudey and the Gehrigs. And N28. And N162. (See a pattern?)

Conversely, I picked up a '53 Bowman Mantle a couple years ago, and it made building the rest of the set seem very reasonable. The next set I'm planning to build has a Ruth that is still just under $1K, so that will definitely be my first purchase. Suppose I better get on that.