What was your first set?

[deweyinthehall]

Pure nostalgia time.

I knew little to nothing about baseball when, in early 1978, Scholastic Books sent out their annual fishing net to my 4th grade class. I subscribed to Dynamite Magazine, and in their Happy Birthday Mad! edition that spring, I found a panel of baseball cards stapled into the spine: Darrell Porter, Cecil Cooper, Tony Perez and Al Oliver. I'd never heard of any of them or their teams (for decades I would have sworn only 4 cards were in the issue - I must have quickly discarded the dupes), but I was hooked. I quickly found out you could actually buy packs of these things in the store (I sort of new that already - the previous fall a couple older friends gave me all their Star Wars cards because they'd discovered the 1977 Topps Baseball set).

On my way with my mom to a doctor's appointment, she stopped and bought me a wax pack. To this day I still recall some of the cards it contained - Jose Baez (#311 - for some reason I thought it was the Maine Mariners, until my father corrected me), Sparky Lyle Record Breaker (#2), Rick Manning (#11), Luis Tiant (#345) and George Hendrick (#30).

Because it was my first set, and almost all the players and most of the teams were unknown to me (I grew up in Connecticut, so I knew the Red Sox, Yankees, and a bit about the Reds and the Dodgers), each card made an impression - I can still remember anecdotes about so many (got Pete Rose in a pack driving someplace with my dad - "that's a good card to have" he said).

To this day, paging through my album, I can still identify those I got in packs versus those I had to rely on the doubles in friends' collections for. In some odd way, the cards I had to really hunt for still stand out to visually as somehow "different" as I look at the set.

I can remember the first cards I pulled of each team (Yankees - Ken Clay and Ken Holtzman) as well as the last cards I needed to complete each team (Blue Jays - Otto Velez, Alvis Woods).

I ripped through wax, cello and rack packs, but there were still some cards I could never find. My Dirty Dozen, those that were the most tough to find, were:

1. Mariners Team (not the Maine Mariners, remember...)
2. Checklist 485-605
3. Mike Jorgensen
4. Bo McLaughlin
5. Ed Kirkpatrick
6. Reggie Cleveland
7. Bill Virdon
8. Ed Armbrister
9. Glenn Burke
10. Dave Garcia
11. Rookie 2nd Basemen (Perlozzo, Whitaker, Iorg, Oliver)
12. Mike Paxton

Mind you, I had never seen or heard of any of these guys - had no idea what they looked like. The final hold out was the Angels' Gary Ross. Over the course of the summer and into the fall, I managed to find even the dirty dozen from friends but never could lay eyes on Ross.

Then my dad showed me a magazine he got when he went to a Yankees game with a Renata Galasso add - the entire set, in mint condition, for less than $15?? It took me a while to talk them into it but my parents let me order it. After long delays, we received it in early 1979, but they sent the wrong set! They sent me the blasted 1979 set! More delays, but I finally got the right box and I finally got Gary Ross.

Of course, there was the fascination of learning there were older cards out there (you mean this isn't the first set they made?? Why is Mike Torrez with the A's and who's Dick Bosman?) and new cards when the new year rolled around (you mean they do a new set EVERY year? What's Pete Broberg doing on an A's card?!? who's Carney Lansford?).

I was hooked.

I would love to hear others' stories about their first sets - I imagine there's a story like this out there for every Topps set issued.

[butchie_t]

There was a company that had a catalog, not large, maybe 20 pages, 8 1/2 x 11 folded over and stapled. I bought a 76 baseball set from them. Along with a 59, 61, 68 (2nd series all blue backs) football and some other cards that I cannot remember. Football is long since traded and traded for baseball sets.

But my first complete set was 1974 Topps baseball followed by 1975 Topps Baseball. I bought them in packs and completed them. I even got the Wash Nat’leag cards in packs too.

I collected 69, 70, 71 cards but did not complete them until the late 80s. I had a friend that had a bunch of last series 71 cards that he had bought and put away, never seeing the light of day until I came along. I got lucky and bought a bunch for around $50. And there were many star cards in what I bought.

Now I am filling year holes from the late 70s to 80s. I need a 73 set and a 79 set and am currently working the 72 set, right around 55% on that one.

I will probably buy or trade for the 73 set. I have complete 74 and 75 sets along with other stuff to barter with.

Edit: I found out in another thread that the company was the Card Collector Company out of New York. I actually bought some of their smoke damaged Bowman football cards. They were singed ever so slightly on the top edges but no water damage. I know I bought other cards from them but that memory is long since gone.

[hcv123]

I didn't yet "collect sets", but had plenty of cards in 1973 - as many as would fit in my pockets to flip for colors or scale during recess. Other kids spent all their money at the corner coffee shop on candy - I spent most of mine on packs of cards - heck, you even got gum with them! I apparently had a bunch of cards from 1972 ( I was 5 years old) which I clearly remember trading a whole box of years later for some comic books at a comic book show - live and learn! I had TONS of cards from 1975 and remember a local discount variety store had 2-3 huge dump bins filled with rack packs - my sweet grandmother would generously buy me a bunch everytime we went food shopping at the super market next door. I really loved the radical change in design from the 1974 ards although for flipping purposes top or bottom color needed to be declared ahead of time. The first year I recall actively trying to collect a set was 1978 - I don't remember much else, but Billy Almon of the Padres was the final card I needed to finish it.

[jayshum]

The first set I collected was 1975 when I was 7. I don't remember anything about collecting it, but I know I still have the set.

[cardsagain74]

The little helmets from those quarter machines (both baseball and football).

I just loved those as a little kid. Was around seven years old, and it was about the time that the Bengals changed to the stripes. Before long, I had them all but the new Bengals helmet (both were needed of course). Plus it looked really cool.

After thousands of dollars/the family fortune spent quarter by quarter and no Bengals stripes, my great aunt finally shared enough w/ my frustration to explain this horrible predicament and ask a toy store to open the damn thing up and pick a Bengal helmet I could see pasted against the glass front. They understood, naturally.

Didn't care if I broke the spirit of it. Was still the best quarter I've ever spent

[Cliff Bowman]

1977 Topps Baseball as a ten year old in the spring in Jacksonville FL, the summer in Waukegan IL, and in the fall in Lakehurst NJ. I still remember the US Navy commissary store in Mayport FL having baskets full of 1977 Topps Rack Packs by the check out registers.

[jchcollins]

Though I didn’t technically complete it until at least 15 years later, the 1986 Topps set was the one that introduced me to baseball cards, and buying packs at the local grocery store (Cashion’s, Cornelius NC) - and later the 7-11 in the neighboring town. I was 9 years old.

As mentioned elsewhere earlier in the thread, the Topps “Garbage Pail Kids” had been my introduction to trading cards of any sort the year before. GPK were great, (even though parents and teachers hated them…) but later a trading buddy boasted to me that he had the entire 792 card set of 1985 Topps baseball cards. I scoffed at this at the time, believing that it was impossible for anyone to have that many cards. I’m not sure when I got the notion to buy a pack of my own of something other than GPK, but I know it was one day with my mom at the grocery store. The blue packs I believe were 35 cents. Not sure what all I got in that first pack, but I know one of the cards was the Dwight Gooden RB card, because he was the only player in the pack I had actually heard of at the time. Later, (after discovering my cousin and his father, my uncle - were big into cards themselves…) I learned a bit more about the game and came to understand that the cards you wanted most from the packs we were buying were Don Mattingly, and Pete Rose. I pulled a Mattingly at some point, but never that year was I able to land the Rose player card. Even though my cousin had like 3 dupes, he refused to trade me one. I had to settle for the Rose manager card. It was at least another 10 years before I finally obtained an ‘86 Topps Rose base card, I think at a show. Though I understood the concept of “sets”, my ‘86 cards on the whole were probably less than a quarter of the complete set coming out of packs I had bought. It wasn’t until I was a young adult, probably in 2001 that I finally sat down one day on the floor of my trendy 1-bedroom singles apartment with two unopened wax boxes of ‘86 Topps that I had scored I think for $11 total at a nearby LCS. Momentarily 9 again, I shredded the wax with joy for about an hour, and then began the arduous task of sorting by number. Eventually the finally complete set went into a binder - yes, with Pete Rose included. My original ‘86 Topps cards remained at my parents house in a shoebox, ever distinct from their later year set replacements by the worn corners, and thumbtack holes from being affixed to the bulletin boards in my childhood room. I later found a boxed traded set, and added an additional 132 cards to the binder.

While the ‘86 Topps design isn’t exactly inspirational - in the hierarchy of Topps’ body of work, they won’t even likely merit a footnote - those cards will always be nostalgic to me, and valuable in a personal way that will never be reflected in price tags outside of PSA 10 HOF’ers. The card hobby was still gearing up to it’s zenith in 1986, and soon after that first pack I was interested in cards, only cards - not even girls yet - for at least a few more years to come. Life was fantastic. I was surrounded by family and friends that loved me, and baseball cards were everywhere. Though even then as a kid I had already began to romanticize about what I perceived as simpler times - (the 1950’s!) - I guess I was blind to the fact while it was happening that much of that same simplicity and joy was surrounding me in the same way in the late 1980’s.

As I got into my teens and then as an adult collector, my path never really turned into seeing sets as the main way of organization for what I wanted to do with the hobby. I turned out (as the 80’s turned into the 90’s…) to be way more interested in postwar vintage singles than current sets, even from my own time also actively collecting “new stuff” in the hobby, which ran from ‘86 to roughly 1994, when cars and friends, first jobs and all those hugely important teenage responsibilities finally claimed my brain full time. However, just in the past few years - I’ve decided that it would be a shame if I never did any set work again - so I’ve taken on 1967 and ‘72 Topps - two of my vintage favorites. I’m still in the early stages, but thankfully already have a lot of stars from both to keep them anchored for some time to come. Honestly, given the nausea that the money aspect of the hobby lately has increasingly provided me with - even just collecting the commons from those sets would probably keep me plenty busy for at least another decade to come.


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[mrmopar]

1978 was the year I discovered cards, bought packs and that baseball set was the first I completed by hand...in fact, one of the few.
A few years later, I started buying the 3 sets via mail order each year.
I eventually went back and bought 79 and 80 sets, but I have nothing older than 78 to this day.

I bought so many of them that I knew (and still know) most cards in the set by just a portion of the images on the cards.
I don't have any specifics, but it was the beginning of a lifetime passion.

Still one of my favorite sets of all time, probably mostly because it was my first.

Originally Posted by deweyinthehall

Pure nostalgia time.

I knew little to nothing about baseball when, in early 1978, Scholastic Books sent out their annual fishing net to my 4th grade class. I subscribed to Dynamite Magazine, and in their Happy Birthday Mad! edition that spring, I found a panel of baseball cards stapled into the spine: Darrell Porter, Cecil Cooper, Tony Perez and Al Oliver. I'd never heard of any of them or their teams (for decades I would have sworn only 4 cards were in the issue - I must have quickly discarded the dupes), but I was hooked. I quickly found out you could actually buy packs of these things in the store (I sort of new that already - the previous fall a couple older friends gave me all their Star Wars cards because they'd discovered the 1977 Topps Baseball set).

On my way with my mom to a doctor's appointment, she stopped and bought me a wax pack. To this day I still recall some of the cards it contained - Jose Baez (#311 - for some reason I thought it was the Maine Mariners, until my father corrected me), Sparky Lyle Record Breaker (#2), Rick Manning (#11), Luis Tiant (#345) and George Hendrick (#30).

Because it was my first set, and almost all the players and most of the teams were unknown to me (I grew up in Connecticut, so I knew the Red Sox, Yankees, and a bit about the Reds and the Dodgers), each card made an impression - I can still remember anecdotes about so many (got Pete Rose in a pack driving someplace with my dad - "that's a good card to have" he said).

To this day, paging through my album, I can still identify those I got in packs versus those I had to rely on the doubles in friends' collections for. In some odd way, the cards I had to really hunt for still stand out to visually as somehow "different" as I look at the set.

I can remember the first cards I pulled of each team (Yankees - Ken Clay and Ken Holtzman) as well as the last cards I needed to complete each team (Blue Jays - Otto Velez, Alvis Woods).

I ripped through wax, cello and rack packs, but there were still some cards I could never find. My Dirty Dozen, those that were the most tough to find, were:

1. Mariners Team (not the Maine Mariners, remember...)
2. Checklist 485-605
3. Mike Jorgensen
4. Bo McLaughlin
5. Ed Kirkpatrick
6. Reggie Cleveland
7. Bill Virdon
8. Ed Armbrister
9. Glenn Burke
10. Dave Garcia
11. Rookie 2nd Basemen (Perlozzo, Whitaker, Iorg, Oliver)
12. Mike Paxton

Mind you, I had never seen or heard of any of these guys - had no idea what they looked like. The final hold out was the Angels' Gary Ross. Over the course of the summer and into the fall, I managed to find even the dirty dozen from friends but never could lay eyes on Ross.

Then my dad showed me a magazine he got when he went to a Yankees game with a Renata Galasso add - the entire set, in mint condition, for less than $15?? It took me a while to talk them into it but my parents let me order it. After long delays, we received it in early 1979, but they sent the wrong set! They sent me the blasted 1979 set! More delays, but I finally got the right box and I finally got Gary Ross.

Of course, there was the fascination of learning there were older cards out there (you mean this isn't the first set they made?? Why is Mike Torrez with the A's and who's Dick Bosman?) and new cards when the new year rolled around (you mean they do a new set EVERY year? What's Pete Broberg doing on an A's card?!? who's Carney Lansford?).

I was hooked.

I would love to hear others' stories about their first sets - I imagine there's a story like this out there for every Topps set issued.

[Harliduck]

I love these threads and reading through each persons stories and journey...


For me it was when I was 9, mom bought a pack each of 1979 Topps cards home for me and my brother who grew up in a baseball loving family and we already had the fever. My first card was Reggie Jackson...I still own the card...and he immediately became my favorite player. My brothers first card was a Mariner...and I was JEALOUS...getting a home team card was huge. It was Rick Honeycutt...and...he still has the card. I got the Mariners team card with the King Dome in my next pack and that was my favorite for a long time. Outside of Reggie of course...

From then on we were obsessed...begging mom to pick up packs as often as she could. Didn't take long to put the 79 set together. Learned of the Bump Wills error at school and I traded away a few cards to get the Rangers version (I had the Blue Jays) as we thought (still not sure) that was the tough one. Everyone seemed to have the Blue Jays version. I thought I was going to be RICH for getting that card. To us it was the upside down plane stamp...

Then my mom made an amazing discovery...she stopped at an old convenient store out of our neighborhood and asked for any packs of cards. The person working the counter said no, but had some in back and sold her like 6 boxes at half price because they were last years. When she came home and told us of this discovery, I was OVER THE MOON. My brother didn't want any part of "last years cards" so I got them all. 1978 Topps packs!! They may as well been 20 years old to me at the time. My brother was 7, what did he know. So I opened all the boxes and was able to complete a set with lots of trading for school. What a score. So at 9 I had two complete sets...



Fast forward to 1981...still getting packs from mom...still putting sets together. I opened pack after pack after pack...COULD NOT FIND Johnny Wokenfuss (Sp?) and Gene Richards. NONE of my school friends had either of these as well. When finally...FINALLY I opened a few packs and got both, set complete. At school I was getting offers after offers for both...no one had either. It was weird, I can't imagine they were single printed in any way or there was coalation regional? I wouldn't budge. My football coach was a big man in town...he was the bench coach for the Phillies and Tigers in the 70's and 80's...had a man cave with AMAZING items...Babe Ruth signed balls, jerseys...you name it. Through him I was able to meet Pete Rose and Milt Wilcox after Mariner games...we thought he was about as famous as it gets. Anyhow...he had just started collecting cards and after practice one day taking me home (back then we would all pile in the back of his pickup truck and he would take a bunch of kids home...crazy to think of that now!) When he got to my house he asked if he could look at my cards. I let him sift through my 81 set and low and behold, he pulled out Gene Richards and said hey, son, your coach needs this card, I'm going to take it. I was not happy, but at 11 years old I didn't say a word...just smiled...and he took it! I went and told my Dad...coach left and my Dad walked him to the truck. When he came back he had my Gene Richards card. He just looked at me and said "son...I don't care who anyone is in life, never get taken advantage of...ever. Here is your card, let that be a lesson".

That one stuck with me. Card was worth a nickel then, probably a nickel now...but everytime I see that dang card a flood of memories comes back to me. Amazing what a little piece of cardboard can mean...and what sometimes people will do to get it...

[butchie_t]

Originally Posted by Harliduck

Fast forward to 1981...still getting packs from mom...still putting sets together. I opened pack after pack after pack...COULD NOT FIND Johnny Wokenfuss (Sp?) and Gene Richards. NONE of my school friends had either of these as well. When finally...FINALLY I opened a few packs and got both, set complete.

I have a story about a card only in reverse of yours. 1974 Topps baseball Winston Llenas was his name. It seemed every time I opened a pack of cards, I would get a frickin' Llenas card. It was nuts how many of them I had 20+ last time I counted. It could not have been some other loser like Jackson, or Rose, or Bench or any other players of their ilk. Nope good ole' Winston and me.

Makes me laugh every time I see him in that set.

[ksfarmboy]

My first cards were 1977 football. I tacked the first pack up to the wall. A buddy of my dads soon opened a card store and I learned the value of cards were based on condition. Broke my heart I ruined my cards by pinning them up. I ended up getting many more and completed the set. I still have the original cards with the tack holes. I worked at the card shop and was his first customer. We were too late for the 77 baseball packs but I opened a ton of Star Wars, basketball and football. 1978 was my first year collecting baseball and I had the set. Yaz was extremely tough and I did get one but unfortunately left it at a friends house. I never got another one out of a pack but bought one later. Opened lots of 79s but 1980 was my heyday. I have about 8-9 sets from packs. I even knew the collation from opening so many. Working at the shop one of my jobs was opening a case of cards and sorting them by numbers and pulling the big stars. I chewed so much gum and it was a great job. I still remember the owner reaching into a filing cabinet of 55 Bowman baseball commons, grabbing a huge stack and giving them to me for working a full day. Man I miss those days.

[commishbob]

My first set chase was the 1960 set and i seem to think I finished it that year. The first cards I ever saw were in the hands of a girl in my Long Island neighborhood in 1958. I was becoming a baseball fan at the age of 7 and those colorful cards made a huge impression on me. the next year I got some packs of '59s in my Easter basket and a hobby collector was born.

In 1960 I set out to gather as many cards as I could and saved every nickel I could for that purpose. I earned some coins doing chores and spent them all on cello packs at EJ Korvettes on every shopping trip my folks took me on. We lived near my Brooklyn-based grandparents and every weekend we were there and just down a block or so was a corner candy/news/cigarette/soda fountain that my grandfather would walk to every morning for the paper and a pack of Camels. I never left that place with a few packs of cards.

My best source was probably my uncle's pharmacy over in Bergen County, NJ. More than once he brought me a full 20 pack box.

The 1960 set doesn't get a lot of love from collectors but it still holds a place in my hobby heart. I rebuilt it just a few years ago and it was a very nostalgic and fun chase. I was reminded of how much i loved those orange rookie cards. Something about them impressed me and I've never lost that love.

And the backs, especially the ones printed on the cream colored stock, are among my favorites of any card backs. Love this set.

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[mortimer brewster]

In 1978 I was in a local bookstore (ullbrichs) in Buffalo NY and I picked up the history of baseball cards book by Clark. I started looking at the pictures and I got bit by the collecting bug. Purchased the book and occasionally take it off the shelf and thumb thru it. It's pretty beat up

I went home and ordered the 1977 and 1978 baseball card sets out of the Sporting News. I believe it cost me 27.00 PPD. I remember many of the cards being miscut, especially the 1978 Murray rookie. Been collecting ever since, I never really stopped.

My first set was actually 1971 Topps football. Collected the cards in the fall and when football season ended I took my cards to the playground at school and threw them up in the air and watched the little kids run after them.

[rats60]

The first cards that I bought was 1965 Topps. I had a shirt covered with iron ons.



The first set I tried to complete was 1967 Topps. I had the first six series complete, but never saw 7th series in a store. I bought the 7th series a few years later from Card Collectors Co.



The first set I completed by busting packs was 1968 Topps. I would go to the local stores every week and buy a pack. If it was the new series, I would buy a whole box and trade for any cards that I needed.

[Gorditadogg]

I've never completed a baseball card set. I am getting close on my 65T though, I just have 3 cards left: Uecker, Hunter and one of the checklists. I started collecting the set in 1966, when my cousin gave me a few of his doubles in trade for some 66T cards that I had just bought.

He was a Giants fan so he wanted my Giants. I had just started buying cards and had never seen the 65T's and I really liked how they looked with the rounded frame and the pennant on the bottom. The first card he traded me was Willie Mays. I kept that card for 50 years and just gave it back to him.

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[Volod]

Thanks for the thread. Strange, isn't it that most of us seem to recall that first set from an emotional attachment that still anchors us to the hobby. I am still working on the first set that I tried to complete. In the fall of 1951, my father was in a weekend bowling league and grudgingly took my brother and me along with him to an ancient, dilapidated alley on the other side of town. He would hand each of us a crumpled bill and tell us to get lost and stay out of trouble for the next three hours or so. Luckily for us tykes, there happened to be a small mom & pop store next to the bowling emporium, so we did not have to spend the night sitting in a smoke-filled barroom with numerous adult imbibers. Instead, we usually spent the time sitting on the floor of the store reading comic books. The proprietor of the store had two large tables near the front window that he filled with items he was trying to unload. On one of the tables, my brother discovered hundreds of packs of 1951 Topps cards that were going for about a penny each. At the age of seven, the only thing I knew about baseball was that my old man had played the game semi-professionally in his youth. That was enough to motivate me to use most of my remaining dollar bill on as many waxpacks as I could stuff into my pockets that night. Opening the packs, I was intrigued by the disembodied head shots of the players and the odd extra functionality of the cards in a simple ballgame. Most of the players seemed pretty obscure, then and now, and, of course, the Redbacks and Bluebacks have long been viewed by collectors as the least attractive and most feckless product Topps ever issued. But, the sets really hit my infantile amygdala hard, as well the brittle, evil tasting caramel candy that came with them. The packs also contained a bonus card - an elongated team card, or a full-size image of a Hall of Famer, or a more well-known current player - which was protected from the dangerous candy by the two-card panel of Red or Bluebacks. Naturally, no matter how many waxpacks I glommed off the table, there was no chance of completing a full set at that time, but I never lost the desire to do so. In the 1980's, my second childhood, I suppose, I managed to complete four of the five 1951 Topps sets, but for some reason, could only acquire eight of the eleven subjects in the fifth set. Still working on that.

[BillP]

When I got back into the hobby in 82, it was 67 topps BB all the way. Never had the high numbers as a kid but the other series were around. A great colorful set and I don't think there are any airbrush shots. Only regrets on the set are headshots of Mantle and Mays and Ryan could have been in this set as well.

[bmattioli]

Collected alot in the 70's but purchased my first complete set the 1975 Baseball Topps set while at a show in Texas when I was at Tech school stationed at Sheppard AFB in 1984.. Still owned..

[egri]

For me, it was 2005 Topps. My mom was involved with a charity that held a dinner every year, and part of the dinner was a silent auction. The first time I went, one of the items was a framed display of the Red Sox cards from that year's set commemorating their world series win the year before. On a ten year old's budget it was hopelessly out of reach, but my interest was piqued all the same.

That prompted my first trip to the LCS, where I was introduced to vintage, and bought my first 1933 Goudeys and 1949 Bowmans. One of the other collectors took notice of my interest in vintage Red Sox and gave me Bobby Doerr's address, which got me into autograph collecting. I took a break when I got to high school (wasn't sure what the girls would think) but picked it up again in college and have been back since.

[dealme]

Originally Posted by Volod

...as well the brittle, evil tasting caramel candy that came with them.

Some of the “edible” inserts were beyond bad. I don’t know if the gum in the 1950s was any better, but the gum that I remember from the mid to late 80s usually just crumbled and disintegrated in your mouth. Those of you that didn’t start opening packs until after Topps quit inserting gum into them don’t know what you were missing.


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[jayshum]

Originally Posted by dealme

Some of the “edible” inserts were beyond bad. I don’t know if the gum in the 1950s was any better, but the gum that I remember from the mid to late 80s usually just crumbled and disintegrated in your mouth. Those of you that didn’t start opening packs until after Topps quit inserting gum into them don’t know what you were missing.


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My theory on the gum is that Topps made one giant batch of it in the 50s and just kept using it until they finally ran out so by the 80s, it wasn't that fresh anymore.

[Volod]

Originally Posted by jayshum

My theory on the gum is that Topps made one giant batch of it in the 50s and just kept using it until they finally ran out so by the 80s, it wasn't that fresh anymore.

Hey, we were kids. Nothing could hurt us because we were invulnerable.

[todeen]

I started with early 1990s sets, but not with the set building mentality. The first set I went gaga for was 1996 Topps. I really wanted those stupid Mantle inserts, but I never got one! Disappointed. The next set I started and completed was 2001 Bowman Heritage. I was 100% bitten by the Ichiro / Pujols bug that year. The All Star game was in Seattle and my dad took me.... to All Star Fanfest. Largest card collecting event I've ever been too. Super special memory for me that my dad would be bored out of his mind for a thousand hours just for me. Real fatherly love. Anyway, I bought 3 boxes of Heritage and couldn't complete the set, and I thought, I don't have the money to keep doing this. So I started emailing other ebay users after they won Heritage lots, asking if they wanted to trade extras. And it worked! Those were the good old days of ebay. I completed the set by the end of the summer. I kept trying to collect Heritage, but without a big rookie combo like Ichiro and Pujols, it just wasn't the same.

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[Tere1071]

My first completed set was the 1971 Topps Football set, including the game cards and posters all obtained through purchasing packs. The 1972-73 basketball set followed. My first baseball card set was the 1974 Topps with the Washington Nationals and checklist cards, again all from purchasing packs.

Phil aka Tere1071