I have a question, as a relatively new (yet kinda old) collector.
I recently completed my Topps 2011 Baseball, Series 1 (cards 1-330) set. As I got closer, it became silly to buy packs, as nearly every card I received was a "double." I found myself 24 cards short, went to EBAY and found a seller offering "You Pick 25" - I won the auction for about $6, including shipping.
My question is this - how do you guys complete your sets? Do you have/know a local dealer? Do you belong to groups that trade cards back and forth? Do you use EBAY, like I did? Or do you not really complete sets in this manner, at all?
Trading and/or sportlots.com were two huge helps in allowing me to complete 2011 Topps Opening Day
ReplyDeleteyeah, I trade as much as I can. I'd rather spend that ebay money on postage helping someone else out.
ReplyDeleteThen for the rest it's sportlots....
Trades. Dude. Trades. I really only use sportlots, COMC for player or team collections. But for current sets, trades are the way to go.
ReplyDeleteSportlots the one for commons & COMC for not so common.
ReplyDeleteOnly trading right now. Of course I haven't completed many sets recently.
ReplyDeleteI buy packs until I get to roughly 50% of the collection - after that it's really diminishing returns.
ReplyDeleteThen I trade and buy from shows or online to fill in the set.
But, I will sometimes keep buying packs if the inserts are cool. Like the 2011 Heritage, I was probably at over half the set, and buying packs was a horrible dupe-fest, but I wanted one of the autographs. So I bought one more blaster... and I pulled a Stan Musial autograph! so that was worth it.
The two things of card collecting I enjoy most: ripping a pack and digging through old $1 bins. I know it sounds crazy, but actually completing the set is not that exciting. It's actually kind of disappointing, lol.