It's 2010 ...Time for a census!

It's the start of a new year, so I thought I would survey my collection of vintage cards (click to enlarge):


The yellow areas are my "wheelhouse". My 1st period of collecting began in May 1967 and stopped after the 1972 football season. I got the low-numbered '67, '68, and '69 cards, and all of the '72 cards in the year issued.

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The release of the 1979 and 1980 Burger King Phillies sets, coupled with the Phillies winning the 1980 World Series, got me started in the hobby again. I decided to limit my collecting to:

A) Completing my '67, '68, and '69 sets

B) Collecting the Phillies cards from all years

C) Buy 1981 factory sets

How did I do?

A. The '67, '68, and '69 high numbers were acquired mostly in the early 1980s. I now have them all except 4 cards from the 1967 set.

B. During the 1980s and early 1990s, I collected Phillies cards from 1964 (an arbitrary starting date, based mostly on economics) up through 1993. This included:

1. All Topps from 1964 to 1993 (except the Mike Schmidt rookie).
2. All Fleer from 1981 to 1992.
3. All Donruss from 1982 to 1992.
4. Most Upper Deck and Score from '90 to '92, and all Bowman from '90 and '91.

C. In 1981, I got the Topps and Fleer factory sets, and the Topps Traded set. In the early 1990s, I also went factory-set crazy, and have all the factory and update sets for Topps, Fleer, and Donruss from 1988 to 1992, and the 1992 Score set.

After 1993, I stopped collecting again until the fall of 2008.

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With the Phillies winning the World Series in 2008, I got back into card collecting. Interests since late 2008 include:

1. Recent Phillies cards (Topps base set, some Topps Heritage and Upper Deck). I have most from 2004 to 2010.

2. Phillies cards from 1963 back to the early 1950s. I currently have all the 1960 to 1963 Phillies except the high numbers, and a few from earlier years. I also have some Phillies from the early 1960s' Post and Fleer sets.

3. Started collecting the non-Phillie 1964 to 1966 Topps cards. I'm currently focusing on adding to my 1966 set.

4. In early 2010, I began adding to my collection of 1970 baseball cards, and now have most of the 720 cards.

Sometime in the last 20 years, my 1969 cards of Willie Mays, Johnny Bench, and Rod Carew went missing. I have recently replaced these.

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Oh, I forgot to mention football cards:

I'm modernizing, thanks to Wrigley Wax!

After reading about Wrigley Wax's new and improved headquarters, I decided that I needed to get off the dime.

In the last few days, I got all my binders and set boxes out of the Hammermill boxes they've been hiding in for years, and put them on a recently freed-up bookcase. (The binders don't all match, but it's a start!) It's much easier to hunt down some cards to scan when they're not in boxes.

While I was at it, I counted my cards. (I knew what I had, I just didn't have any idea how much it was. Well, I have over 17,500 baseball cards! This counting task wasn't as tedious as it sounds, because a lot of those cards are in complete sets. I just looked up the set sizes, subtracted what I know are missing, and counted the loose cards from the incomplete years.

Completed sets are '68, '69, and '72 Topps, while my '67 Topps set is complete except for 4 cards. I'm also a few hundred cards into the '65, '66, and '70 Topps sets, and have a few dozen cards from '64, '71, and '73. All of the above are in binders.

I also have 6 binders of Phillies cards covering the 1952-1993, and 2004-2009 years.


Later, I went through a factory set phase:
'81 Topps and Fleer
'88 Topps
'90 Fleer and Bowman
'91 Topps, Fleer, Donruss, and Bowman
'92 Topps, Fleer, and Donruss
Topps Traded: '81, '87, '89, '90, '91
Fleer Update: '90, '91
Donruss Rookies: '89, '90, '91

...and these sets are near completion (bought by the pack):
'89 Topps, '89 Donruss,

... and finally completed in March 2010:
'90 Donruss, '92 Score

No non-Phillies cards after 1981 are in binders yet, so I have a lot of organizing ahead of me, just to see what I have.