Building a set vs buying a set
 

For me, a big part of the joy of collecting cards is chasing and upgrading sets. Finding what you need, one by one can be a lot of fun, but it's often the more expensive route. I usually find myself buying lots and cherry picking the cards that align with my eye appeal preferences and filling in the gaps. Sometimes, I'll buy a full set, but it's never with the intention to keep it intact. I'll always find cards I want to upgrade. I'm curious about what the set building habits of others are. How often do you buy complete sets outright? How often do you find yourselves upgrading cards in your sets? Do you ever tire of certain sets and let them go in order to fund/chase another?

For me, it depends on the price point of the set. If it's under like $400, I usually will buy 3 or more complete Near Mint sets and then disassemble them and put them back together by condition so that I have one high grade set. That gives me 3 or more of each card to choose from condition-wise as I'm rebuilding the sets. So, I've done that for like '76 thru '85 Topps Baseball (after '85 are all factory sets). For 1975 and back, I build them like option 3 - "I usually buy lots and fill in the gaps to complete my sets."

For prewar sets, I just build those card by card. The only prewar set that I've done is E95.

No real easy answer for me. All depends on where I am with the particular set.

If I don't even have a card or hardly enough for a base collection to start from, I will probably just go ahead and buy it. Then upgrade what needs to be.

If I have a fair number of cards and semi-stars and stars to make a run at completing the set, then I will do that. In the end it probably cost more than it would have to buy the set outright, but I have the fun of completing the set. And I can get the cards I want upfront and not have to deal with upgrading any.

Thankfully, I am almost done with the 72 Topps set and that will be the last one I put together. Unless I win the lottery my Topps run will be complete for me from 69 - 2k. I would like a 68 set but that would be an outright purchase, and that is not happening anytime soon or later.

Cheers,

B. T.

I do not collect sets so but I do know that I enjoy the chase of the cards. So I would not buy a complete set. In addition depending on the cost of complete sets I would probably have to do each card separate to have to have to to gather the funds.

No wrong answer but as a collector I enjoy the "collecting"

As a YOUG KID, I built sets from nickel packs and by trading or flipping! You HAD to! When I got a little older and could afford to buy a whole box, I still finished "This Year's" set by trading or "hocking" cards!

Then I discovered Larry Fritsch and found I could buy a 500-count Vending Box. Each of my 3 brothers and I would buy one, then trade each other to finish the set. If I needed any singles, they could be bought from Larry Fritsch, Stan Martucci, or Bill Henderson. THEY were my "Go TO" guys!

In High School & College, I would buy complete sets, especially Factory sets, so that NO GIRLS could see that I STILL actively collected baseball cards! This let me build older and older sets card by card which I still do to this day...

MUCH more selective now tho...

GREAT question, brings bac a flood of memories!!

Building sets ('57 thru '79) is where I get the most enjoyment in this hobby. Typically I've purchased a lot containing 100 to 200 cards for Topps vintage sets, smaller lots for smaller sets like the 60s football, hoops, etc. I'll cull the beaters and go from there. For the stars I'll buy low- to mid-range graded cards that I break out of the slabs or raw cards from dealers I trust.

In some cases all I have to start with are the Orioles and a star or two when I begin and I build card-by-card from there. The '62 Topps set was like that. And that one, with the green tints and other oddities, was especially fun and frustrating.

Set collecting this way is inefficient and makes no sense from a cost outlay perspective but I'm in the hobby for the fun of it. I really get a kick out of putting that last card in the last open slot in the binder pages.

All of the above.

Aside from the sets I've bought, my set building pace is best described as glacial.
I'm a handful of cards from finishing 1976 topps, not much better than where I was in 77, or the mid 80's I think I've added like 2 cards since then.

I tend to either buy boxes or packs and then gradually fill in most often from large lots of junk, although I've tried to get away from that.

The responses may vary greatly depending on the era a set is from. Pre-War sets tend to have their cards more often listed and sold separately, or in very small groups. So buying large lots and then filling in the holes is normally not even an option. Post-War and Modern cards you can much more easily find large lots, or even complete sets, for sale.

Ultimately, the question is going to more likely come down to and be greatly influenced by the specific set you're going to collect, as opposed to the type of set collector you'd like to be.

I dont have the patience to assemble a large set card by card; I have back runs for that. I would rather buy the entire set complete, leave as is or upgrade, or at least buy a larger chunk at one time and fill in the blanks. Another issue I have with sets is that I want the HOFers in nice condition, and I dont care so much about the commons so long as they have a minimum grade. Many complete sets I see have HOFers with lower grades than the commons, which is ass-backward in my opinion. A final issue I have with sets is I just dont really care about the commons. For this reason, the few sets I have completed/worked on/bought are super rare and small, as its hard for me to spend real money on a bunch of commons

I have completed/worked on 6 sets, all of which are darn rare:

1. T206 524-card complete set - I bought an existing, near-complete registry set and upgraded and added to it. The beauty of this acquisition is that the set was missing many of the major HOFers, which I already had and could just add to the set.

2. E107 set - bought it complete

3. 1906 Lincoln Publishing - bought it complete

4. E104-II - bought near complete and added Wagner

5. D304 -- assembled card by card but did acquire about 40% in one chunk

6. M131-Newsboy -- only about 20% complete, but I have the Cobb, Wagner, Young, Speaker, and Evers so I have most of the cost accounted for.

I would love to own complete 1914 Cracker Jack, 1933 Goudey, and 1952 Topps sets, but I would have to buy them whole, as I do not have the patience to assemble

Good point. We often get consignors of 1950s-1970s sets who have EX to NM commons and their Mantles and Mays cards are absolute train wrecks. Don't go cheap on stars because when and if you do sell low-grade stars will poison the commons.

I voted one at a time, because that's how I get the most fun out of it. To keep costs in check, I have one main project (signed 1953 Topps) and a handful of smaller side projects that I'm ok with working on at a glacial pace. I will pick up lots from time to time, and cherry pick upgrades, but I don't like replacing cards I got signed TTM. Those ones stay in my collection.

Type card collector here. The T205s were fun to make a run at.

https://luckeycards.com/merchantevers.jpg

I completed the 1948 thru 1992 Topps regular and insert complete run (everything pre 1973 card by card, from 1973 forward I bought packs at the local store to the point where the only cards I was missing were the ones where I felt like asking the lovely wife permission to buy them was the right thing to do.

That's when I sold them all.

Doug