Nice thread and great input by everyone.
I think you have practically made your decision, but my vote would be to collect from a variety of sets over focusing over the 52's. There are just too many great cards out there to limit yourself.
I've long considered myself a set collector, and in the last few years since getting back into the hobby, have put together t206 (520), 33 goudey (minus Lajoie and 1 Gehrig), 52 bowman, and 73 topps - all low grade and mostly natural state. But all the while I couldn't focus on just one set. So, I started "tricking" my ocd tendency to complete sets by defining subsets. t205 hofers; t207 bat, belt, glove ; e card clouds and sunsets ; pre-war 100 different types.
I considered the 52t complete set since it is one of the iconic sets but the high numbers $$ and the large % of cards that honestly don't appeal to me visually wouldn't let me get close to actually going for it. I did in fact start a subset with 52t (cards with stadium backgrounds) and got about 30 of those, but ended up selling them as I had too many pre-war projects going on at that time.
The topps completionist thread
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=174273 inspired me to expand my 50's and 60's type set and attempt to collect every hall of famer (active playing years, regular issue) in the main topps and bowman sets 1948-1979. That's going to be a huge task (for me) in itself and I can't even fathom being able to pull off the set run that is described in the completionist thread.
Regardless, for the purposes of this thread, I think you'll like the idea of collecting a small representative sample of multiple sets. I know I really enjoy picking up a stack of 15 to 25 cards from any of the topps/bowman sets in the 50's & 60's and flipping thru them as if I'm a 10 year old standing next to my bike in the gravel parking lot of the country store back in the day.
Have fun and thanks for the thread!
Tony