[FrankWakefield]

Is there value for a set being intact? Yes. But it isn't monetary value. The value is in the self-satisfaction of having completed a set.

If it's all about the 'more money', then collect the cards that you like in a given set, then move on to a different set; don't "lower" the value by completing a set with cards you don't care about.

I recall when the sales tax in Kentucky was 3% when I was a kid. At some point, might have been 25 cents, the clerk would add a penny for tax. Hmmm, so if I bicycled over to the store that sold baseball cards, with enough coins to buy 8 packs (40 cents), then I'd make two trips through the cashier's line. 8 packs at once would cost 41 cents. Two purchases of 4 packs each would cost a total of 40 cents. THEN, to my outrage, in March of 1968, the Governor and state legislature got a law passed that would change the sales tax to 5%, and I think at 15 cents of a total sale they'd add the first penny of tax. I was shattered. Much of my early ball card money was from picking up Coke, Pepsi and RC bottles out of ditches on Saturday mornings. I'd get 4 cents for returning a Coke bottle, and 3 cents for the others. So a penny tax was frustrating to a bicycling kid. By 1968, paying a few cents occasionally for tax was not an insurmountable burden. But I still didn't like it.