Posted By:
Brian McQueenPeter, great question - I'm kind of curious about this myself and have wondered this same thing about a number of other sets (ie...t209, d311, 1909 Obaks...etc..)
I haven't been going after this set nearly as long as Ben or others so I wouldn't be a good at identifying the "Set toughies". I know of the three players which are well-known to be notoriously tough in this set. There is a fourth card that I feel will be tough as more of us get a little closer to completion as there is a descendent of this player collecting his cards.
One observation is that many cards that I need (I need 11 to finish off the set) are not the same ones that others need. Out of the 11 I still need, Steve Murray has 8 of them oddly enough. Out of the 9 Ben needs above, I have 7 of them. This would lead me to believe that while there are 3-5 set toughies, many of the cards Ben and I still need are certainly attainable
Your observation about the different teams is also a good one. I haven't noticed any difficulty gathering cards for specific teams though in the Z11 set. The 11 cards I still need are scattered pretty evenly across several teams and I believe the same can be said about the 9 players Ben needs. However, team scarcity does come into play in other sets such as d311. I've heard a few people say that Sacramento players seem to be a little tougher to find in that particular issue and out of the seven cards I still need to complete the d311 set, 5 of them are indeed Sacramento players.
Hope this helps a bit....