Post your Experience - Built a set, sold it, trying to rebuild

[Exhibitman]

I've built and sold off the 1954 Topps set two times over the last 40 years. It was always my favorite 'Golden Age' Topps set. The first set was raw and assembled mostly from a few large auction lots and local shows. My #1 Williams came from Goody Goldfadden's store here in LA. I sold that one around 1987, piecemeal. The second set was mostly PSA graded and mostly 6-7. It came from card shows and was mostly self-submitted to PSA. I would sell off the 8-9 cards I got and buy slightly lesser cards with the proceeds. That set got liquidated around ten years ago. Since then I've been rebuilding with decent looking vg-ish cards, with a few better and a few signed, plus a few I still had from prior sets.

My main takeaway from the experience is that if you love the set and want to own it, you eventually end up with a set that is a sweet spot combo of cost and aesthetics, so you may as well decide what you are comfortable with and go there first. For me, I wanted a 1954 collection with decent looking cards that didn't have too much money tied up in them. They're just such beautiful cards