A 1952 Topps complete set. Starting "the" ultimate post war project

[BradW]

This is my first post on the forum, so hopefully I did it correctly. First of all, thanks to everyone on this forum for sharing your knowledge. I am newly re-interested in collecting baseball cards. I grew up in the 80’s and collected my entire childhood (wish I still had my old collection). Collecting sure has changed since then. I have learned so much just reading through the historical posts on this forum.

Like many others, I think the epidemic has given me more time to reflect on the past and card collecting brings with it a sense of nostalgia and a way to fill time. I also hope that it can be a shared experience with my sons (age 5 and 7).

Growing up I collected Topps - coolest thing I ever did was put together a 78 Topps set in the late 80’s. I like the process of set collecting and decided that I want a longer term project to focus on and have embarked on the process of attempting to collect the 52 Topps set. To this day, I still remember being a kid and looking at the 52 Mantle at my LCS and thinking how great of a card it was. Not to mention everyone’s posts on this forum outlining the beauty of this set.

My current philosophy is to attempt to build in a PSA 5-6 (obviously will need to settle for a lot less on a handle full of key cards). I’ve seen on this forum and agree that a well-centered 5 presents very nicely. In the last 2 months I’ve compiled 30 commons (including a few high numbers). Most significant card so far is Herman Wehmeir (red back) in PSA 6 from the Greg Morris auction the other night - cannot wait to get that one in hand.

I’m interested in what others think of what seems like very quick inflation on the prices of the non-Mantle stars (Robinson, Mays, Mathews, Campanella, Wilhelm) in lower grades 2-5. I’d like to pick-up at least one or two of these in the short term to feel a real sense of commitment to the set and a bit of accomplishment. I’m not looking at this as an investment so not concerned with that, but because I am viewing this as a longer term (at least a few year) project I don’t want to rush into buying something if the prices are close to the top of a bubble. The commons and minor stars seem to be fairly consistent on pricing to me so I am going to keep plugging away on those now.

Thanks again for sharing all of you knowledge and I’ll update on my progress as I move forward.