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

[Phil68]

Originally Posted by cardsagain74

I have decided to take on the very long-term task of building a '52 Topps set (pretty much out of the blue this evening). Beyond the obvious reasons, this epiphany also hit because:

- Making a slow-paced lifetime project out of it will be a fun challenge

- The set is one of the very few that may actually be cheaper to put together piece by piece. The few complete sets that you see are vastly overpriced, and I don't want to consider a 50 k outlay at once anyway.

- Already have Berra, Feller, Hodges, and about a dozen commons. Almost there eh, so why not finish it off

Will likely attempt doing it low (but no awful beaters) to borderline mid-grade, and just look for the best deal on everything in that range.

Has anyone else here taken this on? How has it gone compared to your expectations?

I'm on my 2nd run doing 52's. The first time I built it--it was raw and I did it from 1981-1985. It was actually pretty easy as I could find guys with albums with those 8-card pages and flip through 'em to find centered cards.

This time around, the Mantle will make it nearly impossible for me so I'll use a custom Banty Red Mantle.

I can't tell you what to do, but I can say that cards that PSA would deem a "5" that are centered present beautifully and have a slightly handled, beautiful appearance. I am happy to buy them raw. It seems Greg Morris brings higher prices for raw cards than graded examples--so he's really not a great option on-line. Great seller, but a card that sells routinely for 25 bucks in a holder sells for 40 raw. I'll save the $15 and break out the saw! But he's the only guy I find in that position. Most cards raw are affordable. Long-term you'll want centered cards with clean images. They are much easier to re-sell if you need to.

Question for you...are you a numbers guy? Meaning, are you cool with a set that ranges from "3"s to "8's" ? Some guys (me included) don't like such a wide condition range. I have found it's inevitable with 52's. The high numbers make NM and better cards awfully hard to assemble without selling your house.

I'm excited for you and hope you take it on! Keep us posted. At least one guy is very interested in your progress!
Phil

[1952boyntoncollector]

Originally Posted by Phil68

I'm on my 2nd run doing 52's. The first time I built it--it was raw and I did it from 1981-1985. It was actually pretty easy as I could find guys with albums with those 8-card pages and flip through 'em to find centered cards.

This time around, the Mantle will make it nearly impossible for me so I'll use a custom Banty Red Mantle.

I can't tell you what to do, but I can say that cards that PSA would deem a "5" that are centered present beautifully and have a slightly handled, beautiful appearance. I am happy to buy them raw. It seems Greg Morris brings higher prices for raw cards than graded examples--so he's really not a great option on-line. Great seller, but a card that sells routinely for 25 bucks in a holder sells for 40 raw. I'll save the $15 and break out the saw! But he's the only guy I find in that position. Most cards raw are affordable. Long-term you'll want centered cards with clean images. They are much easier to re-sell if you need to.

Question for you...are you a numbers guy? Meaning, are you cool with a set that ranges from "3"s to "8's" ? Some guys (me included) don't like such a wide condition range. I have found it's inevitable with 52's. The high numbers make NM and better cards awfully hard to assemble without selling your house.

I'm excited for you and hope you take it on! Keep us posted. At least one guy is very interested in your progress!
Phil

plus issues now of trimming on the high number cards in the nm rnage

[cardsagain74]

Originally Posted by Phil68

I can't tell you what to do, but I can say that cards that PSA would deem a "5" that are centered present beautifully and have a slightly handled, beautiful appearance. I am happy to buy them raw. It seems Greg Morris brings higher prices for raw cards than graded examples--so he's really not a great option on-line. Great seller, but a card that sells routinely for 25 bucks in a holder sells for 40 raw. I'll save the $15 and break out the saw! But he's the only guy I find in that position. Most cards raw are affordable. Long-term you'll want centered cards with clean images. They are much easier to re-sell if you need to.

Question for you...are you a numbers guy? Meaning, are you cool with a set that ranges from "3"s to "8's" ? Some guys (me included) don't like such a wide condition range. I have found it's inevitable with 52's. The high numbers make NM and better cards awfully hard to assemble without selling your house.

I really appreciate all of the input everyone.

As far as what Phil said here: I'll be looking for low grade (w/o anything horribly damaged, bad stains/tape/writing on front, etc) to borderline mid-grade, so basically grade 1.5 to 4-5. Though my Feller is a slabbed 5.5, so I might have to bang a corner on it to keep things uniform Never plan on selling these parts of my collection or upgrading anything I get, so will be taking advantage of that lack of resale value for 85/15ish type centering when possible to lower cost.

It will all be about getting the best deal on anything within those grades while compiling a set that always looks better than beaters, regardless of raw or graded.

I agree that a lot of the Greg Morris raw cards sell at the top of the market, but I've found that occasionally you can find the commons, semi-stars, and even low demand HOFers/bigger names (Ashburn, Red, Roberts, etc) that you need at a very useable price. That was actually where I bought the Hodges yesterday, and that was just before I'd even decided to build the set (at the time, just liked the idea of getting a clean grade 4-5 '52 T card of someone like that for a big discount). So I will still attempt to find anything that falls through the cracks in his auctions.

But getting good deals anywhere on the top names and high numbers will naturally be very difficult, especially in the current market.

[cardsagain74]

Also, how much trouble did everyone have with avoiding reprints or fakes? It won't be much of a problem for the grades that I'm looking for, but noticing those is not my strong point (other than when it's fairly obvious from an ebay listing that something is up).

[jgannon]

Hey, that's great that you are going for a '52 set. I am right now in the middle of acquiring '52 Topps as well. Man, that set in my opinion, is baseball cards as art. I don't think I'll every try to get the complete set, since as we know, a number of those cards are priced so high, especially Mickey's famous card. But I'm just going to have fun picking up the ones I can.

I never went for graded cards. I'm just going for the ungraded ones from some of the reputable dealers on ebay, and will keep an eye out for some nice ones here on 54.