More joy: complete sets or individual items

[conor912]

One of the things I enjoy about set building is that no card is more important than any other for completion.

[raulus]

Blonde or brunette?

London or Paris?

Chocolate or Strawberry?

Ferrari or Lamborghini?

I'm guessing we all have our preferences, depending on what floats our boat. Personally, I'm a player collector, and I go deep. I want every piece from their playing days. If I'm feeling frisky, maybe I'll dabble in collecting a small oddball set that is mostly overlooked by everyone else and seems like it might be a fun sideline.

Although if Ferrari is an option, the correct answer is Ferrari. Always Ferrari.

[BioCRN]

I tend to gravitate toward specific types of collections, defined by me, that make me happy.

I have an ungraded Mark Grace collection that happily sits in binders and I don't really care that much about the card condition as long as it's not a beater.

I have a graded 1950-2011 "HOF-stars-notables" collection. Why 1950? Arbitrary, yet easy enough of a starting point...plus it lets me start my collection with the RC of the first NL/AL ROY winners Don Newcombe and Roy Sievers. Why 2011? Well, it used to be 2001 because Pujols+Ichiro really breathed life into the hobby and it was a nice time to be in it. It became 2011 because why not...and also Mike Trout. I made the call and got to add more cards.

I have an all-time Cubs graded collection of HOF-stars-notables. It's not insanely impressive like the collections of some others (aka Shankweather), but it's comprehensive and very fun to build. It let me deep-dive into the entire run of the team history (well, at least the 1886+ years) to find contributors that don't have decent name recognition. The education has been almost as rewarding as the cards.

So yeah, collect whatever you want and create your own guidelines. The guidelines may change. You might even get a little bit into it and decide to bail...that happens.

Have fun.

[MR RAREBACK]

I like to buy the best 9 to 18 cards of each set and put them in a binder,
That way you dont have all the commons and you have all the best of the set