I’ve been passively working on a 1961 Topps baseball card set for close to 15 years. By passively I mean, I have close to 400 cards in the set (mostly commons) that I pull out and look to add to about once a year. I have only been buying cards that I see as close to NrMt — sharp corners, sharp pictures (not always easy), decent centering, and obviously no creases. Of course I have lowered my standards on occasion, but by and large I have been looking for great cards so that when the set is done I will be able to claim it as one of the nicest complete sets available.
Why 1961? I honestly have no idea why I started with that year. I guess it is because I came across a lot of commons, 40 or so, sometime in the 80’s and just stuck them in a box. Then in the mid 90’s I pulled out all of my boxes of cards to see about liquidating them. I stumbled on the lot of 1961 Topps, and decided to work on a set… kind of the impossible dream given the number of really good star cards in that year, and the highly priced high number series. At the time money was tighter than now (and my wife did not always recognize the importance of baseball to me — curious given that when we met I was playing baseball in college), so buying anything more than commons was hard to justify given that I was looking for cards in super shape.
I pulled the set out again about a month ago, and am ready to go on another spurt of card buying — maybe a couple high numbers or another run of commons. Or, maybe now is the time to start on some star cards. I’d love to get the Clemente (a personal favorite of mine), or maybe a Hank Aaron.
I know it will be no less than another 15 years before I complete the set, buying in spurts once a year. But it really is fun to work on something that really was once unattainable to me.
