Collecting Goal 2016: Set Completion

I'm not much of a set collector.  When I was a kid, the only thought I gave to completing a set was when my parents would give me a sealed factory set for Christmas.  Even then, I often broke the set apart and used cards from it for trade fodder with my friends.  I got back into the hobby in 2012 and adult me saw a certain value in set building.  A more mature me, with a little more money, saw set building as a worthy goal, something to give me a sense of accomplishment.  And it does, really.  Those numbers on the back of the card actually begin to mean something.  Checklists actually gain a purpose.  My need to organize and know what I have receives some clarity.  So this year, I set a collecting to goal to knock out some of the incomplete sets I had begun.  This seemed perfect for me.  I sometimes obsess over goals, and I love the feeling of a completed project.

With that in mind, I focused my end of the year card purchases on set completion.  All of these cards came from Sportlots and represent a set need.

So let's see how I did this year.  I now present to you the sets I completed in 2016.  (Note: Not all of these sets were begun in 2016.  These are just the sets which I acquired the final card in the past twelve months.)

Baseball:

2015 Topps Chrome (Final Card: #3 'Scooter Gennett)
2012 Panini Cooperstown (Final Card: #148 Ferguson Jenkins)
2014 Donruss (Final Card: #61 Billy Butler)
2008 Upper Deck X (Final Card: #27 Jim Thome)

2016 Topps Opening Day (#161 Stephen Piscotty)
2016 Topps Opening Day Heavy Hitters (Final Card: #HH13 Joey Votto)
2016 Topps Bunt (Final Card: #6 Evan Gattis)

Football:

1994 Classic NFL Experience (Final Card: #55 Dan Marino)
1997 Pinnacle Zenith (Final Card: #150 Dan Marino Checklist)

 2014 Topps (Final Card: #140 Philadelphia Eagles Team Card)

2015 Topps Platinum (Final Card: #10 Tony Romo)

 2016 Donruss (Final Card: #49 Jay Cutler)

So by my count, that's 12 sets that I completed this year.  However, there are a few more that should have been completed this year, but just didn't get done.  I'll do a post on my "almosts" a little later.  That's a disappointing post for me.  But I know one thing: I won't be pursuing too many new sets in 2017.  I learned this year that set building gets to be a little expensive for me, especially when I'm spending my limited budget chasing cards like Jay Cutler.  Ugh.  Or actively trading for players that I absolutely no connection to or even a liking for.  Plus, I don't the storage space for a bunch of random cards.  I learned that some smaller sets, like Opening Day and Bunt, could provide me a both a box break and a complete set for a price tag under $30.  I'll probably continue that method when I can.  Other than that, I may just find some smaller insert sets that I like to build.  I don't know.  But I don't think I have the money or storage to continue building a ton of sets.  I'll continue working on knocking out the ones I'm currently working on, but I won't too many more.