The Joy of a Year's Worth of Completed Sets

Since the time that I apparently decided I was a bit of a set collector, around five years ago, I have kept track of the final card of each set. To me, it's a fun exercise to look back at which card was the most elusive and see how many sets were knocked off my needs list each year. I've found that I tend to finish off around a dozen sets in a typical year (many of them small insert sets), with 2020 being a high point of 27 and 2021 a low point of seven. 2022 rode the flow back to a higher point, with 17 sets completed. Here is a review of those sets I put to bed last year.

2021 Topps Opening Day

220 cards; Last card: #218 Daniel Johnson

It used to be that a box of Opening Day yielded a complete set. For the last few years, that hasn't been the case. After my box of 2021 Opening Day, Daniel Johnson was the last card I tracked down.

2015 Score Gridiron Heritage

25 cards; Last card: #16 Ozzie Newsome

2016 Panini

300 cards; Last card: #285 Paul Perkins

I took my time on this set, opting only to pick up the missing rookies when I found them for less than 75 cents. Ironically, Perkins was the last card I needed--but the foil parallel has been in my collection since I broke my first box of the product 6 years before completing the set.

1998 Fleer Tradition

250 cards; Last card: #182 Derrick Rodgers

 This set was part of my mission to complete one set for every year that I have been collecting. By 1998, I was barely collecting. But I wanted to keep the complete set streak years going. I wasn't sure about 1998 because of the big rookies in the year (Peyton Manning, Randy Moss, Charles Woodson, etc.) I was able to find them pretty easily and inexpensively for this set. The streak will stop at 2000, though. There's no Tom Brady rookie I could afford.

2012 Leaf National Convention

90 cards; Last card: ??

This is an interesting one. I bought this oddball multi-sport set from ebay because I'd never seen it before. The listing said it was a 98-card set. But when I went to enter it into TCDB, I discovered that it was listed as 100 cards on the database. I was missing Marshall Faulk and Eric Dickerson. However, I've still been unable to even verify the existence of those cards. So, was it a 98-card set and TCDB has an incorrect checklist, or am I to search forever for Faulk and Dickerson?

2021 Panini Prestige

300 cards; Last card: --

I didn't collect this set piecemeal. I bought the entire set in one fell swoop. Frankly, newer products have become so expensive as unopened products that I may have to complete many base sets by just buying complete sets.

2012 Panini Cooperstown The Village

10 cards; Last card: NNO Otesaga Hotel

This is a set that I thought I had completed years ago. Last year, I discovered one missing card and had to go back and finish it off. Someday I'll go to Cooperstown.

1998 Pinnacle Mint

30 cards; Last card: #18 Cal Ripken, Jr.

This was a fun one. I collected the base set--all of which have holes for the coins. I collected the brass coins, too. It just so happened that the last card and the last coin were the same. I picked up the coin first and it sat on my desk for a few weeks while I waited for the cardboard part. It was cool to unite the two to finish off the set. Both of them, actually.

1992 Upper Deck MVP Holograms

54 cards; Last card:--

This one is a boxed set I already posted about.

1992 Fleer

720 cards; Last card: --

Part of my junk wax rampage this past summer. After tackling 1989-1991 sets a piece at a time, I opted for a factory set of 1992.

1993 Topps Colorado Rockies Inaugural Edition

825 cards; Last card: --

Another factory set. This one left me with a story about my collection I'll never forget. You can read about it here.

 2022 Topps Opening Day

220 cards; Last card: #204 Joey Bart

Same story as the 2021 Opening Day set. This one didn't spill over into the next year, though.

1993 Upper Deck (Berman's Best subset)

10 cards; Last card: #433 Jerry Rice

Probably nobody but me counts this as a completion. I was just shooting for the "Berman's Best" subset. I've loved Chris Berman's nicknames since I was a kid. Bonus points to this set for containing my only Chris Berman card.

1990 Topps

792 cards; Last card: #417 Jim Gantner

Not gonna lie. This set was a ton of fun to build. I didn't have much to begin with. Instead of busting packs, I learned what a vending box was. I pulled massive junk wax trades on TCDB. Is it my favorite set? Not even close. Was it some of the most fun I've had collecting in a 4-month span? You betcha.

 

1990 Bowman Sweepstakes

10 cards; Last card: NNO Bo Jackson

While searching for lots of over-produced cards for my set builds, I came across this little promotional insert from 1990 Bowman. I'd never seen them before I bought a monster box of junk cards. I'm a sucker for art cards, so I just put them all aside as I dug through the box. A quick trade later and the set was all mine.

2022 Panini Chronicles Draft Donruss Retro

25 cards; Last card: --

In the fall, I had some extra card money set aside and I went on a bit of a spending spree. Part of that included finding a deal on this set of current NFL stars in their college uniforms on the 1992 Donruss design.

2022 Panini Chronicles Draft Score Retro

25 cards; Last card: --

From the same seller came a deal on this set of NFL All-Time greats in college on the 1992 Score baseball (but not football) design. Kudos for having a BYU player in each set.

So I polished off all of those sets in 2022. Some I started and finished within the calendar year. Some were years in the making. Some were acquired as factory sets, others as hand-collated sets. Some were spur-of-the-moment, found-the-right-deal-on-a-fun-set-I-had-never-considered-building-until-this-point purchases. But at the end of December 2022, I had 17 more complete sets in my possession.

And almost 18. Here is one that was oh-so-close. I still intend to complete one set each year, even though 2020 posed a problem for me. You remember 2020, don't you? Cards were scarce and prices started to skyrocket. Either I never found or couldn't afford to buy any 2020 football products at all. And with the success of a few top rookies in the class--Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Jonathan Taylor, to name just a few--I wasn't sure I'd be able to afford a complete 2020 football set in the near future. But I found a decent price on a small Panini set on eBay one day. Chronicles only has a 100-card base set, but rookies are there. So I picked up the set and called 2020 done.

After it arrived, I left it on the shelf, unopened for about two months. Just this past week, I finally cracked the box open. And I discovered this:

Foil never scans well, so let me explain what you're seeing. The base cards in this set have silver foil in the helmet "C" logo, the team name, the position, and "Chronicles" across the bottom. Fourteen cards from my purchased set weren't base; they were parallels. The colored cards were mostly pink (Jackson, Polamalu, Kelce, Watt, Rice, and others), but some were bronze (Alexander and Sanders), green (Hockensen), and blue (Swift). Still, the major components were there, so I'm okay going back to complete the final 14 with actual base cards. Even if that means one less set in 2022.

2023 has already brought me two more set completions. Let's see how the rest of the year goes.

Holographic MVPs

Without looking it up, can you name the AL and NL MVPs from 1991? I'll give you three seconds.

3

2

1

If you guessed--or remembered--Cal Ripken and Terry Pendleton, you are correct. I bring this up because I recently stumbled onto an all-holograph set from Upper Deck.

I didn't even know of this set's existence before I found it on eBay. As I've mentioned in a few of my most recent posts, I spent the summer with overproduced era sets, trying to complete one set per year since I started collecting. For 1992, I chose Fleer. Unpopular, I know, but I still don't regret that decision. But as I waded through my junk wax cards, I became really fond of 1992 Upper Deck and its fun, unique photos on both sides of the cards. I jumped onto eBay to explore the cost of a factory set and found 1992 Upper Deck Team MVP sets for sale. 

 

I still don't know how it was distributed, but I learned they were EXTREMELY RARE. Yes, ONLY 214,000 were made. My CoA says this is #143886/214000. I put in a bid and ended up winning for about $3 plus shipping. Then it took forever. I waited for three weeks after I had received a tracking number before checking up and finding that the tracking number had never been received by USPS. I contacted the seller who said he had gotten sick and would mail my package the next day. About five days later, USPS marked the package as having entered transit.

The set has 54 cards--two for each team and one each for the league MVPs. Each team is represented by its top pitcher and top position player. Many big names--from Nolan Ryan at the end of his career to Jeff Bagwell at the beginning of his--are featured in the set.

 

But do you remember these guys? These are the stars that Montreal, California, Detroit, Houston, New York, and Milwaukee had to offer. I bet those Bill Wegman vs. Luis Polonia matchups were instant AL classics in 1991.

It's a pretty cool set and I'm glad I found it (cheap). I'm still debating whether/when to add 1992 Upper Deck baseball to my wantlists, but in the meantime, I'll be mesmerized by turning a set of 54 holographic cards around in the light.

A True Feel-Good Collecting Story

A few years ago, I decided that I needed to have one complete set from every year that I have ever actively collected cards. Since my collections have always had a football-first focus, I was looking for football card sets from 1988-1999 and from 2012 carrying up to the present. It was just a few months ago that I acquired the last cards I needed for a complete 1998 Fleer Tradition set and completed that run.

If anybody is interested, here are the sets I chose to retroactively finish for each year of my youthful collecting days:

• 1988 Topps
• 1989 Topps (and Traded)
• 1990 Action Packed (and Rookie Update)
  
• 1991 Pro Set Platinum
• 1992 Fleer
• 1992 Ultra
• 1993 Fleer
• 1993 Skybox Impact
• 1994 Collector's Choice
• 1995 Collector's Choice
• 1995 Upper Deck
• 1996 Donruss
• 1996 Select
• 1997 SPx
• 1997 Upper Deck
  
• 1997 Zenith
• 1998 Fleer Tradition
• 1999 Pacific Paramount
• 1999 Upper Deck HologGrFX

I wasn't a huge baseball collector back in those days, except for 1991, when the convenience store (the only one in my town) stocked Topps and Fleer cards. I would pick up a few baseball packs here and there as a kid, but my money typically went toward football. But after completing my youth years run of football, I thought it would be fun to do the same for baseball.

Which brings me to my story.  Last month, I visited Platinum Sports and Music in Provo, Utah. I don't typically use the names of card shops in my blog, but this one deserves a shout-out. The owner, Steve, is a pretty good guy. He knows who I am and we talk when I come in. When I have my kids, he gives them quarters for the gumball machine.

Anyway, I stopped by in June and noticed a stack of 1993 Topps factory sets on the shelf. He told me they had found a case of them in a storage unit and I asked how much he was asking for them. He had me look up the prices on recently sold sets on eBay, and we found a range. He offered up a price that was about $5 lower than the low end of the range. I had sort of decided that I wanted to complete Upper Deck for my 1993 set, but this was a good price and it kept me from having to chase down a Jeter rookie for that year. I took it.

I noticed the box he gave me wasn't factory sealed, but I didn't think too much of it. I took it home and put it on a shelf, waiting to crack it open as a Father's Day activity. There were 10 Gold cards and 3 Black Gold cards included, so there was a little bit of surprise involved. Of the three years that Topps made a gold foil parallel in the early 90s, 1993 was always my favorite, so I did want to see if any fit into my collection.

I was disappointed when I opened my box. I should have taken a picture, but I didn't. But when I opened the box, it was obvious that it was not in its original factory state. There were about 50 cards that were not in the brick of cards going through the box. Instead, they were perpendicular to the other cards and shoved into the gap between the ends of the other cards and the box. I pulled them out; all of the Gold and Black Gold cards were there. Some commons and some prospects were there. Derek Jeter was there. And ALL of them had severely dinged corners.

My best guess is that somebody discovered this unsealed and searched through it to make sure it contained the Jeter rookie and the special cards before they sold it. But then they carelessly put the cards back in the gap and they jostled around and got damaged. 

So now I had a problem. I bought the set, but I opened it. It had been close to a month because I had saved the box before opening it. I was considering taking it back, but I knew that many people would say, "You've had it for three weeks and you've opened it and you want to return it now? With the most valuable card in the entire set badly damaged? Get lost." Knowing that they had an entire case of factory sets in the store, I thought it was worth trying my luck to get this one replaced. I took it back in, but Steve wasn't there. I explained the situation to one of his employees, who got him on the phone. Steve told him to replace it. So he grabbed another set off the shelf and handed it to me.

Happy ever after, right? Well, the story doesn't end here.

The new box was factory sealed. It had a different seal on it, too. It had a stamp saying it was "Exclusive to the Colorado Rockies Baseball Club." I didn't think much of it until I opened the set.

There I found, in perfect condition, the Jeter Rookie Card.

And I noticed the gold stamp. These were part of a special, parallel set. I looked it up on eBay. The factory set of this version was selling anywhere between $250 and $800. I had paid $40. I didn't feel right about this, so I went back in the next day. Steve, the owner, was there and saw me enter with the box. He said, "Now, I know that one was factory sealed." I explained that, yes, I was the one who brought back the other set the day before. Now we had a completely different problem. If he had been the one to pull the set off the shelf and hand it to me, I would have been okay with it. But it was his employee, who I could tell knew nothing about cards (not unusual because the larger portion of the store is a music store) who gave it to me. I showed him my discovery and said I appreciated his trying to make the damaged set right, but I didn't feel good about such a discrepancy in value in my favor.

He said, "Oh, you know those usually sell for a lot more?" Well, yeah, that's why I was there. He replied, "I'm sorry about the damaged cards. I appreciate you coming in, but I can't think of anyone better for that set to go to."

So instead of the 1993 Topps Flagship set, I ended up with the 1993 Topps Colorado Rockies Inaugural Edition set. And this card--the real Jeter rookie in the set (not Shawn)--which has had recent eBay listings sell for $120 to $300, is somehow in my collection.

As for the extras in the box, here are the Gold and Black Gold included. Barry Larkin was the best gold player, but my favorite gold card was the bottom left of the top photo, Bernardo Brito. I remember watching him play for the old Salt Lake Buzz when he was a prospect for the Twins. "Brrrrrito!" was by the AAA team's best slugger, but he never had much of a Major League career. After hitting .219 in 40 games over 3 seasons in Minnesota, he took his bat to Japan. I don't know how his career went after that. The Black Gold cards were a bit more interesting; I pulled a ROY collection fit in Eric Karros and the Redemption card for all four parts of the Black Gold set. (Most of the redemption cards were for parts A, B, C, or D. This was the ABCD redemption card.) I wish I could still redeem this thing. The stated odds on the box for an ABCD redemption card were 1:25 boxed sets.

I appreciate Steve for being willing to let me exchange the damaged set in the first place, let alone for allowing me to keep the harder-to-come-by, more expensive set. He says, "It's all about Karma here." Whatever the reason, I feel like he went above and beyond in customer service and I became the beneficiary of an unexpected boon.

I Did What I Could

When I look back on 2021, it seems like it may be a forgettable year. A lot happened for our family in 2019 and 2020--the biggest change being that we moved in 2020 and spent a considerable amount of time and money renovating the new house. As a result, I didn't have much money left to work with on any projects in 2021, either around the house or in my hobbies. When I look back at all I accomplished during the year, my major projects revolved around things like yard clean-up. It required very little money, but it doesn't give the same sense of achievement as, say, building something might. On the card front, I spent less than I have in ten years. My trading slowed way down. So as I look back on my set completions, I see that I completed significantly fewer sets than 2020, as well. In 2020, I polished 27 sets off and removed them from my wantlist. In 2021, I managed to finish off only seven. But the completion of any set is a good feeling. Here are my set completion achievements for 2021.

 

2016 Topps Pressed Into Service

10 cards; Last card: #3 Jose Canseco

I like the idea of this set, featuring position players who took a turn on the mound at some point. I think Topps did a decent job finding photos of the player pitching, too. Only a couple of cards don't have pitching pics. The back is good, too, providing the details of the outing. It's a fun, small set.

2020 Panini Diamond Kings DK Originals

10 cards; last card: #2 Clayton Kershaw

I've been working on a couple of inserts from this set, but this one is my favorite. It's a nice, simple design with some cool stylized photos. The ten-card checklist is a mix of retired legends and current players.

 

1991 Fleer Pro-Visions

12 cards; last card: #11 Don Mattingly

 

 

These cards have been cool since they came out 30 years ago. I never considered building the set until I bought a monster box full of random (mostly overproduced) baseball cards a few months ago. Combining the few that I owned with the few that came in the box left me with just two cards to obtain for the full set. It became a no-brainer that I kind of stumbled into.

1991 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes Nolan Ryan

9 cards; last card: #10 Nolan Ryan

This is another set that has been iconic to me for 30 years. I never was lucky enough to pull any of the early inserts back in the day, but once again a lot of older cards came to the rescue. This time, I bought a binder of baseball cards at a local show and found seven of the nine Nolan Ryan Heroes cards in there.

1996 Score

517 cards; last card: ?? Received entire set at once.

I just showed this set in one of my most recent posts. It's a truly underrated set, in my book.

2021 Topps Opening Day Outstanding Opening Day

10 cards; last card: #10 Hank Aaron

This set showcases players who had particularly good season-opening games. I like the theme, even if the design isn't the most eye-catching.

2018 Score NFL Draft

30 cards; last card: #6 Saquon Barkley

My final completed set for the year is this colorful insert set from 2018 Score. From the moment I pulled my first cards out of a pack, I knew this set would look incredible together in a binder. Most of the cards were pretty easy to come by, but every Saquon Barkley I came across was priced way too high for my liking. So I bided my time for a couple of years until I finally found a copy for under $1. I snatched it up and--BOOM--set done.

So there you have it. Not too many sets crossed off the list. Then again, there weren't too many sets added to the list, either. We'll see what 2022 holds in store.

Sets Dropping Like Flies

For the past few years, I've been keeping track of the last card I obtained for a set. Because of this, I have a running tally of every set that I have knocked off my want list since 2017. In 2019, I managed to finalize a record 12 sets and I felt pretty good about myself. This year, killing off sets from my want list became even more of a collecting priority for me. This was partially because there were sets I was tired of seeing on my want list after years of back-burner status, partially because I had ideas for new projects that I didn't want to start while I still had too many sets to think about, and partially because new products this year were uninteresting/unavailable to me. The result of spending my time and money searching for set needs was a whopping 27 sets completed in 2020. My annual disclaimer for this post is that these sets weren't necessarily started and finished during the 2020 calendar year, but 2020 was simply when I collected the final card needed for the set.

Some of the images below are photos I took upon receiving the cards, while others come from TCDB.

2016 Panini Absolute Unsung Heroes

20 Cards; Last Card: #13 Joe Thomas

I never opened a pack of 2016 Absolute, but I saw this set and had to have it. This is one of my favorite checklists ever, with guys like Eric Berry, Joe Thomas, and John Kuhn as well as two former BYU Cougars, Brett Keisel and Ziggy Ansah.

2013 Panini Triple Play

100 cards; Last Card: #98 Stephen Strasburg

I really don't like this set. I only decided to build it because I had accumulated the entire base set and thought, Why not? Except for the last 10 cards, which are short printed and harder to find than you might expect. The SP subset is "When I Was a Kid" and is pretty fun. Strasburg was the final one eluding me for a couple years, but I was able to pick it up and put this set to bed.

1992 Fleer Ultra

450 cards; Last Card: #331 Barry Foster

I bought a box of 1992 Ultra on a whim about three years ago. I probably could have finished the set earlier, but the collation was awful and the box didn't get me as close to the set as I had hoped. Every other card that didn't come from the set came from trades.

1992 Fleer

480 cards, Last Card: #469 Steve Young

See above.

1993 Fleer

 500 cards; Last Card #399 Anthony Miller

See above.

1996 Donruss

240 cards; Last Card #143 Emmitt Smith

This set took about 3 years of "once-in-awhile" collecting before I polished it off. This is Donruss's first foray into the football field.

1992 Upper Deck Gamebreakers

9 Cards; Last Card: #9 Michael Irvin

Last year I completed the 1991 Gamebreakers set. I mentioned that I was close to the 1992 set. Well, now it's done. Two holograph sets that fit neatly into a nine-pocket page. 1991 featured running backs; 1992 was all receivers. I didn't realize this before, but I just learned that these had one-per-box odds, so that's kind of cool

1999 Pacific Paramount

250 cards; Last Card: #100 Edgerrin James

Last year, a TCDB member was selling some partial sets and I decided to pick up a few. Even though I had no 99 Paramount cards before that, I ended up buying enough of the set to conclude it was worth finishing it. I took less than a year to buy and trade for the remaining cards. The set has a couple of nice rookies, including this Edgerrin James and Donovan McNabb.

1986 Topps 1000 Yard Club

 26 cards; Last Card: #22 Roger Craig

Earlier this year, I picked up a couple of large boxes of football cards from the local classifieds. Among the good stuff in there was a near-complete set of 1986 Topps 1000 Yard Club inserts. I immediately decided to add the collection and it didn't take long to trade for the last 3 or 4 that I needed.

2017 Topps Update

300 cards; Last Card: #US221 Mark Zagunis

This is a set I thought I had completed a few years ago. It turns out I was still missing one card. A Cub, no less! But I rectified through a trade this year.

2020 Topps Opening Day

200 cards; Last Card: #175 Austin Meadows

My annual box purchase once again yielded a complete set. All of these cards came in one fell swoop, but I marked Meadows as the last card needed as it was the last card of the last pack.

2020 Topps Opening Day Opening Day

15 cards; Last Card: #5 Milwaukee Brewers

This repetitively-named insert set is usually a pretty fun one. I had no particular interest in completing it, though. Until my box came up just one card short. It was a quick TCDB trade away from completion. 

2019 Topps Opening Day 150 Years of Fun

25 cards; Last Card: #23 Francisco Lindor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was my yearly Opening Day insert set from last year. It took my a little longer, but I finally made the trade for Lindor that completed it. I wonder if some team will finally make a trade for Lindor in real life. It seems like he's been the subject of rumors for ages.

1992 Pinnacle Team 2000

80 cards; Last Card: #29 Brian Hunter

 

This was an interesting set for me to build. I had never bought any 1992 Pinnacle and had never seen this insert set. But when I did discover it a few years ago, I loved the checklist so I decided to chase it. I just completed an 80-card, nearly 30-year-old insert set that I had not started before. It was fun to do.

 

1996 Select

200 cards; Last Card: #200 John Elway/Barry Sanders Checklist

Like the Paramount set above, this came from the same lot of set starters I bought from a TCDB member. This design isn't my favorite; it's all horizontal and the football leather texture makes it hard to read the text. But 1996 was a pretty good rookie class and Select was a pretty good product back in its day.

 

2016 Topps Archives

300 cards; Last Card: #101 Babe Ruth

This set was completed almost completely from blaster boxes and then trading. This last card cost me way more than it should have, but I guess the pandemic-induced price hikes on cards included modern-day Babe Ruth base cards. I paid over $2 for this card, but I haven't been able to trade for it and I really wanted this set off my wantlist, so I went for when I saw a seller on Sportlots that I already had included in my cart had a copy available. Although, I have to admit that showing the Babe as a pitcher for the Red Sox makes for a pretty cool card.

 

1998 Pinnacle Mint Bronze

30 cards; Last Card: #7 Ken Griffey, Jr.

This is such a weird product. The base cards have big holes in them. Coins came in packs with cards. This particular set is one of three parallels with foil coins printed in place of the hole. These parallels look more like real cards than the base. I picked up a starter set of base, coins, and bronze for $1. I'm still working on the coins, but Griffey polished off the Bronze foil set.

2016 Topps Bunt Program

30 cards; Last Card: #P-10 Albert Pujols

It feels like this set has been sitting on my wantlist forever while I just added a card or two every year. They weren't hard to find or cost prohibitive to pick up, but I always seemed to find something else that I would have rather picked up. With one Sportlots order, I decided just to knock out the last few that I needed. I really fell in love with the idea and the design when they first came out, so I'm glad to finally have them all.

 

 

2017 Prestige

290 cards; Last Card: #267 Jeremy Sprinkle

There are actually 300 cards in this set, but the final 10 are short-sprinted and too far out of my price range for players that amount to just set fillers for me, so I don't plan to collect those. As far as I'm concerned, this set is done.

 

 

2020 National Baseball Card Day

30 cards + 3 Bonus; Last Card: #9 Francisco Lindor

I already posted about my quest for this set. Thanks to a generous card shop owner, I was able to come within a few cards from free packs alone. The last few came from Sportlots and eBay. Francisco Lindor is my final card in a second set this year.

 

 

2019 Topps Big League

400 cards; Last Card: #375 Christian Yelich

I really thought it would be easier to build this set. Two hobby boxes barely netted me 50%, but I was determined to finish it. Most of my TCDB trades this year involved 2019 Big League, but this popular Christian Yelich had to come from Sportlots to finish the set.

 

 

2008 Upper Deck X Xponential

90 cards; Last Card: #X-RO Roy Oswalt

This cool holographic set was the bright spot for 2008 Upper Deck X. It took me years before I decided I wanted to complete this set and another year or two before I decided to complete it and get it off my wantlist. Once I did, I found it was surprisingly easy to chase it down. I like the sister insert set, Xponential 2, more and I'm making good progress on it right now, too.

 

1998 Ultra Pizazz Subset (Short Printed)

25 cards; Last Card: #494 Mark McGwire

I never made a goal to put the 1998 Ultra set together. I merely acquired a good chunk of these sparkly Pizazz cards and thought it would be nice to finish it off. I didn't know that these cards were SPs at the time. I think this set is the highest value set (by average card, not cumulatively) I have ever put together. No, I'm not a high-end collector.

 

 

1997 Upper Deck

300 cards; Last Card: ??

One more set that I bought off the TCDB seller and completed. I don't know which card was the last because I didn't realize that it was done until later and I couldn't remember what the last card was.

1988 Topps 1000 Yard Club

28 cards; Last Card: #24 Eric Martin

After I completed the 1988 Topps football set for nostalgic purposes (the first cards I ever owned), I thought I'd add the one-per-pack 1000 Yard Club Cards to the binder. This set came almost entirely via trades. Fun fact: due to the 1987 strike, the threshold for these players to be included in the 1000 Yard Club was only 750 yards.