The funnest dumb way to collect (almost) the whole set!

You may recall from an earlier post that I’m now collecting the 1961 Fleer “Baseball Greats” set. At the time I wrote the article I had maybe 30-40 of the 154 cards in the set. Now, just a month later, I am now at 140/154, just 14 cards short of the set. Awesome, right?

Ah, but did I mention I have over 100 doubles?! Here’s the thing. Rather than just buy the set (boring, and too big a hit all at once to the pocketbook) or buy only the singles I need, I’ve to this point focused almost entirely on “lots,” as in listings of 10-40 “random” cards at at time. (And just to avoid confusion with other meanings of the word, I’ll capitalize “Lot” from here on out.)

Early on that was a great way to go. For this particular set, I might find a Lot of 30 cards in VG-EX and pick it up at right around a dollar a card, i.e., even less than what collectors pay today for many of today’s brand new 2019 and 2020 offerings.

When my Lots arrived, good times ensued-

• It was fun to thumb through the cards and see who I got. (Yes, I tried hard NOT to look at the listing details specifically so I could be surprised later.)
• It was REALLY FUN to find cards I needed for my set, and early on this was most of the Lot.
• It was REALLY FUN to occasionally come across a “high end” player (e.g., Lou Gehrig) I didn’t expect to see thrown into a Lot. (In today’s jargon, this would be known as a “hit,” and I would be expected to post a pic to social media with the caption “DiD I dO gOoD?”)

All told, buying Lots brought back all the fun of buying packs, which, sometimes we forget, is about the funnest thing in the world you can do with baseball cards. (No kidding, I have a group of guys I get together with each month (COVID-19 Update: on hold!), and we have a blast opening packs of junk wax, even packs we don’t care about at all. Most of the time we don’t even take the cards home.)

Of course, all pack openers know what happens when you get closer and closer to completing your set. Doubles galore! Now back in the day, that meant spending 30 cents and ending up with 15 doubles. At the high-stakes poker table that is 1961 Fleer, it may mean spending $20 for 15 doubles and only a single common I need for my set. (By the way, the notion of a common Baseball Great is one of my favorite oxymorons, even if it fits this particular set to a tee.)

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I’ll add here that the situation with ordinary packs or Lots is amplified with a set like 1961 Fleer that has a decidedly more scarce high number series. Unless you’re buying a specifically advertised “high number Lot” you almost certainly end up with somewhere between 95-100% low numbers. Still, I was determined not to give in and complete my set “the boring way,” which I’ll define here as any method that’s fast, cheap, or efficient. I was in this one for the fun of it, and any extra I was paying would simply be the “cost of fun.”

Fortunately, two things happened to me that helped me a lot (lowercase, ordinary meaning) with my set.

• A collector got in touch with me and made a big trade.
• Another collector got in touch with me and sold me his Babe Ruth.

In each case, there were no doubles involved, and in the case of the Ruth I got one of the cards that would never come my way buying low-cost Lots. I was now breaking my own rules right and left, but I was okay with it since trading and making deals with “real people” (vs. anonymous eBay sellers) is almost as fun as opening packs. Finally, with a Want List that’s now exclusively megastars and high numbers, buying more and more Lots seems like an exercise in total futility.

Most collectors I meet feel an internal tug of war between wanting to build their collections on a budget while also wanting to enjoy the chase. Giving in to the former generally means buying the set all at once (BORING!), while giving in to the latter generally means Lots and singles (EXPENSIVE!). (And singles get particularly expensive when each $3 card adds $3 in shipping.)

Ultimately, how you collect comes down to what your budget is and what value you put on the fun. For every collector the answer will be as unique as their fingerprints, but in general I would encourage all collectors to at least consider fun in the equation.

Too often as collectors, we forget about the fun side of the Hobby, worrying instead about whether or not we got a good deal or found the lowest price. In reality though, not knowing who you’re gonna get, getting one of the cards you really wanted, creating your Want List, making up dumb games with your doubles, having a Want List when someone asks you if you have a Want List, trading, checking things off, completing a sheet of nine in your binder, having a set you’re working on…often (and if we’re honest with ourselves…ALWAYS!) these things are more satisfying than actually having the set.

As such, if you pay a little extra to take the fun route, it’s maybe not so dumb after all; it might even be really smart. At the very, very worst, we’ll say it’s a fun dumb, which maybe–just maybe–is the best an adult blowing hard-earned cash on little cardboard baseball men can ever hope for. God knows I’ll take it!

Epilogue

Back to those hundred or so doubles. It’s not normally my thing, but I did manage to sell a small stack of them. More germane to this post, however, is that I found a way to turn them into tons of fun.

A fellow Chicago chapter member is having a baby soon, and he’d told me once he might get into this set. (I didn’t break it to him that he’d soon have zero time for hobbies, sleep, or anything else.) Well, boy did I have a blast printing fake wrappers off the internet and creating 1961 Fleer “repacks” as a dad-to-be gift for him.

Of course, now he’s the guy with almost all low numbers, hardly any big stars, and a bunch of doubles, but guess what…

He’s also the King of Fun when it comes to opening packs. Click here to see who he got in his first pack, and I bet you’ll learn something new about every single player!