General Forum

 I have slowly, over 30+ years pieced together the baseball sets of my childhood. It has been a lot of fun and a passion shared by my son- tolerated by my wife. I started with the 1969 set, the first pack I remember buying, as an eight year old. That said, it is a toss-up between the 1951 Bowman and the 1954 Topps. I'm not sure why but both of those sets have a certain "magic" about them, at least for me. Besides, what baseball card collector wouldn't want a Mantle rookie?  Thanks for the question. 

 I would complete my dad's sets, the 61-62 basketball fleer, which currently is 60% complete and Topps Baseball 61 and 62, which combined is about 50% complete...

1952 Topps Baseball would be the ultimate

 1956 Topps baseball. It's beautiful. It's full of hall if famers. It's just cool. Aside from that, though, the 1972 Topps baseball set. Like others, I'm sentimental towards that set because they're the first packs I ever bought. Because I'm blessed, as of my birthday yesterday, I'm now exactly one Cesar Geronimo short if fulfilling this life-long dream that I've worked hard on for years now. 

 The biggest focus of my collecting has been the Greats of the Game sets.  I would have to say a true master set of the 2004 set with all of the cut autos.

R338 Goudey Sport Kings. I love the variety of sports covered.

Many of you mentioned the set you started collecting with, and I guess I was fortunate that I started working for a card shop (sorting cases at home into sets) shortly after I started collecting and I got a set from the year I started. I started colecting in 1978, got 2 sets in 1979 (from mostly packs), got a complete set in 1980 and started with the shop in 1981. So I have all the sets from 1978 to present in Topps (except the elusive 2001 Traded set). So I actually do have the set from the year I started collecting. I'm hoping to get 1972-1977 sets from a family member who has extras, but we'll see. They are worth a good amount and I need to work out a deal. Then, I'd be 3 sets shy of getting from my birth year to present day. As it is, I'm missing 9.

  I have to agree with Clueless Joe about the 2004 Greats of the Game set.    It is not the set I chose but the 2004 GOG sets are probably the nicest of the last 30 years.   Nice sturdy stock and classy.