General Forum

  I'm a single player collector, for the most part, but I found some old '73 topps football cards I had as a kid. About 50 in all,  only commons from what I can see.  I did have a Chris Hanburger card, which he signed in pen, remember those?

   The condition of these is VG at best, but I really don't care about condition all that much, I would just like to slowly try and complete the set. I'm figuring years right?  How do you guys go about it?  I could just buy a bunch at once, or even a complete set, but what fun is that.  Do you just hit flea markets, or card shows, or maybe pick up some at Sports Lots, or someplace?  The postage is what kills you ordering online.

   Anyone have any set building stories to encourage me?

                                                                                                                              thanks, Banny

Trade!! Find people here who want to trade.

And I may have some of those.

I agree with Dan trading is the way to go. I also like buying wax box/packs but that could be prohibitively expensive for something that old. 

I've done (doing) ebay lots and trading here.  Any dupes from the ebay lots I use for trading here.  I'm patient and don't over bid (pay) on ebay.  I've won lots as low as 10¢ a card.

I'm with C2. When I have less than half a set, I buy lots on eBay. You can get them fairly cheaply if you're patient and discerning. Then you upgrade with the doubles and sell or trade them off. As the set is almost done, I trade or go to my card shop or buy singles. Good luck. 

v3

I have 43 of them.  Maybe more   If interested

I also take the C2C and Vvv approach.  Until you have about 75% or so of the set in your collection, I feel the best approach is auction lots (online or if you luck into finding an actual auction in person).  After that, you have to be pretty selective in the lots chosen, so trading with TCDB members is the best way to whittle it down further.  And then you're down to just a handful or two of cards left, and it's back to eBay (in my case).

Best of luck.  I loved that set as a kid and have started lamenting giving my dad permission to sell my old football cards back when I was in college.

I would say trade here first if possible.  Then, look on eBay or Amazon for lots. Or, I've found there's a number of Facebook groups of card collectors. You'd be surprised what cards you can get from some groups. 

I have been a set collector for years. I went to cards shops to finish 1978 and up from my youth before the days of eBay. I finished a lot through eBay when it came out. The card shop is fun but expensive. I have found if you find a Buy it Now for 25 cards or so you can usually talk to that person about a larger order and most will cut you a break. I recently joined this sight and love the trading. Seems to me to be cheaper if you can do large trades.

I'm a recently-converted set collector myself (not sure I had made the announcement yet in the forums) and kind of figured that bidding on lots would be my plan of attack.  i think that when I hit 75% of a set, I'll put the missing cards on my want list and trade for what I can, and at 90 or 95% I'll look to buy the rest if trades are unavailable.  And I guess that in the process of buying lots, I'll accumulate doubles to use as trade bait.  Who knows if I'll stick with it, but sorting by set, numerically, was the idea that got me back interested in cards again.