General Forum

The number of base sets, parallel sets, and insert sets is out of control.  How many Topps baseball base sets, parallel sets, and insert sets were released in 2014?  Anyone want to take a guess?

Easily over 100. A&g alone must have 25 or 30

The answer, across all Topps baseball brands (including Bowman) is 1,617.  At least that is how many are here on TCDB.  There are 2,648 baseball sets for the year 2014 on here.  1,617 were produced by Topps.  "Out of control" may be an understatement.

One only has to look at a single product to be overwhelmed. Let's look simply at the "2014 Topps" set.

There is the base set, and 99 insert and parallel sets - this doesn't even include any new inserts in the Update series. So in series 1 and 2, there are 100 different "sets" to choose from. Too much. Much much too much.

You're right, over 1,500. It was the 2014 Bowman base set with its 130 insert/parallel sets that set me off.  A 220-card base set has 11,250+ insert/parallel cards (all the checklists aren't uploaded).

The Junk Wax Years was nothing compared to the past decade. At least during the Junk Wax times you could complete sets along with the inserts.

It's the fact that so much of this stuff is completely unattainable that bugs me. If there are a lot of sets, but I can get them, that's one thing. If there are a zillion 1988 Donruss cards out there, that's fine with me. Packs were under 50 cents back then, and the set was attainable. I wasn't out much money trying to get them all. But I refuse to keep paying $20 for 8-pack boxes of the same thing to chase after color parallels of Cardinals, when I'm colorblind and can't tell most of them apart anyway. And have zero chance of getting them all. I would rather spend $20 at Just Commons once a month and get a big package full of stuff I actually want. I got so many Tom Herr cards in the mail last week!!

And now you all know why I collect the older sets from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and even the 90s.  At least I might succeed in accomplishing my goal of completing all of the sets.

The one thing it has driven me to do is to truly evauate what i want to collect and what is important to me rather than what the market says are the hottest cards. I got rid of most of my collection about 7-8 years ago when downsizing to a smaller place and only held on to my binder of 57 and 61, in hopes of someday completing those sets, and a couple of boxes of misc cards.  This year i found TCDB and while the vintage trading is rare here i did find people interested in my odds and ends. I looked at the 2015 sets and started buying blasters but quickly got sucked back in to collecting, however, I will only collect Topps, Stadium Club, A&G, and GQ and only the mini parallels for the last two.  i finished the Topps base set and almost feel disappointed and thinking of selling it, though i do love the new Stadium Club and love all the minis.  The good thing is that between trading here and selling on Listia, i can get rid of the doubles, inserts and parallels i dont want and get things that interest me, like selling 6 first ladies inserts from A&G and getting enough credits to buy a 2015 framed Clayton Kershaw #/20.  So there is always someone out there for everything. Sorry long winded reply.

I thought there was too many sets when Fleer and Donruss started producing in 1981.  This is why I've started collecting Opening Day, a true master set is attainable (although I'm beginning to hate the purples).  Speaking of which, anyone out there with Opening Day doubles from 98-15, please check my wants.

Not to mention, the asking price on a lot of these colored parallels (not even #'d) and inserts are out of hand. Trying to find hundreds of Target-only parallels is going to be costly - not even worth it. Impressive for sure, but chasing all those cards down will be a major challenge.