General Forum

Tl;dr: If you wanted to collect team sets of your favorite team in today's cards, what approach would you take? Which brands/sets would you prioritize?

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I started to weed through the vast collection my father and I put together years ago. I decided to sell/trade everything that didn't have much meaning, which is essentially all non-Pirate cards. I have team sets for the Pirates in some state of completion from 1952-1993.

Id like to start collecting Pirates teams sets from 2023 and the past decade, where should I begin?

There are so many variations I don't understand. If I started with just one brand/one set/one variant, what should it be?

What should my approach be after collecting that set?

I've had people wanting to trade new cards for old cards but I have to turn them down because I still don't quite know what my goal should be. Help me out!

Thanks!

Topps. They have sole license from MLB.  Any other brand will have no team logos, team names, distinct uniforms.

Among the Topps line of cards some of the bigger sets that will have a larger amount of players would be:

Topps (flagship)

Stadium Club

Heritage

Archives

Bowman

I think the same large sets that have been around for years are the most fun to collect and there are ways you can do it to give you a fun chase without breaking the bank. Topps flagship and stadium club. I think a reasonable and fun goal would be to trade for all base paper and chrome sets and collect as many non-auto non-relic inserts as you can. If you like spending money the gold sets in paper and the base refractors are fun. Just don’t get swept up in collecting all the colors.

Agreed, pretty much anything Topps.

Those first three for sure 

I do not like spending money. 

Are the paper and the chrome sets the same picture with different material or wholly different?

I'm 99% sure that when the Topps 2024 sets drop, I'm just going on ebay and buying team sets of the Blue Jays and Tigers. I might buy a box of Heritage, because I love it like I love O-Pee-Chee for hockey, but due to the SPs I've never completed a set... so I am leaning towards just buying team sets of that as well.

My advice: figure out what you like and collect that one. If you want some sort of historical consistency though, the flagship Topps set has been there for us since the dawn of time.

That being the case, start adding sets to your wantlist. Then add all those cards you no longer want to your trade/sell list. Sit back and watch the offers fly in! Or seek out trades for the cards you want.