How To Build Card Sets on a Limited Budget!
Building sports card sets is a great way to enjoy the hobby -- it's like putting a puzzle together!
Each Happy Hobby Sports Card Newsletter For Collectors has a handful of great sports card subjects, helping sports card collectors working with limited budgets!
This Week’s Newsletter Highlights!
⚾🏈🏀 HOW TO BUILD CARD SETS ON A LIMITED BUDGET!
⚾ PATRICK’S PRIME PROSPECT PICKS!
⚾ BASEBALL CARD TRIVIA!
🏈🏀⚾ OUR 5 MOST POPULAR PODCASTS EVERRR!
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⚾🏈🏀 HOW TO BUILD CARD SETS ON A LIMITED BUDGET!
Josh Scarberry of MJ Family Time Cards was kind enough to write our feature piece for this week! This is for card collectors of all types, including baseball, basketball, football and hockey card collectors!
In 2022, I got back into the hobby and my son Micah was introduced to sports cards. We have a blast ripping packs together on our YouTube channel, going to card shows and collecting. We have found that one our areas of enjoyment is set building.
Over the past few years, I’ve learned some things which have helped me build sets on a limited budget. I enjoy set building as it gives value to the base card, in a time when the base card has become less valuable to many, due to large amounts of parallels, inserts, autos, etc. Set building makes all the cards matter, from the top stars to the bench players, and it also adds another element to collecting.
Your First Big Decision!
There are so many sets each year, one of the biggest decisions you must make is determining which sets you want to build. Identify what you like, perhaps a series like Topps Holiday, which is one we build this annually because we enjoy it so much. Perhaps the design of a certain year catches your fancy or even because it’s a loaded class of rookies like the 2024 Topps Update series.
Find what you like and start there, the process of building and obtaining is part of the fun.
Building Sets on a Limited Budget
Set building requires cards, so finding ways to obtain cards for less matters.
Wax: Normally my strategy for building is purchase some wax as our starting point and then try to fill what is missing by other avenues. Building sets by ripping wax only is the most exciting way to build sets, but it can be quite costly.
Other Collectors: Other collectors may not be set builders and they might be willing to trade, sell or give away base cards. There are groups on various social media platforms which are happy to share their needs and trade. The Happy Hobby Sports Cards Chat on Substack has been a place I have both given cards and people have given cards to me, specifically for set collecting. Check with other collectors -- you may be able to obtain many of these cards for free, or for the price of shipping.
eBay: I approach eBay in two ways for set building:
Buying Cards in Lots: Many sellers rip wax for big hits and will sell their base cards in lots. This is great place to obtain large lots with hundreds of cards to fill sets. This is normally a cheaper way than ripping wax to add bulk of cards, but you won’t have chances at the big hits.
Buying Singles: Normally, I can get these with a discount if I buy more than one to fill my last few cards needed in the set.
Card Shops and Shows: We love to go to shows and local card shops. If you carry a list of what you need with you, you’ll often find singles at great prices.
These are just some of the ways we have learned to build card sets on a limited budget. We know there are many other ways, and we’re excited to learn some of the ways you might add cards to your sets – leave us a comment!
Once again, thank you to Josh and Micah! Make sure you check out their fun family friendly videos over at MJ Family Time Cards!
⚾ PATRICK’S PRIME PROSPECT PICKS!
Patrick Imhoff shares some of his favorite baseball prospects to pick up every few weeks!
Bowman 1st prospect cards are always a hot ticket. With that comes high prices for the so-called top prospects. In this corner, the goal is to highlight a prospect with tons of potential that doesn’t come with the high price. In this edition we are highlighting New York Mets #2 prospect, Jett Williams.
Williams will most likely start the season in the Mets organization in Triple-A, however, the MLB Pipeline #45 overall prospect projects to hit the big league roster this season. The two big pluses for Williams is his ability to limit strikeouts and his plus tools as a defender. Williams has the talent to play to two biggest positions, SS and CF, and his versatility and speed will get him in the Mets lineup sooner rather than later. His power numbers still have room to grow, but an injury free start to 2025 will be just what he needs to get his final reps in before his call up.
What I like most about Williams is the price of his cards on eBay for a player of his caliber in a major city. For less than $5, you can find multiple options of his 2022 Bowman 1st Chrome Refractor BDC-190, and for under $20 you can find a numbered parallel or sapphire refractor, which is a great color match for a Mets player. Now is a great time to grab a Williams card before prices rise with his expected callup in 2025.
⚾ BASEBALL CARD TRIVIA!
Send me the answer to this question – you could win this free card from me! 2008 Topps Opening Day Joey Votto #218 Red Team Color Match Rookie Card.
Which baseball player had both his 2,000th and 3,000th base hit on the same day, Aug. 6, six years apart?
Email your answer to gonoscards@gmail.com and you can win this 2008 Topps Opening Day Joey Votto #218 Red Team Color Match Rookie Card! Rather than take the first person who answers it right, I’m going to do a random drawing of all the people who answer this question before midnight, Friday, March 13. The winner will be announced in the March 20 newsletter.
From Feb. 27 newsletter: Which 1986 Fleer Basketball card is the only one with a “Traded” logo on the front? The prize is 2020-21 Panini Chronicles Marquee Tyrese Haliburton #241 Rookie Card. Answer this question before midnight, Friday, March 6. The winner will be announced in the March 13 newsletter.
From Feb. 20 newsletter: Last week’s question: Which year of Topps Series 1 is believed to have the highest production run for each base card? The prize: 1976 Topps All-Time All-Stars Mickey Cochrane card! The winner will also be announced in the March 13 newsletter.
⚾ OUR 5 MOST POPULAR PODCASTS EVERRR!
We started our Happy Hobby Sports Cards Podcast about nine months ago, and we eclipsed 9,000 total downloads last week! With so many new subscribers over the past couple months, I wanted to share a handful of our five most popular podcasts, in case anyone missed them!
Coming Next Week!
⚾🏈🏀 9 FREE CARD COLLECTING TOOLS YOU SHOULD BOOKMARK RIGHT NOW!
🏈⚾🏀 SPORTS CARD TRIVIA!
⚾🏈🏀 CARDS THAT MAKE US HAPPY!
***Important Card-Collecting Articles on DavidGonos.com***
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Podcast Music: "I dunno" by grapes - 2008 - Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (3.0)
 | A guest post by
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I love building sets myself.
A good resource I have used is a site called Sportlots. Card prices start at 20 cents and if you find a seller that has a lot of cards from a set listed you can get a pretty good deal without getting killed by shipping.
Happy building!
Enjoyable read. Really nice article about set building, Josh. What a great point about making base cards, even of the common players, mean something, in a world in which they’ve kinda been lost in the shuffle, as you pointed out. I’ve always wanted to build some sets, and I plan on doing so fairly soon, when I have a dedicated space where I can kinda “stretch out” my collection, finally
And Patrick, really like this idea for a recurring column, helps keep me better informed of some of the prospects for other teams, and great buys too. Well done, fellas.