Modern player basic sets

jimtb

Hello Everyone,
I'm collecting Trammell graded cards. The good news is that most cards are realitively cheap. The bad new is that there are way too many of them! As you all know, any player that made it big from the 80's on has hundreds of cards. My question is, is there a formula as to what is considered a basic card and what should only be added to the Master list? Where do cards such as Flair, SP and OPC fit in? Or is it up to the collectors putting the set together?

Any help would be appreciated,
Jim

theplasticman

I think the basic set is just your typical base brand cards, no inserts or oddballs.

Typically you can do either a basic set or master set in the registry. I am going for Master sets for two players I collect. What is cool is that most of their cards are pretty low priced and nobody is into PSA grading 1988 Donruss cards

Have fun with this, I am so far. They are having a $5 per card registry submission special right now. If you have some top notch stuff you could certainly send it in.

peterredshoes

I have done some thinking on this in the past and found I didn't take enough notes. So I went back through the basic and master sets of six players whose careers overlap Trammell's pretty well, compiled their basic sets into a single list sorted by set name, and then did the same for the cards that appeared in the master sets, but not the basic sets. The six players used were Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens, Tony Gwynn, Rickey Henderson, Ozzie Smith, and Cal Ripken. Criteria for selection was largely based on overlap with Trammell's career, particularly in the second half where basic vs. master questions are more ambiguous, and the number of cards in the sets, with a preference for larger sets. There are other players that I could have included as well, most notably Don Mattingly and Kirby Puckett, but I didn't want to overwhelm myself too badly with data, and adding players to the study has significant diminishing returns due to the fact that most players of this caliber appear in most sets produced, so that you can get a good qualitative result without an exhaustive player list provided that you have one or two sets that are fairly comprehensive, so that lack of submissions for a particular set isn't as much of a problem. In this respect the Clemens and Ripken sets were extremely helpful.

The key results can be summarized without bombarding you with stats and are as follows. I should note that this is purely an indication of what precedent has been best established to date (based on majority rule of the six sets in question). As you might expect there's plenty of gray area and room for arguments that current trends don't make sense.

*The most obvious candidates for exclusion from a basic set--inserts, glossy/tiffany cards, mail-order sets, food issues, minor league cards, game cards, regional sets, and the plethora of small retail factory sets distributed by major companies during the mid-'80s to early '90s, do in fact stay out of basic sets. There are a few curious exceptions to this rule, most notably in the Puckett basic set, which is one of the reasons I didn't study it in detail.
*Basic sets are, in general, completely free of subset cards.
*The five most prominent baseball manufacturers--Topps, Donruss/Leaf (now owned by Playoff), Score/Pinnacle Brands (defunct as of 1998), Fleer and Upper Deck--are the only manufacturers whose cards show up in basic sets. There are no exceptions to this rule in the six cases I studied.
*In terms of which brands of the "big five" manufacturers get included, the breakdown is as follows:

-brand names carrying the name of the manufacturer are in, as one would expect.
-the first premium brand offered by a company (Leaf for Donruss/Leaf/Playoff, Pinnacle for Score, Stadium Club for Topps, Ultra for Fleer, and SP for Upper Deck) are nearly always included. It should be noted here that the Leaf brand served as a French/English counterpart to the Donruss set from '85-'88 much like O-Pee-Chee did for Topps for so many years, and that these cards appear only in the basic set only for Clemens. Also Bowman, which hasn't always been a premium brand but which Topps re-introduced in 1989 after buying them out in the '50s, is consistently included as well.
-After those first premium brand, there are no really good rules of thumb other than that the more widely collected the brand, the more likely it is to be included. This makes sense because this is probably the toughest thing to figure out for modern player collectors--how "basic" is a set with a name like "Metal Universe Championship?" The result is that aside from the most popular and long standing "other brands"--Finest, Flair, SP Authentic--there's really not much consensus among the six sets. The Henderson basic set is extremely restrictive, for example, whereas the Clemens set is probably the most permissive. I am also hypothesizing that some difficulty arises in drawing conclusions from precedent due to two factors--lack of submissions for more esoteric sets, and my understanding that these sets are essentially self-monitored. This may explain why there seems to be a bit less consistency with respect to brand inclusion among larger sets than among smaller sets, but again I'm only speculating here.

At any rate, this did help me come up with what I thought was a reasonable list of Trammell cards to consider for submission and registration on the basic set. Reviewing the data this time will result in a few deletions, as I didn't notice the first time that subsets were so consistently exlcuded. The total after revision should be right around 140 cards, which is larger than most of the basic sets discussed here because I opted to be comprehensive regarding premium brand non-insert sets, and because it's pretty clear that all of the basic sets here, like the Trammell set, still have room for expansion via first-time submission.

Peter G.

-If you're interested in more details of what I did to come up with this, feel free to shoot me an e-mail

boggs301012

I am interested, I just shot you an email. What you have learned so far is very intresting.



James

Virtualizard

I don't know if this will upset anyone here, but I had a hand in streamlining the Henderson Basic set for Darton (who doesn't post here enough ).

Between the two of us and a submission we sent in a few months back, we decided that the Henderson Basic set needed a major overhaul. I contacted BJ with a request to update the set. Here is a copy of my email from Oct 17, 2003.





<< <i>I have recently submitted about 30 Rickey Henderson cards to PSA for grading and while reviewing the Henderson Basic set, I noticed the following cards are missing from the set:

1988 Score Rickey Henderson #13
1989 Fleer Rickey Henderson #254
1990 Score Rickey Henderson #360
1990 Topps Rickey Henderson #450
1991 Donruss Rickey Henderson #648
1991 Fleer Rickey Henderson #10
1992 Score Rickey Henderson #480
1992 Upper Deck Rickey Henderson #155
1996 Upper Deck Rickey Henderson #445
1999 Topps Rickey Henderson #277
2001 Fleer Tradition Rickey Henderson #201


Could you please add these 11 cards to the set?


Also, I believe there are a lot of cards in the basic set that do not belong there. Could you please remove the following 15 cards from the basic set? These cards belong in the master set only:

1988 Score Glossy Rickey Henderson #13
1992 Stadium Club Rickey Henderson #750
1993 Finest Rickey Henderson #86
1993 SP Rickey Henderson #40
1994 Bowman's Best Red Rickey Henderson #4
1996 Collector's Choice Rickey Henderson #240
1996 Select Certified Rickey Henderson #70
1997 Finest Rickey Henderson #63
1997 Skybox E-X 2000 Rickey Henderson #94
1997 Topps Chrome Rickey Henderson #39
1999 Skybox Molten Metal Rickey Henderson #93
1999 Topps Chrome Rickey Henderson #277
2000 Finest Rickey Henderson #208
2000 Skybox Rickey Henderson #84
2002 Donruss Classics Rickey Henderson #21


Thanks in advance.

JEB. >>





These additions and deletions were made without exception, and I believe this is now a "true" basic set (although a few more could be added once graded).

I believe that a basic set should be just that - BASIC. If the description of a card includes any text after "Topps", "Fleer", "Donruss", "Score", "Leaf", or "Upper Deck", it does not belong in a basic set. There are gray areas, but I would like to keep the Basic sets simple and attractive to the majority of collectors.

If anyone is interested, I'd be willing to offer a proposed Basic set for any player.

JEB.

peterredshoes

I'm certainly not upset. I'm having a blast with this!

One thing I really liked about the current composition of the Henderson basic set was that it was very consistent. If a particular brand was in, it was always in. If it was out, it was always out. And the place at which the line was drawn is certainly easy to understand, which I also liked.

One thing I'm curious about now is whether such an approach would work well for contemporary player collectors. I'm thinking in particular about players who have a large number of rookie cards due to their rookie years being in the mid-90's or later, and whose premium brand rookie cards are at least as widely collected as the most basic of brands (e.g. '94 SP Alex Rodriguez). Anyone out there with a favorite player who fits that description have thoughts on this?

Peter G.

dbj77

I was always wondering if there was a way to incorporate post-playing cards into the master set. For example, if you are a Mantle set collector, I would think it would be cool to include all his cards rather than just his playing days. The cards I had in mind would be like 1977-1984 Galasso greats, 1978 TCMA, 1975 SSPC, etc. Obviously the "purists" wouldn't want anything to do with these cards, but maybe the rest of us would..........

jimtb

Great post Peter G.
I have been adding cards to the Tram basic and Master sets as I have come acquired them. I'm not sure there will ever be 100% agreement on what should or shouldn't be in a basic set, but I think the collectors of each player can work through those issues and come to an agreement.
Jim

bengineno9

I know there are several more cards that need to be listed on my Ozzie Smith basic set. Especially when your around the mid 1990's. I was just waiting to have it updated once i get them graded.

Jim.
Good luck with your Tram set. You should have a lot of fun with it. If you roam Ebay on a daily basis you should have no problem adding 2 or 3 cards to your sets every week like i do.
Plus if you got a lot of Raw/oddball cards you can really bulk it up with this months special!

BEN

peterredshoes

It seems to me to be in the spirit of the freedom of the master set to allow post-retirement cards. It's also appears that such cards are gaining momentum in terms of the mainstream productions coming out and their popularity. In my mind, this trend started with 2000 Fleer Greats of the Game and has continued with such sets as Upper Deck Legends, Topps Archives, and Fleer Fall Classic. Personally, I prioritize such cards ahead of major stamp and sticker issues, which I noticed are already finding their way into master sets.

I also noticed that I overlooked a couple of items in my original post. These are traded/update issues and "clone" sets such as Topps Chrome. Trammell has no cards of either type which may have caused my oversight, but for many players they are of special interest. Ozzie Smith, for example, has one of the more notable traded cards around in his '82 Topps Traded issue (it even made the Mike Payne 300 great cards list), and so it wasn't surprising to me to see it in the basic set. Ditto for Ripken and his '82 Topps Traded rookie, and Clemens' '84 Fleer Update. The Boggs and Henderson sets by contrast feature less famous traded cards in master sets only, while Ripken and Gwynn have additional traded cards that can be further argued against by virtue of being part of subsets. Based on this I'm not sure there's enough to draw any firm conclusion aside from the fact that key update cards typically make it in.

With regard to clone sets, it appears that they tend to find their way into most basic sets as well, although there are exceptions and slightly less consistency. This is a particularly interesting question for collectors of current basketball players, where the Topps Chrome issue is sometimes the most sought-after rookie card (e.g. Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan). Is this true of some of the younger baseball players as well?

Peter G.

mikeschmidt

<< <i>It seems to me to be in the spirit of the freedom of the master set to allow post-retirement cards. It's also appears that such cards are gaining momentum in terms of the mainstream productions coming out and their popularity. In my mind, this trend started with 2000 Fleer Greats of the Game and has continued with such sets as Upper Deck Legends, Topps Archives, and Fleer Fall Classic. Personally, I prioritize such cards ahead of major stamp and sticker issues, which I noticed are already finding their way into master sets.
>>



Peter:

I respectfully disagree. With the Mike Schmidt Master set, for example -- I envision the current rules having the "Master Set" end up at around 400 cards or so. Since Schmidt's retirement on May 29, 1989, there have probably been closer to 1,000+ unique Schmidt issues issued. And there is seemingly no end in sight. In fact -- it is a fairly typical circle anymore. Whatever game-used, autographed Schmidt insert sold for $200- two years ago is now selling for closer to $20 because of all the "new" game-used, autographed Schmidt insert cards. Add in all of the serially numbering and other current modern card silliness -- and no one would ever truly dream of putting a Master Set together.

If people want to collect a player's post-retirement cards, that is fine. However, I think that anyone putting together a graded set of such have a separate registry for such items -- as the vast majority of player collectors I know generally shun the vast majority of post-retirement player cards.

purelyPSA

Call me a cynic, but I think PSA has a vested interest in seeing as many cards as possible being placed on master set lists. I think if it comes down to some collectors wanting it added and some preferring to keep the set static, the former would win out based on potential opportunities for PSA.

dbj77

Maybe PSA could add and "ultimate player set" that would encompass any and all cards ever graded for that player by PSA. I knew the "purist" collectors would scoff at my notion of adding post career cards (and to a point I agree about the unlimited potential in game used and serialed cards) but I'm sure there are enough people who are crazy enough about their favorite players to warrant such a set.

boggs301012

but I'm sure there are enough people who are crazy enough about their favorite players to warrant such a set.

That is me , but that is something 2 or 3 years down the road. Once the basic and master are complete. I requested a Player/Manufactuer..and or PSA/DNA set. And A game used set. Never thought I would ask for a game used set but some of the cards are very nice. I know it isnt for every one.


James

Virtualizard

<< <i>...Peter:

I respectfully disagree. With the Mike Schmidt Master set, for example -- I envision the current rules having the "Master Set" end up at around 400 cards or so. Since Schmidt's retirement on May 29, 1989, there have probably been closer to 1,000+ unique Schmidt issues issued. And there is seemingly no end in sight. In fact -- it is a fairly typical circle anymore. Whatever game-used, autographed Schmidt insert sold for $200- two years ago is now selling for closer to $20 because of all the "new" game-used, autographed Schmidt insert cards. Add in all of the serially numbering and other current modern card silliness -- and no one would ever truly dream of putting a Master Set together.

If people want to collect a player's post-retirement cards, that is fine. However, I think that anyone putting together a graded set of such have a separate registry for such items -- as the vast majority of player collectors I know generally shun the vast majority of post-retirement player cards. >>




I agree completely (and very strongly) with Marc's statement. If someone is that passionate about getting every card that comes out every year, they need to have a separate set (such as the "Ultimate Set" that dbj77 suggested). If someone wants to take it to that level, fine ... but, I collect players that I grew up watching, and I want to get the cards that I collected as a kid in high grade, not the cards produced 20 years later to make a profit off of my favorite players' images.

I think it would hurt PSA more than help them if they decided to include these cards in master sets. I submit many oddball cards for the player sets that I'm currently working on (check the 1 of 1's in my Stargell set) and I have a few more player sets that I'm thinking about starting. If post-career cards are added, I will definitely stop submitting my player set cards to PSA, and be happy with a nice raw set.

JEB.

AlanAllen

I agree that post-retirement cards and parallel/oddball/insert cards should not be included in the basic set, but I think mainstream base set cards have to be included. That means the Finests, SPs, Ultras, etc. should be there. It's not a concern before 1989, but from then on most key cards are not the basic Topps and Fleers, but the premium brands. It doesn't make sense to have a basic set with cards that few have submitted and even fewer are collecting. Would you build a Kobe basic set with his Topps RC but not his Topps Chrome RC? It doesn't affect my collecting habits either way, but that's my two cents. At any rate, PSA should definitely standardize the criteria from player to player, and PUBLISH it for god's sake! Why do we still have to guess and argue and see more and more divergent standards used after two years?

Joe

jackstraw

i still cannot believe that there is no reggie jackson player set?