Thank God for Tax Returns!

Jdurg

I am so incredibly psyched right now. I filed my taxes a few weeks ago, and the US Government has already paid me the $800 they owed me. As a result, I picked up the 2001 and 2002 Topps Traded sets which were the last two "unique" sets I needed in order to complete my run of 1980-Now complete sets of Topps Cards. (Base and Traded/Update sets). I've also begun to try and put together the parallel sets that one can reasonably hope to obtain, as well as the insert sets. I'm avoiding things like autograph insert sets, relic insert sets, or VERY limited inserts/parallels. (Such as the 2006 Platinum Parallels, and the recent Gold parallels).

In my collection, I do have the 1992 Gold Factory and winner sets, the 1992 Gold Traded Set, the 1993 Gold Set, the 1994 Gold Set, as well as few other inserts like Black Gold and Cyberstats sets. What has ALWAYS been bugging me for a long while is that Topps introduced those Inaugural Versions of their Base Sets in 1993 and 1998 for the Marlins/Rockies and Diamondbacks/Devil-Rays 1st seasons. The problem is that you could only buy those sets in the areas of the new teams and only for a VERY short period of time. In addition, people would always seem to break those sets up so finding a sealed factory set was next to impossible.

Today, while just doing some searching on Google, I came across Charm City Cards, http://charmcitycards.com/, and couldn't believe what I saw. They had all four sets for VERY reasonable prices. I have a current bid on an E-Bay auction for the D'Backs set, but did pick up the D-Rays, Rockies and Marlins sets for $277 shipped. I FINALLY have these parallels to add to my collection, and if I lose the E-Bay auction I'll be able to go back to this site and pick up the set from them. I am falling in love with this site and hope to do a lot more purchasing from them in the future. They seem to have EVERYTHING I'm looking for!

Brian48

I owe every year

On the other hand, an account once told me, it's better this way. My cash stayed in my bank versus me giving the government an interest free loan. 'Cause, accountants are good at spinning things like this to make you feel better. Sending that check off in April of every year really sucks.

Jdurg

<< <i>I owe every year

On the other hand, an account once told me, it's better this way. My cash stayed in my bank versus me giving the government an interest free loan. 'Cause, accountants are good at spinning things like this to make you feel better. Sending that check off in April of every year really sucks. >>



Well, it wasn't all pleasant for me. While the Feds gave me $800, the State of CT made me pay them $100. I even had the state take as much out of my paychecks as possible, yet I still owed them because that *%&$# in the governor's office just loves raising taxes.

Stone193

Congratulations on the 800$!

Good luck on spending it.

This year's Topps Heritage is setting me back around 680 bucks - no check - just credit card - I could use around 800 right now.

mike

Tedw9

Congrats on completing your run!


Are you doing only the regular Topps? If I remember correctly, I think I have a Marlins Stadium Club set around here somewhere still in the package. If you need it, its yours for free.

Estil

Congratulations! I currently have a run of 1978-2004 (which I hope to get up to 1974-2006) regular Topps and 1981, 1983-1991 Traded sets (that I hope to go up to 1995). So I guess we're both in the same boat eh?

got pictures?

Jdurg

I don't have any pictures yet as I just ordered the sets yesterday and they will ship tomorrow. I'm currently only collecting the standard Topps sets and the reasonable parallels and insert sets. I've avoided the variations such as Stadium Club, Finest, Archives, Turkey, etc. etc. just because it is far too many to collect, and growing up all there was were the standard sets so that is what I remember collecting. Thank you for the offer though tedw9.

I'm really pretty amazed at how cheap these sets are. I figured they'd cost a fortune because of how low the print runs are and how limited their availability was. They aren't that dissimilar to the Desert Shield run of 1991 Topps in terms of limited availability, but I guess these Inaugural sets just don't have the publicity and popularity that the Desert Shield cards do.

I guess I've been pretty lucky to get a hold of a lot of these sets for pretty good prices at various online card shops. It's pretty neat being able to go and see every complete set from 1980 onward. Eventually I'll have these stored in the binders so they can be viewed every now and then, but some of these I'll keep sealed in the factory sets. When the next pay-day hits, I'll probably go back to that Charm City Cards place again and pick up some of the Topps Tiffany and Topps Limited sets that I need to flesh out my collection. After that I'll just be left with hunting down the hundreds of insert sets Topps has put out over the years.

When the Inaugural Sets get here I'll take some pics of the factory sets. Probably won't be too impressive, but hey, I bet a lot of people have never even seen these sets.