The Best Baseball Set of All Time - Part 2

1957 Topps Baseball

When I decided to put together a "vintage" baseball set, 1957 Topps was a no-brainer for me.  I decided that I wanted to have the set in PSA 6 or better.  My rationale was that Ex-Mt still looked good, but was eminently affordable, especially when I was going for a complete registry set.  I initially thought that I was going to do all four of the 1957 Topps sets, as this also happened to be the first year that Topps produced all four major sports (Baseball, Football, Basketball, and Hockey), but that enthusiasm eventually waned to just baseball and football.

My project took about 4 years to complete, from start to finish.  Along the way, I got to experience a lot of highs and lows, and met a ton of great people in the collecting community.  I corresponded by email with some very kind people over at Net54, and had some dealings with several large vintage dealers online.  The better experiences were going to local card shops and local card shows and buying raw cards to send them in to be graded.  I had never graded anything with PSA before, so this was an interesting experience as well.  I really learned the age-old adage to "buy the card, not the grade," as I really was buying the card and submitting it for the grade.  A lot of the cards that I bought did not qualify, but most did.

I started with some of the bigger cards, and boy were they ever pretty.  The more challenging aspect, though, was finding some of the smaller cards.  Especially hard were the commons from the scarce fourth set, which seemed difficult to find in the PSA 6+ grade.  But I persevered, and eventually the set was completed.  In an age of "what have you done for me now?" and instant gratification, collecting this set was a lesson in patience.  I know that vintage isn't for everyone, and especially not graded vintage, but this was a tremendous exercise for me.  Most of my collection is modern, but putting this set together was one of the best collecting experiences of my life.