Set Building Progress Report - Football

I've hinted at it before but I am fully preparing to wrap up my sports card collection as much as possible. It will be hard to know exactly when my collection will be "done" but the most obvious way to see the finish line would be to complete sets. As a result I've become more of a set builder than ever.

This is the first in a short series (probably five parts) focusing on my set building progress. I'd planned to start with basketball, until Greg of The Collective Mind contacted me about some 2015 Panini Prizm football cards he had for trade. I sent him a PWE full of cards for his set building projects and received these:

 Eddie Lacy was the only Packer of the bunch. He was not the only running back.

 

Not by a longhsot, lol. For some reason I always assumed Bishop Sankey was a tight end.

Mostly wide receivers here, headlined by HOFer Cris Carter.

2015 Prizm is a 300-card set, and the last 100 cards are rookies. Hunter is the best of the bunch here.

 

 

 

Moar rookeiz. I've got to clean my scanner before the next post. There's no gunk on the Carden card. I'm just too lazy to re-scan it right now. 

Greg, thanks for the nice boost to my set build!

 

 

My latest COMC order arrived yesterday. I'd planned to visit my mom in Connecticut but my daughter got sick on Thursday and still isnt feeling 100%. So I guess it was a good thing I was home to bring in the box. These six rookies were included in the 61-card shipment. Gordon was the most expensive at 70 cents while Peters was 65 cents. The rest cost 33-40 cents each.

 

 

 

The rest of my new football purchases. Nothing over a dollar here - Higgins was 85 cents, while the Za'Darius parallel was 75 cents and the Chargers sticker cost 52 cents. Mosaic parallels are pretty cheap on the site, and I was happy to snag a color-matching HOFer for 41 cents. Steve Smith doesn't color match but I'm not complaining about adding a blue parallel to my cart for 40 cents. The Rice base was 49 cents.

I started this set from fat packs I purchased on Blowout Cards for the pre-pandemic price of ... $5 each? Really?!? (This is why I note the price I paid for things in each blog post. Sometimes I don't believe it myself!)

They're now $39.95. Which is a shame because these fat packs came with a pack of exclusive Red White & Blue parallels. Plucking singles off COMC is better for my budget, but it's less fun. 

 

Also I have no idea why Blowout is charging $40 for these particular packs. Most Prizm sets have a 'hot rookie' to chase, and I get that. It's crazy what those newer boxes sell for but at least the ceiling of possible pulls are higher. This set's best rookie card is... Stefon Diggs? Jameis Winston? Amari Cooper? Probably Diggs - though I may be biased because I actually have that one. I also have the Tom Brady base card - which is the most expensive 2015 Prizm single on COMC.

2015 Panini Prizm

205/300 cards (68.3% complete)

key cards (needs in red)

#12 Tom Brady
#34 Walter Payton
#201 Amari Cooper RC
#218 Danielle Hunter RC
#221 Darren Waller RC
#228 DeVante Parker RC
#244 Jameis Winston RC
#264 Marcus Mariota RC
#285 Stefon Diggs RC
#288 Taylor Heinicke RC
#298 Tyler Lockett RC

This is the only football card set I'm currently building. I don't have every needed card number listed on my blog just yet - because I still need 96 singles - but you can check them out on my TCDB wantlist.

I have been working on upgrading some singles from 1986 and 1987 Topps. '86 in particular is a very condition-sensitive set. Some of my '87s are off-center, gum stained, and have black ink lines dripping on the white border. '86s have major centering issues, and a number of mine have fuzzy corners.

 Future Projects

If I decided to pursue another football set build it would probably be either 1990 Pro Set or 1985 Topps. I could be temped to buy back my childhood with a couple cheap boxes of Pro Set. '85 Topps is growing on me slightly, and it was the first football card set I ever saw. (I was five.) But that would be another very condition-sensitive set and I'm not sure my OCD could handle that, lol.



Are you working on any football card sets? What was your favorite football card set as a kid? Or now?

Thanks for reading!

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