The Joy of a Finished Set (Or Two), and I (will) have Gypsy Queen for trade!

I finished a couple major sets today.

It didn't take me too long, actually. I started on my quest to have a complete set run of Upper Deck towards the end of last year, and about six months later, things are looking pretty good.

I started with the 1989 set already complete. I've had that complete for a few years now. It wasn't too difficult to find complete sets for 1990-1993. Many of the other sets were fairly simple to obtain as well.

But several of the sets are priced beyond what I'm willing to pay or just aren't available complete at all. Those are the sets I choose to hand collate. 1997 was one of those sets. I'm still not finished with that one - I need one card aside from the update and trade sets. 2006 was a nightmare - three series with no cards available. The last three cards I needed I recently picked up on Sportlots and I'm waiting for them to arrive. 2008 wasn't too difficult. I thought 2010 would be hard to obtain but prices dropped after the season. 2009 is still in progress - I still need 64 cards to finish that behemoth.

But today, in two plain white envelopes, arrived two keys to finishing two different Upper Deck sets.

 1996: Complete. Klesko was the last one! I don't have the 30-card "traded/update" set that came with the factory sets. The fancy foil on the bottom isn't ugly, but if it wasn't there the picture would be that much better.

1999: Complete! Sammy Sosa was the last card. Go figure. And it was a subset card. I do kind of like cards that tell about the heritage of the players, but what's up with the extra picture on the bottom corner? Is that the stadium where he got his start in the DR?

I'm looking at my spreadsheet of Upper Deck sets, and there's a lot of green showing! But I'm not finished yet. I haven't even begun to tackle the 1998, 2001, 2003, 2004, and 2007 sets. 2001 has the Pujols RC, 2007 is insanely large (just a bit smaller than 2006, actually), and the 1998 set is just insane.

But these old sets have been on the backburner lately to devote my money to current releases, such as, oh, let's say Gypsy Queen. If you've bothered to read this far, and are trying to put together the GQ set, know that I have a 600+ card lot on the way which I'm going to use to put together a base (non-SP) set, and then I should have well over 300 cards to trade off to you guys to help you finish your sets. I'll be posting about that as soon as I receive and sort out the cards!

And last, but not least, I've started posting my first custom cards as a way of telling you guys about my travels. The first one hit last night and three more were posted today. I'm going to try to do about one per day until I run out of locations. Feel free to comment (as always) about the cards, the locations, the commentary.

(Last minute update. ESPN's ScoreCenter mobile app just told me the SF Giants game was being delayed due to ceremonies. It's Willie Mays' 80th birthday celebration today, but I didn't know that ceremonies are a valid reason for delaying a game.)

(Last second update. What's with all the great pitching this year? A nice no-hitter by the Twins, and then today the Braves had a no-hitter going while the Brewers starting pitcher struck out 8 and gave up only one earned run, and the Brewers still lost. And then the Cardinals had a perfect game going into the 8th inning.)