Playing Favorites

I've been up for nearly 24 hours now. After a long workweek, a busy Saturday, and overtime Sunday afternoon, I spent Sunday evening and all night with my Japanese friend playing sports and singing karaoke. It's actually about 6 am in Japan as I write this and I'm sitting in McDonalds munching on a hash brown. A good night, but now it's time to write.

Fuji asks via someone else (sorry I'm writing using the iPhone blogger app) what my favorite sets are in each sport. Well, I only really collect baseball though I have some other sports sets as well.

So let's start with the national pastime. What's my favorite set here? The entire Diamond King series. The sets all feature beautiful art and ran for quite a long time (22 years as a licensed baseball product). I continue hoping Panini will bring it back in the next year or two. I'll be on board for that set, license or not.

As for other sports, I like the variety of subjects seen in this year's Topps Olympics set, but I wish they had just gone with photos for the base set. The art style isn't that impressive. It's a tough call, but I think I'll go with Sports Illustrated for Kids. There's a simplicity yet attractiveness to the card designs, and a great collection of different sports and subjects. There are no gimmicks though the cards are gimmicks themselves. No silly hits or crazy SPs.

A big part of my collection is my non-sport cards. While I'm very proud of all my full sets I really like my complete Charlie's Angels vintage sets and my nearly-complete vintage Star Wars sets. But my favorite set is probably the Pop Century relics set. There's a great collection of stars who I want relics for and the swatches are huge.

That's about it! I don't collect any other sports specifically. Again, this is on the iPhone blogger app so pictures will come later!

Edit: I added the pictures. As if you couldn't tell.