Glutton for Punishment: New Sets I'm Collecting

One of my collections is that of many sets that appeal to me. The list of completed sets there stands at 538, though set sizes range from a 1 card "subset" to a 1320-card multiple-series issue. The "sets wanted" portion of that collection is an additional 148 sets now. One of my goals this year is to get that down to 125 sets, but I'm not making that any easier by finding more sets to collect.

 The first added today is from the 2012 Topps Olympics set, the insert titled Games of the XXX Olympiad. I have a good start on this set, as I only need nine of the 25 cards after picking up the rest at a card shop.

 I'm not doing so well with the Olympic Venues set, though. Of the thirty cards, I only have two.

 Finally, the Heritage of the Games insert set will also be a bit of work, because I need almost all of the cards. I got the base set five years ago when the set was issued, but never bothered with the inserts. I guess it's time. I haven't decided to go after the 2014 or 2016 sets yet.

 This card isn't from a new set. A couple years ago I won a Panini contest and was awarded two boxes of Americana. I love Americana, and I've been collecting it since its inception. The two 2015 boxes got me close to a full base set and gave me a lot of the inserts. So over the past couple years, I've been grabbing singles where I can to get a master set. I'm not working on the horse racing insert set, but other than that, all I need are cards from the On The Tube - Modern set. But it's 40 cards, and I still need 28. It's only been the past month or so that I've actually tried finishing it, because it is the largest, and I instead focused on the other, smaller insert sets.

I didn't scan them - they're too thick to fit through my sheetfed scanner - but I have four cards from 2016 Topps WWE Undisputed. These four are from the Divas Revolution insert set, not to be confused with the Divas Revolution release. At 30 cards, and apparently not easily found, I don't think I'll be finishing this insert set this year.

Finally for today, I'm diving into hockey. Well, sort of. Upper Deck's 2015-16 Champ's hockey set includes two ten-card subsets of Canadiana. The subjects are tied to Canadian history or sports. The first ten cards are SPs and the other ten are SSPs. I lucked into getting 18 of the 20 cards for a total of 900 yen. I just bought one more card from COMC, so I'm already down to the last card to finish this set (SSP #296). As you can see from my scans above, the parallels are mixed in - I have two bronze and one gold.

All of the cards mentioned here were picked up at Card Fanatic, an independent card shop in Shibuya. They do carry Japanese cards, but it appears that they can be a good source of random American cards too. Card Fanatic isn't really a "singles" shop, though. They have some showcases with nice cards at high prices and a couple dozen 5000-count boxes with soccer, NBA, MLB, Japanese baseball, and other random cards. Visitors to Card Fanatic are more likely to be pack and box busters and memorabilia collectors. Those box busters do dump their unwanted singles on the shop, which leave them some stock for singles collectors.