Going Postal: A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

First, before I give you this post: has anyone read the official rules on the Topps Diamond Giveaway site? The table on Rule 3C states that with 30 different rings, you receive the complete Topps set, unlike the Dig site, which shows 45. Any thoughts?

Yesterday, I posted some recent pickups from the prior week. A few more cards were sitting here, waiting to be scanned, and have now been digitized for your reading enjoyment.

First, the joy of a completed master set.

 In 1993 Upper Deck issued what may be the first major throwback release (other than straight reprints, such as Topps did with their early Archives sets). It started at the All-Star FanFest, with the release of a nice four-card boxed preview set. Later that year, the full set was released in packs. The base set is 165 cards. The first 130 cards feature one player, while the remainder of the set features two players per card, similar to the scan above. Randomly inserted in packs was a 10-card unnumbered reprint set from the original 1912 T202 Hassan "Triplefolders" set which inspired the main set.

Due to the set's age and era, it's been very difficult finding these cards. They're not old enough to be popular vintage and most of them are most likely sitting at the back of a closet. I bought a box in 1993 when it first came out but I was never able to finish it then. Over the past year or so I've been pushing hard to locate the missing cards, but this Wood/Speaker card has been elusive until this past week, when I saw it posted on Sportlots. I finally have the preview, base, and insert sets completed. (The only piece I'm missing is an uncut UDA sheet of the preview cards.)

Also focusing on set building is a large stack from the 2008 Stadium Club set. I picked up a lot off eBay containing a bunch of base cards and retail first days, and this blue Photographer's Proof parallel. The Proof goes into the samplers, while about a quarter of the first days and base cards went towards my set. Many of the first days covered my needs for the short-printed divisible-by-three cards. My list of needs for this set is located here. I mostly need divisible-by-three cards and rookie variations (photos on the back aren't cropped from photos on the front), plus all the autographs if I bother with that part of the set. First Day Issues are fine!

The rest of the base and first day cards are available for trade. See my trade bait page for the list!

Last and certainly not least, the first two cards towards my Gypsy Queens insert set. I acquired these in a nice simple trade with the Sewingmachineguy! I sent him two inserts, he sent me two inserts. Thanks, SMG!