At some point, I need to get off my lazy ass and organize my 2001, 2003 and 2005 Heritage cards to see what I have and what I need. This year, I did pull out my 2002 and 2004 cards and with a little help from COMC, I found the last three cards I needed to complete both sets. 

Let it be said that the Topps 1953 card design is infinitely superior to the 1952 card design. I get the iconic nature of 1952. These cards are better looking. No question.

Yesterday, I shared my recent 1973 Topps acquisitions as I try to build that set. I'm also working on the 1977 Topps set and picked up a few of the cards I needed from COMC. Still got a bit to go, but I'm getting close!

Completing my 1971 and 1972 Topps sets was an expected surprise. I've decided to be a bit more proactive with my 1973 set. I still lack a ton of cards, including almost every card in the final series, which, as far as high number series go, not that bad. After a recent COMC purchase and a monumental eBay purchase, I'm making progress and I am 7 cards closer. I still have a ways to go.

Before my family relocated to Georgia from Memphis, TN, I had two favorite teams. One was the Montreal Expos (who's AA franchise was located in Memphis in the 70s) and the other was the Philadelphia Phillies. I can remember all of the World Series fairly well from around 1975 on, but 1980 was the first time I ever felt truly invested in the outcome. Schmidt is one of the defining players of my childhood and is the best player to ever play his position. There was a time when I never though I would own this card, but it's an honor to have it in my collection. (And honestly, how many cards released in the last five years can you say that about?)

I have a great deal of respect for the talent of Yaz, but like a number of other great players, George Brett comes to mind, I simply never cared for him. Ever, ever, ever.

The "Secretary of Defense" was a mainstay of those great 1970s Phillies teams that just kept coming up short of a World Series. He was still roaming the outfield at Veterans Stadium when the Phillies finally captured a championship in 1980. Looking back at his numbers, he was, for a period of about five years, a damn great player. It is strange for me to talk about the Phillies teams of this era, because I hate, hate, hate the Phillies of the 90s onward.

I used to travel a lot for work and here is a list of the famous people I've seen on airplanes: Bob Newhart, Stevie Wonder, Little Richard, and Rod Carew.

I'm now three cards away from completing series 4 of 1971 Topps. It will be first series complete in the set. This is one of the more expensive cards and I found a decent deal on this. Sure, it isn't in pristine condition, but it's actually in better condition than most of my cards in the set!

I just got another batch of 1977 cards in from eBay. These were DIRT CHEAP. I like it a lot.

Here's the final set I managed to complete in 2011. I love this set and it was not cheap to finish off. The one thing I had going for me is that I already had the Robin Yount and George Brett rookies. Most of these cards were picked up from the card show in Norcross and Check Out My Cards. I think I picked a few of these up off of eBay as well.























And here are the final three that I've picked up over the past two weeks on eBay. (Apologies for the poor scans.)