Bring on the Fall! Thanks for sticking with my son and I as we continue our journey to complete our first-ever set together as a father-son duo! It's the opening Sunday of the NFL season, but I'll be waiting for my Broncos to open their season on Monday night against the newly-minted LOS ANGELES Chargers. That just sounds weird. I feel bad for one of my best friends, Dave Warren, who WAS a lifelong Chargers fan, and grew up on the outskirts of San Diego. He simply couldn't force himself to continue rooting for the Bolts since they abandoned his city. His fiance is from Michigan, so now he's a Lions fan.
I've spent a good chunk of the past day or so going through cards with my son, updating our online checklist, and figuring out whether or not continuing to pay $5 per pack was worth trying to assemble the final pieces of our first set--the 2017 Donruss baseball set. I'm sitting here, my wife is napping, the kids are playing Lego Marvel, and I'm listening to the Yankees romp the Texas Rangers. Both Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez each went yard twice. Not bad for a pair of 20-somethings.
Anyway, the last time I logged in and updated you on where the boy and I were at on our set, my friend and co-worker had just returned from Oregon and brought us back multiple packs and a box of cards, spanning three states in the hopes of helping us finish the job. Thanks Josh! The other great thing I love about this online checklist, is that not only does it keep track of what you have, what duplicates (or as I called them as a kid, doubles), but it also provides a percentage of each set that is completed.
My wife (bless her heart), has been helping my sister-in-law out with laundry, because at separate times, her washer AND dryer were both on the fritz. So she spent Friday helping her out. Last night, my daughter was at a sleepover, and the wife needed a much-needed, much-deserved ladies night out with that same sister-in-law. That left the boy and I to go through our packs and box uninterrupted. We began with a pair of packs on Friday, got some needed pieces in the '83 Retro Variations subset of the Donruss collection. I coach middle school football, and I had an early morning on Saturday, so I told the boy that we would finish the remaining packs (6) and do the box when I got home from my game.
By the time we were done opening each pack, examining the cards, and delving into the box, he was tired, and fell asleep on the floor next to me. The fun part was over for him, and I believe the excitement of it all wore him out. I put his pjs on him, woke him up long enough to brush his teeth, and laid him on the couch in a blanket. I began the tedious task of updating the online checklist, card by card. By the time I was done, the final tally and percentage had us 57 cards short of completing the 195-card set, good enough for a 70.8 percent completion rate for the set. There are a ton of subsets in this collection that will take us months, if not years to finish, but the base set that I aimed to complete with my son, and the inserts that come in the actual packs, are just about finished.
The one subset that comes with the most inserts, are the 1983 Retro Variations. These cards are in the same format as the original Donruss 1983 cards, except they have both modern AND past players. From what I've read online, collectors aren't real thrilled with this subset, but I like it. When I was in the early years of collecting, a neighborhood friend of mine sold me dozens of cards from the '82 Donruss set. Both the '82 and '83 sets are very similar in appearance, so it's a nice reminder from my childhood collecting days. In our current 2017 set, the '83 Retro Variations have 50 cards in the subset, and the boy and I have 39 of the 50.
That takes us to the next conundrum in our pursuit of completing this first set together: keep buying packs and boxes, knowing that 1. both are difficult to come by where we live and 2. odds are good that most of the cards we get now are duplicates. So how do we get around it? eBay my friends! Rather than spend between $5-$20 on cards we already have, I made the command decision to start hunting down the remaining 57 commons, variations, and '83 Retro Variations for individual purchase. So I head on over to eBay, and begin my search.
Right away, I find two sellers that have most of what we need at an affordable rate. I picked up 13 cards for about $5.00. That included shipping, so I was satisfied with the find. The other seller, was a tad more pricey, hawking the variation cards (multiple cards of the same player), for .99 each. I picked up 14 more and paid $3.95 shipping. That leaves the boy and I exactly 30 cards to acquire to complete our first set together! I placed a bid that should get us down to 16 remaining cards in the base set, as the famed "Rated Rookies" and "Diamond Kings" could be had for $3.69 if my bid holds up.
My son is very excited, and I couldn't be more proud of the patience and care he has taken with each purchase, each card, and understanding that piecing a set together card by card is a process. What's crazy to me is how many darn subsets there are to the 2017 Donruss collection, with little to no clue as to how or where to acquire these cards without using eBay or another auction site. I know that Topps has so many different sets, series, etc., but with Donruss, it's almost as if they don't exist on the open market as recognized cards. No worries however. We will put them all together, no matter how long it takes us.
I know that I complained when this blog first began about "cheating" the hobby by purchasing whole sets rather than hand-collated sets. Card companies I'm starting to realize, make that dream almost an impossibility simply based on access to products, and the price of said products. What I firmly believe will be the beauty of this 2017 Donruss set, is that I hope in my heart, is that my son will cherish this one specific set with the same romantic viewpoint that I think of the '86 Topps.
While we may have wiped out the base set in just a couple of months, along with the one '83 Retro Variations subset, the additional subsets are the ones we can track down together, get excited over a good find, and eventually complete every single subset that is being offered by Donruss in 2017. This challenge is what builds the love of the hobby, and what I hope is a lifelong partnership between my son and I, no matter how old he gets, and no matter how his interests and other hobbies change. I hope this is the bond that keeps us close for the remainder of my life...
