Cards Before Topps

bsatttu said:

Are you wanting to collect one card from every year that cards were made or are you wanting to collect one of every brand and year of card ever made? Collecting one from every brand of every year leaves the possibilities endless and you will have to set some guidelines to narrow down exactly what you want.

If you want to just collect one card from every year regardless of brand, that should be much more manageable. Topps actually produced red backs, blue backs, and Connie Mack All-Stars in 1951. Bowman started in 1948 and produced cards until 1955 before being bought out by Topps. For the years 1942 to 1947 there were not really an main-stream sets produced due to paper rations caused by WWII. Before that, it is hit or miss whether or not a main stream set was produced in a given year. Although it's not perfect, here is a pretty good list of the most commonly collected sets produced from 1975 back: http://www.psacard.com/PSASETREGISTRY/SetComposition.aspx?c=2038. There are some pretty tough sets on that list, where it will be very difficult to obtain any card for under $100.

BTW, the kind of collection we are talking about is called a "Type" set (ie. you are collecting one of every type of card within certain guidlines.) Here are some of the ways that I can think of that collectors build type sets:

- One from each year of a certain set. It sounds like you are complete with this for Topps base sets, which is pretty cool I think
- One card from every year, much like what you are describing. To stay on a budget, you could limit it to only post-war cards (1948-present).
- One card from every set on a certain list like the one I posted. You can also limit this to certain years such as post-war years.
- One from each type from a certain company. Similar to your Topps collection, but by also throwing in the '51 Red Back, '75 Minis, '69 Deckles, etc.
- One from each Tobacco set, Gum set, or candy set produced. This would be for primarily pre-war sets.
- The possibilities are endless.

I hope that helps some. Let me know if you have any other questions.

- Britt

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majdic2136 said:

thanks...I'm still not sure where I am going to go with it, but it is fun none the less!

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majdic2136 said:

I think I might try and collect some cards from the tobacco and chewing gum companies, but mostly focus on the main brands and having 1 card from every year...I'd need help finding the years they were around though...only company I know the years is Topps and I'm almost done with them

Topps (1952-Present) (need 53, 54, 70)
Leaf
Bowman
Fleer
Score
Upper Deck
Donruss
and any others I might have missed

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bsatttu said:

I believe this is correct for the base sets:
Topps (1952-Present)
Leaf (1949, 1960, 1985-1988, 1990-1998, 2002-2005)
Bowman (1948-1955, 1989-Present)
Fleer (1960-1961, 1963, 1981-1997, 2002, 2006-2007)
Score (1988-1998)
Upper Deck (1989-2010)
Donruss (1981-1998, 2001-2005)

I think that is all of the major companies. If you want all of the other products produced by these companies and the more minor or short lived companies, the list is very, very long. Also some of the companies produced other brands outside of the years listed. For example, Fleer produced a lot of other brands like Fleer Premium and Fleer Focus from 1998 to 2005, but only produced basic Fleer in 2002. If you go to Beckett.com and figure out how to search on there, you can come up with a pretty good list.

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