1999 Flair- 20+ Years In The Making

I mentioned that I finally finished my 1999 Flair Master set the other day.  This is the first “premium” set I ever put together, and I am extremely fond of it.   The cards are absolutely beautiful.  Many of you who have traded with me have been the beneficiary of the excess I have accumulated while building this set through wax boxes and eBay lots.   I still have lots more and would love to trade some of it to other collectors out there, especially if you have never had any of these. 

The checklist is 144 cards, and has 3 parallel “rows”

Row 1 is comprised of 3 tiers of numbers (1-48 #d to 1,500; 49 to 96 #d to 3,000 and 97 to 144 #d to 6,000).  I love that the set count is divisible by 9 and fits evenly in 9 pocket pages!

Row Parallel Set Cards 1-9.  The Ripken card is a work of art.

Row 2 Is not numbered, but I like it just as much as Row 1.

Row 2 Parallel Cards 1-9

Row 3 is the base set.  It’s ok.  In fact, I don’t even have it in the binder.

Row 3 Derek Jeter

There is also a “Legacy” parallel set #d to 99.  I have a couple of these.  No way am I going to attempt to build that set.

Robin Ventura Legacy Parallel

My Significant Other … (other than my wife)

I planned on waiting to unveil this until a later date, but thought it might be better to show it now while I only have a handful of followers.   And even though I only have 4 followers, let me say it is quite a thrill to know that there are actually some people in the world who have looked at my little blog.  I don’t have a catchy nickname for this… thing.., but I spend a LOT of time working, updating and just plain staring at this worksheet every day.   It is so lovely to me. 

Basically, it is a ranking system for any and all sets I am working to complete.  It gives a set a ranking by among other things:  % completion, # of remaining cards, estimated cost per card, age of set, etc.  There are checklist tabs in the background that I update when I get new cards.  The worksheet then takes all of the rankings, weighs some categories rankings higher than others, and calculates a “score” per set.  The very first column is a rank by score.  Right now, as has been the case since I started this thing, 1999 Flair Row 1 is the top ranked set to complete.  In other words, it should be, according to my spreadsheet, my top priority.  There is only one card remaining, and I have not been able to find anywhere:  Card 42, Warren Morris #d to 1,500.  Actually, I take that back-  I did find it on Sportsbuy.com, and have come very close to pulling the trigger and ordering it many times.  However, since it has taken me so long to find this card, part of me wants to hold off and try to find it at a show or in an eBay lot or something more exciting.    By the way, this is a beautiful set, and the first “premium” set I ever put together.   The scan below is not mine; I took this image of the Piazza card from a Google image search (much easier than digging mine out and scanning it). 

As I become more comfortable and competent at this blogging stuff, I would like to start getting into trades with other bloggers, and hopefully I can find an easy way to incorporate this worksheet into my blog and keep up with my want and have to trade lists.

I am interested in how everyone else keeps up with their collection.  Any best practices out there?