Mini Sets!

And by that I don't mean sets of minis (Sorry, N.O.)  I mean small sets. Nowadays, they usually take the form of inserts.  To a certain extent, so they did in the distant past. But, not always.  I am, first and foremost, a vintage Topps flagship set collector. I have been working my way through the 1970s and will keep working backwards through time. I figure I will finally get to 1952 when I am an old man.  I will empty out my bank account, cash the Social Security check, buy a 1952 Mantle, slide it in the Ultra Pro pocket, stare at it for a few minutes, then die completely broke and completely happy.

But, being a vintage set collector means dealing with long dry spells, especially when working on a set issued prior to 1974.  Before then, Topps issued sets in series and the high number series were issued late in the year, overlapping with football. Consequently, they didn't print as many of the cards from those late series and high number cards are difficult to acquire cheaply.  Luckily, I can be a capricious collector. While I have a single main focus, I tend to come across things that catch my fancy.  These have (inadvertantly) served to help fill in those long dry spells set collectors often encounter.

In my case, these diversions are often small sets. By small sets, I generally mean sets with less than 50 unique cards.  Sometimes, they are insert sets, like the 1968 Topps Game cards or the 1969 Topps Deckle Edges. Sometimes they are standalone sets, like 1961 Golden Press. 

At a show last year, I encountered Golden Press in the form of about 12 cards that I snapped up for a song. This is a 33 card set that, in my understanding, came as an attachment to a book, from which they needed to be detached.  That said, I put them in my miscellaneous vintage binder, added a want list to my sidebar, and promptly forgot about them.

Fast forward to a short time ago when, out of the blue, Greg from Plaschke Thy Sweater is Argyle contacted me saying he had a few of these cards at the cardshop he worked at and asked what my condition requirements were. I responded that as long as they didn't look like they were used by a baby as a pacifier, I was good.  Fast forward to yesterday and a package arrived in the mail containing these:

Now there is a problem here. Greg was under the impression that he owed me something for a card I sent him a time back. Problem is I sent that card because he went way overboard on his half of a trade we made back in 2012.  So now, he thinks we are even, but I think I owe him.  In and of itself, that isn't a problem.  Card bloggers will often just send things to each other without any formal trade having been worked out.  The problem is that Greg is working in a card shop in Cali. How the heck am I going to find anything out here in flyover country to send back that he doesn't already have access to? How I ask you? How?

PS Thanks, Greg!