The first of the last

 I finally ordered my Sportlots box over the weekend, and it had all but one of the cards I needed to finish off the '74 Topps set.  Card #126, the 1st series checklist.

A bit of obsessiveness kicked in and I wound up trying to chase down the card, first on ebay where I couldn't find a copy less than $13.  To me, that wasn't going to fly.  So I hit Sportlots.

Struggled with cutting the tops of cards off on the scans today

I found the copy you see on the right for $3, much more acceptable.  It does have a bit of a border on the top, despite the scan you see above.  The seller graded the card as good, likely because of the boxes that were colored in on both sides of the card.  One of these days I will get into a full on discussion about how I feel checklists should be graded, especially those with the boxes checked/colored in.  For me, what you see above really didn't wouldn't have kept me from buying the card as I think that older checklists should be colored or marked.  That's what kids did back then.

I added the '79 Topps FB checklist on the left for 18 cents.  Clean on both sides.  Couldn't leave it there at that price.

I've been chipping away at some older sets lately, and this purchase was no exception.  Again, disregard the poor scanning job you see (it might be time to replace my scanner), as these 4 cards from the 69 Topps set were the first I've purchased in a while.  They all came at a reasonable price as well, just 35 cents apiece leaves me thinking while I write this that I probably could have hunted for some more.  

Not my day for scanning

This is another set that I've begun to try and pare down the want list some more lately.  These 4 combined cost me $6.50, but that includes the high number Art Fowler in the lower right corner, which is in nice shape.  The want list is finally below the 80 card mark with 79 to go, however I'm going to guess that about half of them are going to be quite expensive, so the extended time building this set is going to continue.  (rough count while writing shows about 30 big$ cards)

Later this week I should receive my Sportlots box that I had shipped and hopefully the final 7 cards will be scattered inside the many envelopes inside, which should finish off the '74 Topps set.  If/when that happens, that will be the last of the 10 sets that I wanted to finish at the beginning of 2020.  

Only 352,647 sets to go.   Or so it seems.....

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert