My Birth Year Set is Complete - 1971 Topps!

I can't express how exciting finishing a vintage set is to me.  I have always had a goal to finish all the Topps sets back to my birth year and with the completion of this 1971 Topps set from the year of my birth I am down to one set left. 

This set build has been a slow and steady build.  It started with a few star cards then some lots of commons.  I acquired a decent number of cards through trades and over the last few months I have been picking off the last high numbers I needed to finish off the set.

Here are the final 3 cards I picked up off of eBay:

The Dusty Baker/Don Baylor rookie card was the most expensive of this batch.  I struggled finding a card at a price I was willing to pay and this one finally popped up for just under $20. I pulled the Buy It Now trigger. The card is a little off center but not as bad as my scan makes it look.  Otherwise it is in pretty solid shape.  The other two cards came from different buyers.

The last cards I needed to finish off the set came in a COMC order I received last week.  Here are 7 of the 8:

As I seem to run across for vintage sets, the Yankees proved a little harder and a little more costly to track down.  I was lucky to find a newly listed Boog for a very low price compared to the others on the site and eBay.  I actually picked up 2 copies of the Jose Pena for some reason.

Here is the final card I purchased and the card I consider the last one for my set:

There is a little story here.  I had bought a copy of this card on eBay and a couple days before I requested shipping for my COMC order I realized the card hadn't come in the mail yet.  I checked the tracking number and it showed it had never been dropped off.  I contacted the seller and he had a story that he had issues with his mailing drop off station and he would check.  The next day he refunded me the cost.  I had won an auction for a pretty low figure so I think it was all BS.  However I got lucky and found this COMC card for a few cents less.

Denny McClain is card number 750 out of 752 in the set and as a very well known player, and the last pitcher with 30 wins in a season, seemed to carry a premium.  I think it is a fitting final card.  It does break a pattern (that will probably replay itself in my 1969 set) of the final card being one of the more expensive.

This set is all paged and bindered up and I was able to confirm that my want list was accurate.  My 1971 Topps birth year set is complete!

I plan to continue to try for those high numbers in the 1972 Topps set to finish the Topps run of my life.  I also have 1959, 1960 and 1970 complete sets so I suspect my goal will extend back for all the 1960s sets.  I am actually closer to 1969 that 1972 so my vintage set building attention will focus on 1972 and 1969.