A Tale of Two Purchases - Stupid and Smart

It was the best of splurges, it was the worst of splurges.  I have a monthly budget I use to spend on cards.  It is a solid budget and keeps me in line.  While just about every card you could ever want is somewhere for sale on line, I have to prioritize my purchases to stay within budget.

Last month I saw something on eBay that was discounted.  It was something I considered purchasing directly from the Topps site prior to the beginning of the season - I remember that as the very short window when I actually held out hope the Giants would be good.  I didn't pull the trigger on the Topps.com purchase but it was early in the month, my budget had been deposited into my trusty paypal account and in a moment of weakness I pounced and bought this:

This is the Spring Training Topps Now set of the Giants.  When I got this in the mail and opened it up I immediately regretted the purchase.  For the price of this set I could have knocked off a couple star cards from my 1969 Topps want list or grabbed a few 1972 Topps high numbers.  Don't get me wrong about I am far from a fair weather fan and this fits well into my collection.  However I have fully accepted that I will never have every Giants card in my collection.  It just seemed like a lot of cash to commemorate a team that is perhaps the most disappointing team in my lifetime.

Let's move on to a more positive tale.  I haven't had as much time to peruse the blog role as I would like but one day a couple weeks after that terrible Giants purchase I was checking out some posts from the blog When Topps Had (Base) Balls and noticed Gio has posted a custom set he had designed and had printed up. He ended up printing off a couple for his personal collection and was offering the rest up for sale. 

The cost was about half of the Giants set but I hesitated for a bit.  It still wasn't that late in the month a my Stupid purchase put a dent in my budget.  I went back to the blog post 2-3 times over a day or two and finally decided to pull the trigger and buy the custom set.  It is a set of 40 cards (20 from each league) featuring the stars of 1930.  I should have taken a picture of the packaging (a killer box to hold the cards) but forgot.

The quality of these cards in hand, the subjects, the design - this set is flawless and one of the smartest splurges I have ever made.  This set doesn't technically fit into my various parts of my collection but I believe it has started a new subject - custom sets done by @wthballs.  I decided to scan all the cards to show them off - enjoy! 

The backs are great too but I only scanned one of the Bambino to share.

Gio, you outdid yourself.  Great work my friend and you can put me on a list to secure any sets you do in the future.  In a way I feel buying your set helped redeem my stupid Topps Now purchase and I thank you for that as well.