Time is Money…and Money is Money.
Earlier this month, I was writing an article about goalie-themed hockey card sets and mentioned the Between the Pipes sets that came out in the 2000s and 2010s. I went into my closet and found my 2013-14 Between the Pipes set so I could scan a few of its cards.
Or, rather, I should say I found my near-complete set of 2013-14 Between the Pipes, as it is missing 14 cards. That means that, in over 10 years, I’ve never bothered to finish the set. I opened one box, put the cards in order, then promptly forgot about it for a decade.
I was then reminded that I made a Collecting Resolution for 2025 that I was going to try and complete as many sets as possible this year. Heck, I even wrote about it back in January, thinking that by making this proclamation public, I would follow through on it.
Do you care to guess how many sets I’ve finished in 2025 so far?
Seven.
I’ve completed just seven sets over the past nine months – and most of them were insert or small sets under 50 cards. If these were bigger sets, I’d see this as an accomplishment.
And so, I decided on that Monday night in early September that I was going to sit down at my computer and track down the last 14 cards I needed to finish my 2013-14 Between the Pipes set.
I shopped around on Sportlots, as most common cards are listed at 20 cents each, and shipping is usually cheap. Plus, if a seller has one card you need from a random set, there’s a good chance that they have most or all of the cards you need from that set.
This took a lot of time. I started at around 8:30 pm or so and figured I’d be doing this for an hour. But it was a lot of trial and error, and it took way longer than that.
One seller had many of the cards I needed but their shipping charge went to $7 for 10 or more cards.
I looked at cards from another seller, who many times wanted 75 cents per card. Somewhere, there’s a joke about spending more on singles than just buying the set outright.
Finally, the third seller I looked into had ALL of the 14 cards that I was looking for at 20 cents each, and the shipping was only $4. Then I noticed that if I bought between 50 and 150 cards, shipping was $7 – but orders of 151 or more cards got FREE shipping!
And thus, I got sucked down the rabbit hole, going through my massive, 160+ page want list, seeing if this seller had any other cards I needed. And they did.
Four hours later, I found 230 cards from this seller to fill various sets. In addition to the 14 cards that I needed to finish my 2013-14 Between the Pipes set, I also found nine of the 10 cards needed for my 2021-22 AHL base set, 80 of the 137 cards needed to finish my 2015-16 O-Pee-Chee base set, and 48 of the 50 cards needed to finish my 2010-11 Certified base set.
Wow! Almost 15 years have gone by since I started my 2010-11 Certified set. What was I waiting for? 30 years?
Of course, all these cards added up, with most of them costing around 20 to 27 cents each, with a few star cards or Panini Prizm cards costing around $1 each. When all was said and done, and including sales tax, I spent $60.10 for 230 cards – or just over 26 cents per card. I also spent nearly five hours going through the seller’s inventory and my want list, finally cutting myself off at close to 1 am.
So, I spent money and time, and as they say, time is money. But as tedious as this process was, it still beat being hunched over a 5,000-count monster box at a card show, hoping that I can find 10-to-15-year-old common cards to complete my sets. And let’s face it, those days are long gone, as most dealers are not going to use table space at a show to sell cheap cards that less and less collectors want.
How do you complete your sets? Do you buy cards on eBay, Sportslots, COMC, or somewhere else? Do you trade? Let me know how you fill in your sets. Leave a reply or hit me up on social media @puckjunk.
Note: This article is an updated version of an editorial that originally appeared in Volume 3 – Issue 36 of the Puck Junk Newsletter. For stories like these, plus news and updates about hockey cards and collectibles, subscribe to the newsletter here.
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