Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Home Team Advantage? A conundrum

So it turns out that the 2001 Topps set I bought was not a 2001 Topps set at all - it was a 2001 Topps Home Team Advantage set. The cards are identical to the base set except for "Home Team Advantage" logo over part of the photo. I was totally unfamiliar with this before I opened the box last night.

Now I have a conundrum. Should I consider these the same as base set cards, or as a whole different set? As you may know, I like to collect everything, mainly trying to complete sets. I keep all my cards in boxes in chronological order by set (i.e. all my Bowmans, then all my Collectors Choice, then all my Donrusses, etc.). I have generally considered parallel cards to be a different set than the base set. For example, after my 1992 Topps set, I have my 1992 Topps Gold cards, then my 1992 Topps Gold Winners cards. Similar for things like Upper Deck Electric Diamond or Ultra Gold Medallion. There have been a couple of exceptions to this rule - I consider red-back and white-back 2007 Topps cards the same, and tiffany-back and plain-back 1990 Topps Traded cards the same. However, both of those variations only cover the back of the card, not the front.

If I followed this logic that I have applied to my collection already, I would put this 790+ parallel set after my base 2001 Topps set (I think I have about 300-400 cards from the set already). Then I would still need the other few hundred cards from 2001 Topps, which is disappointing because I figured I now had the complete set I thought about just buying a 2001 Topps base set, but they are expensive - average sale on eBay is over $50 according to Wrigley Wax's very helpful complete set eBay sale watch. I am unlikely to get one for under $10 any time soon.

Instead, I am leaning to considering the HTA set the same as the base set for my collection, keeping all the HTA cards (so all the cards in my set look the same) and put all of my 2001 Topps singles (which do not have the HTA logo) up for trade. However, I would be interested to know what you blog-readers think, if that is a good idea or not.

Another thought - do any of you have all (or almost all) of the 2001 Topps set to trade?

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