My Frankenset(s)

It seems like most bloggers jumped on the Frankenset bandwagon while I was away. I’ll admit I had aspirations myself before taking my hiatus but I didn’t have much time to think about what I would do.

The first one I remember seeing when I started following blogs a couple of years ago was $30 a Week Habit's Serial Insanity, though I don't think the term Frankenset came around until a little later. If somebody could point me in the direction of its originator, I'd love to give someone credit.

In terms of Cubs bloggers, P-Town Tom of Waiting Til Next Year snagged a good one with making a giant Cubs set. Paul of Wrigley Wax decided to do uniform numbers, which also turned out pretty good.

So what’s a Cubs fan to do with two good ideas already off the board?  Well, I looked at the two mini collections I had going already and decided to make Frankensets out of both!

As a refresher, my two mini collections are posted in the right hand column under the “Niches” headline. The inventory under those links are a little out of date but they'll be updated shortly. The Horizontal Cards mini collection even resulted in a separate blog (that needs to be dusted off once I get the hang of this one again). The goal of that blog was to find the best horizontal card for each team by pitting two against each other every month and letting the readers decide.

For this particular Frankenset, I’ve decided to cap the set at 630 cards. That’s 30 cards for each of the 31 teams from my lifetime. I’m doubling down on the Expos and Nationals since I grew up with the Expos but at 10+ years now, the Nationals probably deserve their own spot, too. I’m hoping to find base set cards (though I may allow parallels) from as many different brands as possible.

I imagine it will be easy to get it started and then tough to fill in gaps. But that’s what makes this fun, right? Maybe once I get to that stage, that Horizontal Card Challenge blog will turn into a battle of making it into the Frankenset!

The second Frankenset will involve cards that feature the ivy covered walls of Wrigley Field in the background. This one won’t have a set number of cards from each team as it’ll be tough to find American League teams at Wrigley. As with the horizontal set, I will try to get as many different brands as possible. I don’t know if I’ll put a cap on this set as I have to go through what I already have.

I guess I have a reason to include some Cardinals cards in the collection. Ugh. I love this shot of Bill Sampen in the powder blues with his full nameplate and number showing. That ones a keeper!

Both of these Beltrans have a home for now but I'd like to bump one out eventually for variety sake.

I will always chase Cubs cards for my overall collection, but for the purposes of this set, unless I want some place fillers, I’m also going to try and avoid using Cubs cards like the Dave Smith below.

Upper Deck has some great ivy shots on the backs of cards but this one will probably be filler as well until something better comes along.

Before my hiatus, I had a box of cards that I’ll be going through shortly to scan and catalog so stay tuned. I’m excited to get to and figure out haves and needs. And hopefully putting it out there for the world to see keeps me accountable when I don’t feel like organizing…

And I'd like to give a big shout out to Jeff at 2x3 Heroes for the cards above that arrived in a PWE while I was away on my trip. He dropped some PWE's on me while I was away too and nudged me back in the direction of this blog on more than one occasion. Thanks for the support and cards, Jeff!

Jeff stunned me with his generosity with one final card in the envelope and since it doesn't fit this theme, it'll get its own post sometime next week.