What would you consider the single greatest set from 2000 on?

[Ryan The Orange]

I loved 2005 Reflections.

Well done sticker autographs, different colored parallels, easy set to complete, good relics.

 

[Austin]

My favorite autographed set is 2005 UD Ultimate Signatures.
The single-signed cards are beautiful and I have about 30 of them.
But I love dual-signed cards best because they pair players based on awards and famous moments, like Dennis Eckersley and Kirk Gibson, Bill Buckner and Mookie Wilson and Don Larsen and David Cone.
One of my favorites is Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strawberry.
And they're all on-card autographs. No stickers.

Here's a quick phone shot of my dual signatures:

 

[trauty]

2001 Topps Heritage, try and find a hobby box at a reasonable price now.

Not that retail is any easier to find or really all that less expensive but retail was seriously way better than hobby in regards to 2001 Heritage. The only thing you could get in Hobby that you couldn't get in retail was the Willie Mays buyback auto and good luck with that. Retail packs were loaded with the card #'s 1-80 which were shortprinted in the hobby packs. Out of a case and a half of hobby I pulled 1 auto and 2 relics -- out of a similar amount of retail I pulled 6 autos and 8 relics. And I don't think my results were too far out of the ordinary.

 

[trauty]

2002 Donruss Originals.
I loved building the giant base set with the '82, '84, '86 and '88 designs, along with the "what if?" '80 Donruss cards.
I have the entire set, along with most of a second one.

The set is so nostalgic for me since I grew up collecting in the '80s.
I look at that set in my binder all the time.

I don't know why Donruss didn't make an '03 set using the '81, '83, '85, '87 and '89 designs.
The '02 set was very popular.

I loved that set too but that product was DOA. That stuff was selling for well below cost the same week it came out.

 

[schmidtfan20]

Not that retail is any easier to find or really all that less expensive but retail was seriously way better than hobby in regards to 2001 Heritage. The only thing you could get in Hobby that you couldn't get in retail was the Willie Mays buyback auto and good luck with that. Retail packs were loaded with the card #'s 1-80 which were shortprinted in the hobby packs. Out of a case and a half of hobby I pulled 1 auto and 2 relics -- out of a similar amount of retail I pulled 6 autos and 8 relics. And I don't think my results were too far out of the ordinary.

The autograph odds for both hobby and retail were the same, but lets also remember that the odds of getting a Willie Mays were the same as getting a Joe Mays. Every card had the same print run. The extra low number cards that you are talking about came from toys r us blasters only. I think these were printed last in the run when topps had extra cards, I must of opened 200 packs of these, but never pulled an autograph. Over the years I have found that retail works this way. You have a good, maybe better than normal, chance of pulling a nice card and then it tapers off from there so that at the end of the run you have almost no chance to pull anything decent.

Kevin

 

[bigalbert]

I'm in for 2005 UD Ultimate sigs. All those HOFer's with on card autos with some amazing rare cuts and a base set #'d to 825.

 

[aaron41984]

2001 SP Legendary Cuts
2001 Topps Archives Reserve
2002 Bowman Draft

You beat me to this. Makes me wanna puke thinking about how far base cards have fallen. I remember selling Francoeur base bowman draft RC's for $30 a pop.

 

[linuxabuser]

I remember being a kid and drooling over that set when i saw it in Beckett.

EDIT: Damn. Meant to quote csmtampa's reply about 2000 GOTG.

 

[gt2590]

Pretty surprised that 2001 Sweet Spot didn't make the list so far.

2000 GOG, 2005 Donruss Champions, 2007 Bowman Draft, 2010 Upper Deck (?) and the two Gypsy Queens would make my List.

 

[trauty]

The autograph odds for both hobby and retail were the same, but lets also remember that the odds of getting a Willie Mays were the same as getting a Joe Mays. Every card had the same print run. The extra low number cards that you are talking about came from toys r us blasters only. I think these were printed last in the run when topps had extra cards, I must of opened 200 packs of these, but never pulled an autograph. Over the years I have found that retail works this way. You have a good, maybe better than normal, chance of pulling a nice card and then it tapers off from there so that at the end of the run you have almost no chance to pull anything decent.

Kevin

The extra low cards were in all retail. I owned a shop back then and when hobby dried up, I bought case after case of retail plus bought a few retail boxes from Target, Shopko, Pamida, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, etc. All the retail was just loaded with cards 1-80. I don't recall ever seeing a blaster of 2001 Heritage -- were they TRU exclusive? We didn't have a TRU so I never had a chance to look there. Besides the case and a half of retail I busted, I probably saw at least another 5 cases opened by customers. Every case of retail (and they were from multiple sources) had 4-6 autos/relics and tons of low numbers (every case of hobby had 2-3 autos/relics and only 1 card per pack from the 1-80 series). As for the Willie Mays I'm talking about, it's the 1952 Original Buyback "Autoproof" (limited to just 25) that was randomly inserted into hobby boxes as box toppers. --- a few minutes later ----- After going through some boxes in the back of my house, I just found the sell sheet for 2001 Heritage and the Mays buyback was actually available in retail (as a redemption) although it says the Mays buyback is limited to 10 -- they must've decided to up it to 25. So there really was no advantage in buying hobby. I'm going to include the Sell sheet images here. It's interesting to note that unlike today, when Topps makes wholesale changes to their checklists, there were 52 autographs listed and every one of them ended up being packed out (although the Eddie Mathews and Doby were redemptions that were never fulfilled due to Mathews death and Doby's refusal to sign - I wonder if there are any unsigned versions of these guys cards sitting in the Topps vault?). It's also interesting that the Sosa shown on the front of the sell sheet was a horizontal card (using the same pic) in the actual set.

 

[doubles81]

The best set after 2000 imo would be the dodgers tribute set with the Jackie Robinson cut auto that had the B cut out with a dodgers jersey inserted. Great set

 

[wolfmanalfredo]

04 timeless treasures. Love that set.