1998 Topps Tek Set

Setting goals is an important part of collecting.  There are a lot of days you can look back into your card boxes and feel a deep sense of accomplishment with the different things you have achieved with your collection.  It's one of the great parts of collecting cards.  Also, yard work.

Tonight, I am blogging about one of my favorite "white whales" in my collecting career: The 1998 Topps Tek set.  The set was released towards the end of the calendar year in 1998 with a simple 90 card set and one huge twist.  Each of the 90 cards would have 90 different variations, meaning that the base set was 8100 cards.  I am sure there are people that sought to finish the complete set, but many people tried to focus on just one player.  I had an easy choice.  Ray Lankford.

1998 Tops Tek Ray Lankford Pattern 50

 1998 Topps Tek Ray Lankford Pattern 70

1998 Topps Tek Ray Lankford Pattern 76 

1998 Topps Tek Ray Lankford Pattern 52

1998 Topps Tek Ray Lankford Pattern 21

The cards were very available in abundance for awhile and many collectors went to work.  I am even positive that some collectors were even able to assemble the full 81 card set for an individual player.  I was off to a good start with my collection and got all the way up to 38.  That was a few years ago.  I added one earlier this year to bring my total to 39.  And now?  Currently there is one Topps Tek Ray Lankford card up on Ebay and it's a parallel listed as a Buy It Now for $24.  There are only 5 available on COMC and I already own those variations.  

I know that it would be an awesome feat to accomplish and I would post way more than five pictures on my blog (I'd post them all) if I ever got the full 90.  The Topps Tek set reappeared two more times before it was retired after the 2000 release.  The set is one of the best from the 90s and one of the most underrated chase sets of all-time.  Ask a person who has a personal collection of one of the 90 players appearing in the 1998 set and I am sure that many would relay the same story.