Just Completed My Best Set Ever

It has been years since I have put together a set of cards.  I am thinking it was 2002 or 2003.  I am just not into have a huge stack of cards that do not feature my favorite team.  It can also be fairly expensive for a budget minded collector like myself.  I do go after all the Cardinals team sets, but even those can be a challenge with all the wonderful short prints that are produced.

There is one set that I have been trying to complete for a long time.  It is not a base card set or even a team set.  It is the 1998 Topps Tek set of all 90 Ray Lankford cards.  For a long time I was down to needed patterns 4 and 7.  I believe it was early last year when another Cardinals collector traded me #4.  I had my doubts whether I would ever find #77, but last week The Bench member cardinals-colle sent me a trade offer with a bunch of Lankford cards I need for team sets.  He also included Tek #77.  I could not make the deal quick enough and anxiously awaited the envelope to make sure it was indeed the last one I was searching for.  It arrived on Wednesday.

So it was a 1998 Topps Tek Lankford, but was it the one I needed?

You bet it was.  It was great to slide this card into the page to go along with the other 89 patterns.  This is my first new Lankford of 2019, and hopefully not the last.  There are also diffractor versions of all 90 patterns, but since I only have 3 of those that set will never be complete.