Joy of receiving a complete set of 1986 Fleer plus more

ARPSmith is looking to clear out a bunch of cards, so check out his blog if you haven't recently. He happened to have plenty available from my current #1 setbuild (1980 Topps), plus many of my "future setbuilds?" that I had coincidentally been hoping for starter lots to fall in my lap. So I rounded up my best available SF Giants cards to return the favor, and we had ourselves a nice deal.

Adam sent me about 200 cards for my 1980 Topps set with lots of needs and upgrades, taking me from 55% complete all the way up to 80%. Just 143 cards left to go; pretty good considering how recently I started the project.

Most of the cards were in great shape. A few had some wax stains on the front. I tried the old hair dryer and paper towel trick and was able to clean them up nice, with a Before and After example here from Lynn Jones. I think this was my first time using that trick, and it definitely won't be the last. (Thanks, P-town Tom, for posting about this a while back).

And I was stoked to get a complete set of 1986 Fleer from Adam, too. It's one set that for whatever reason, I just never had many cards from in my collection, so in my mind it's more scarce than it really is.

While it's not the greatest design ever, I like the simple dark blue borders. It's got some great looking cards in there.

Adam even included a full set of the 22 sticker inserts from '86 Fleer. Apparently the variation of the Cardinals logo with the yellow beak is somewhat rare and worth a few bucks.

But the best part of these stickers is the Laughlin artwork on the back.

Also included in the big box were probably half-complete sets 1983 Topps and 1984 Fleer, so I should probably get wantlists for those typed up one of these days. Also solid stacks of (in order of most) 1982 Topps, 1987 Fleer, 1978 Topps, 1984 Donruss, and 1985 Donruss. These are all sets on my "maybe probably someday I'll work on these sets" list, so it's great to get a big chunk to get me going, though I'll likely wait to land another good lot of each before I figure out my needs.

Big thanks again, Adam! Great stuff! Hope you're as happy with the cards I sent.

Thanks for reading, guys.