So, let me tell you about putting together this 2024 Tier One Baseball checklist. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and just decided, “Hey, I’m gonna make the ultimate list!” Nah, it was more out of, well, necessity, I guess you could say.
I’ve been collecting for a while, and Tier One is one of those sets I always look forward to. You know, the nice hits, the clean designs. But keeping track of what’s actually in the set, especially with all the parallels and auto variations? Man, it can be a headache. I first did what anyone would do: I went searching online. Figured there’d be a dozen perfect checklists ready to go. And sure, you find bits and pieces. A forum thread here, a partial list on some sales site there. But nothing comprehensive, nothing I could really trust or easily use to track my own pulls and needs.
Getting Started on My Own
After a bit of that runaround, I just kinda threw my hands up. I thought, “Alright, if I want this done right, or at least done in a way that makes sense to me, I gotta do it myself.” So, I fired up my computer. Didn’t use any fancy software, just a good old spreadsheet. That’s my go-to for organizing pretty much anything.
First thing was to gather the basic info. I started with the official announcements from Topps, if they were out, or looked at early product information from hobby shops. You try to get the basic structure:
- Base cards (if any, Tier One is mostly hits)
- The different autograph sets – like Tier One Talent Autographs, Break Out Autographs, Prime Performers, that kind of stuff.
- Then the relic cards, the auto-relics, all those variations.
- And of course, the parallels! Gotta list all those /99, /50, /25, /10, 1/1s. That’s where it gets really granular.
So, I started building out rows and columns. Player name, team, card type, parallel, serial numbering. It sounds straightforward, but the information trickles in. You see a card pop up in an early break video, and you’re like, “Okay, add that to the list.” Sometimes the official info isn’t even fully complete when the product drops!
The Nitty-Gritty and Keeping Up
This is where the real work began. I’d be scouring eBay listings, checking out box breaks on YouTube, reading through collector forums. You’re basically a detective, piecing together clues. Sometimes you see a card you didn’t know existed, or you find a correction to something you had listed. It’s a constant process of updating and refining.
I remember with last year’s Tier One, there were a couple of late additions or unannounced variations that threw everyone for a loop. So, for 2024, I was kind of braced for that. You learn to leave a little wiggle room in your expectations.
One thing I tried to be meticulous about was noting down the card numbers for each subset. It just makes it easier to organize later if you’re trying to sort your own cards or figure out what you’re missing from a specific group.
It’s not like I finished it in a day, or even a week. It’s an ongoing thing, especially early in the release. Every time I thought I was close, a new piece of info would pop up. But slowly, it started to take shape. The base autograph list, then the relics, then layering in all the parallels. It’s kind of satisfying, in a nerdy way, to see it all come together.
And honestly, having my own checklist, tailored to how I think about the set, it’s made collecting Tier One a lot smoother. I know what to look for, I can quickly check if a card is a new parallel I haven’t seen, and I can keep track of my own collection progress. It was a bit of a slog to get it set up, no doubt about it. But now that it’s mostly there? Totally worth it. Still keeping an eye out for updates, though. With these modern sets, the checklist is never truly final until way, way after release, it feels like.
