About Us
Dear Fellow Baseball Fanatic,
My name is Steve Crisp.
I'm a die-hard, life-long New York Mets fan. When The Mets franchise began in the 1962, so did my love of the sport. And naturally, I collected baseball cards.
By the mid-70's, I had moved on to other things (I'm thinking it was girls) and I quit collecting cards altogether. Then somewhere along the way, any cards I did have were either lost during moves or thrown out by my well-intentioned mother.
Fast forward several decades. I owned a successful business that ran mostly on auto-pilot, so I had a lot of extra time on my hands. Instead of buying a Ferrari, I decided that I wanted my old baseball card collection back. Except this time, I wanted top-of-the line cards and I wanted them all.
THE QUEST BEGINS...
I had the funds, access to the internet and the freedom to go anywhere I needed to compile my personal collection. Really, how hard could it be to put together a really nice, totally complete set of baseball cards?
I started pecking around baseball card shops, card shows and online resources. I quickly discovered that if I wanted a Tom Seaver rookie card, no problem, I could pick one up anywhere. But if I wanted a 1990 Brian Bohanon card, there wasn't one to be found. Well, let me take that back. I might be able to find one if I was willing to spend a couple hours rummaging through hundreds of boxes and bins at a card shops across the country. But even if I found one, there was no guarantee that it'd be in good condition.
Most baseball card dealers focus exclusively on the "stars" -- the baseball cards of superstars and Hall of Famers. The cards of players that aren't stars, known as "commons", are usually boxed up as they are collected and never see the light of day again. This is a MAJOR problem when you're trying to build a complete set.
THE QUEST CONTINUES...
So, I took matters into my own hands. I started by putting together a spreadsheet of every baseball player who played the game in the last 40+ years. Then I cross checked it with several print and online resources to determine if a baseball card had been issued for that player. I had my list.
So far, so good. Then I came across another problem. How could I know what uniform the player was wearing on the card? With all of the trading and free agency in the past couple decades, it was almost impossible to know what uniform a particular player was wearing especially when he was traded that year. Then you've got a bunch of retro cards. Would a 2002 card picturing Nolan Ryan show him in a Mets uniform or some other team? I knew I had to physically get my hands on the cards.
I had a choice. I could either spend hundreds of additional hours going from shop to shop and show to show searching for cards and purchasing the cards once I verified the uniform OR I could simply buy all of the cards and easily pick out the cards featuring my team. Obviously, I bought entire year sets of cards.
I later found that you could purchase "team sets" from dealers and was kicking myself, right? Wrong. Many cards have multiple players on them. Those are rarely found in other "team sets". They also don't include the cards of players from the annual Topps® Traded sets. And they don't even think about including special cards like World Series, League Leaders, Topps® Debut, etc. I wanted a complete collection of Mets cards -- not a partial collection! So, it turns out that I made the right choice by meticulously creating the set myself.
ULTIMATE TEAM SET IS BORN...
I originally purchased a complete set of every Topps® card. I purchased factory sets and hand collated sets, but even then I found that some of the cards were not worthy of my collection. I became an expert in grading cards. I even made little transparent centering templates for each and every year (I told you I was insane!).
Even when you purchase a factory set that is supposed to be in "mint" condition, there could be problems with card centering, image focus, corner damage, etc. So I ended up buying multiple sets so that I could get perfect cards for my collection.
By the time I finished my collection, I had hundreds of thousands of baseball cards left over. Then it hit me -- if I wanted a complete set of cards for my team, other people might want a complete set of cards for THEIR team...
And Ultimate Team Set was born!
Over the last several years, my helpers and I have amassed millions of Topps® baseball cards. Then we did the impossible -- we sorted them, hand-graded them and put them in an organized master collection.
We pull your Ultimate Team Set ON DEMAND from our master collection and we replenish the master collection with new cards daily.
I am sure by now that you're drooling (or the person who sent you here is still drooling and they're ruining their shirt!).
Ultimate Team Sets are a great gift for ANY baseball fan. So, order now to insure availability!
