I passively end up making keepers out base cards / inserts and parallels of prominent players to reflect the fabric of a decade / era - this may not mean I actively collect everyone as if they were all my personal favorites, where being obligated to mindlessly hoard 'numbers' seems overwhelming.
On the other hand, besides my regional favorites, I've settled on a short list of 5-10 guys from a decade / era I've chosen to really focus on - Helton is one of those former players who ends up a non-geographical guy for me whose cards I can look for, where it becomes a mission to claim or rummage for his cards I assume I don't have.
Go figure in my COMC order, I only ended up with a couple of Heltons - it could have been a trio of them, but the card that was missing in my order was actually a Helton card.
1998 Leaf Fractal Foundation Gold Leaf Rookie /3999 Todd Helton #184Helton has his share of rookie era issues, but it's of a priority to chase and pay a premium for any one particular card - when his true rookie card [1993 Topps Traded #19T; Team USA] ends up pre-dating his professional career.
2001 Donruss Class Of 2001 Scrapbook /525 Todd Helton #SB-7
Maybe unique design jersey / relic cards might be fun to track down on the cheap - even when it's a type of card that other collectors don't value at all, they fill out my player collections.
