Collector Stories | 1965 Topps Baseball Completist

Jared Carlisle’s Collector Journey

During his childhood in the 1980s, Jared Carlisle collected singles of his favorite MLB players. When he hit adulthood, he decided to build a vintage set. One year really stood out to him: 1965 Topps.

“I did some research, and I wanted to find one that I could realistically complete that wasn’t going to bankrupt me,” Carlisle said. “It doesn’t have a lot of weird error cards or anything. It’s got a ton of Hall of Famers and cards that I just thought would be cool to own. I like how they look, that’s another factor.”

Carlisle enjoys the simple design and vibrant colors in the ’65 Topps set.

“Another reason I enjoyed putting the set together is I enjoyed reading about some of these players,” he said. “If nothing else, just a little blurb on the back of the card was really interesting to me, finding out some of the history and then maybe looking up some of their other cards from other years.”

The 598-card set features many big-name players at the tail end of their careers. Mickey Mantle and Eddie Mathews are a few of the more recognizable cards. Growing up in North Dakota, Carlisle is a fan of collecting Roger Maris as well.  

“I’d never owned like a Sandy Koufax or Willie Mays, those types of players,” Carlisle said. “It’s really cool to be able to hold cards of some of these Hall of Fame guys that I heard of growing up but are before my time, of course.”

Carlisle loves the history of baseball. When he began his project in 2014, little did he know it would take him seven years to finish. However, he persevered.

“It was a huge sense of accomplishment for sure,” said the 43-year-old Carver, Minnesota resident. “It reminds me of childhood again.” As a kid, Carlisle and his younger brothers all loved The Hobby. “We’d spend countless hours with our cards.”

Getting High Grades

Carlisle didn’t set out just to build the entire set. He was on a mission to have all the cards graded by PSA.

“I like to do things in order and everything neat, so I was going to try and do all of one grade, but I found out pretty quickly that’s not really going to be reasonable to do, or it’s going to take much longer,” Carlisle said. “So, I decided I’m going to keep it all 7s or above with no qualifiers.”

Carlisle, who had previously completed Rickey Henderson’s Topps base card run, figures he picked up between two and 15 cards per month. He set up trackers online, waiting for cards to pop up. Shows and online auctions were also valuable resources during his hunt.

Carlisle’s set consists of roughly 60% in PSA 8, 35% in 7, a handful in 7.5 and 8.5, and three or four 9s.

“I was lucky, actually, I finished right as COVID was starting and right when prices started exploding,” he said. “The most valuable card by far in the set is the Mickey Mantle, and I want to say I paid maybe $800-$900 for a 7. But those are like $3,000 now or something like that.”

Patience and Drive

It takes plenty of dedication for a person to keep a project alive for seven years. But nothing was going to stop Carlisle from finishing the laborious set.

“I’m a completionist,” he said. “It would drive me nuts if I got it 75% done.” The collector’s nine-year-old son, Cohen, will one day be the recipient of the set. “Even the ones that might take a while, there’s enough examples out there that I’d get there eventually. The longest it ever took to find one once I really, really tried to look was probably six to eight months.”

Now that Carlisle has been done with his ’65 Topps set for a few years, he’s thought about tackling a similar project.

“It’s fun to be on the hunt for something,” Carlisle said. “I thought about 1980 Topps, but there’s so many more cards — I think that’s close to 800 cards. My wife’s probably happy I’ve taken a break lately. But I’d definitely be interested in doing another one.”

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