Thanks to everyone on their comments. The main reason I posted these was to show that a date set, regardless of your own choice for beginning and ending dates, could be a lot of fun and a good alternative.
I also made sure that I was filling in my types as I made my decisions on which coin(s) to search for with a given date. So, as an example, I just about had to have a twenty-cent for the 1875 date if I wanted both the date and a short run type included for both purposes.
As for posting all of them, not a chance. I simply don't have the time or the desire for such a project. I have all of my coins photographed in my inventory, but the conversion time alone would eat up more hours than I'd care to give.
I will be posting a couple of my favorite date sets soon, such as my 1897 Philadelphia with gold set. Or a couple of my favorite coins I've fallen in love with and purchased recently.
As for the raw/encapsulated question, I usually stay at about the $150 mark in value as a guideline. Above that it's usually good to stay with the slab, below that, it all depends on how confident I am of finding a coin in the grade I want that hasn't been messed with. As an example, I would never buy any
Peace dollar in any grade I wanted unless it was encapsulated simply because those are so terribly prone to cleaning and since they are some of the worst toned coin types there are. Too many of the "bright"
Peace dollars have been cleaned, in my opinion.
As for which ecaps I use - ONLY NGC and PCGS. And I'm not here to listen to a political war over the value or negative aspects of
TPG's. I like them just fine and my opinion has zero chance of changing.