Symmetric edge polytopes, also called adjacency polytopes, are lattice polytopes determined by simple undirected graphs. We introduce the integer array giving the maximum number of facets of a symmetric edge polytope for a connected graph having a fixed number of vertices and edges and the corresponding array of minimal values. We establish formulas for the number of facets obtained in several classes of sparse graphs, and provide partial progress toward conjectures that identify facet-maximizing graphs in these classes. These formulas are combinatorial in nature, and lead to independently interesting observations and conjectures regarding integer sequences defined by sums of products of binomial coefficients.