Fill in the holes

In the pasts, my January 1st posts have been somewhat elaborate, meaning its me trying to get things done collecting wise in my own weird and warped way.

Well, 2020 pretty much wore me out.  4 posts in December proved that.  

In 2021, I'm going to try and keep it simple.  Try to keep the laughter to a minimum.

I've only had 3 ideas on what to do for collecting cards this year.  That's easy, right?  Without further adieu, here's my to do list for 2021.

1.  Keep trading on TCDB.

Simple enough.  Would like to hit the 100-150 trade range again this year as I have the past 2 years.  I've dealt with a lot of great collectors/traders on the site, as well as some bloggers that have joined over the past year or two.  

I'm at 363 completed transactions on the site...hitting the 500 mark this year is an attainable goal.  Let's leave it at that.

2.  Finish "the Next 10"

I really enjoyed focusing on building sets in 2020 and finishing the first 10 was fun to document.  I've already completed 2 of the Next 10; I've learned that completing some of these sets is going to be a bit of a task what with the insane amount of SPs and the prices that they are going for.  You'll probably hear some wincing from me as I attempt to find Josh Allen and Baker Mayfield RCs for the 2018 Panini Prestige set that I want to complete.

My birthday is in late October, I'll make it reasonably easy on myself and say that I'll have the Next 10 done by then.

3.  Fill in the holes

I have quite a few vintage sets right now that I'm working on.  1968-1972 Topps baseball.  1971-72 OPC hockey.  As I've traded for/purchased cards for each of these sets, my enjoyment of them has increased.  

They are in varying states of completion, anywhere from 30-60% done.  They're all in pages and binders.

Now what I want to do is start to fill in the holes.  Here's a couple of examples from 1972 Topps to illustrate.

The top scan is page 4 of the set (Cards 27-36) and as you can see, card #33 is missing.  The infamous Billy Martin flipping the bird card. 

The bottom scan is page 5.  Card 38 which features Carl Yastrzemski is missing.  

These are the kinds of holes that I want to start filling.  Not all the pages are just missing 1 card.  Some are missing 2, some 3....you get the idea.

Over all the vintage sets that I'm building, I'd like to fill 150 pages total this year.  There's also '59 Topps baseball on my plate.   Maybe I'll even shoot for a few pages of '79 Topps football as well.  

It wouldn't be a new year without at least a couple of resolutions for me to tackle, right?!

To all the great folks out there that I've traded with and spoken with that have survived 2020, I wish you all a very safe and prosperous 2021.

Happy New Year!  Robert

90 days to a slimmer, trimmer want list

2016 Ginter is done!! 

You see all the ads on TV for weight loss.  Almost everyday there's something stating "lose weight with such and such product".

It gets monotonous.  "30 days to a slimmer, trimmer waist line."  Leave me alone and let me get back to my program!!

Recently, I saw a couple of fellow bloggers/twitterers (is that the term for someone who uses twitter?) display their disdain for newer products.  It got me to thinking...

"Do I really need to be starting any new sets when I have a boatload of sets from the past that I want to finish?"

Of course, the answer is no.   But to emphasize my point, I went through all my want lists and decided to add up the number of cards that I have on said want lists just to see how big the number is.

The number??

12,172

Wow, that's an eye opener to say the least.  Twelve thousand, one hundred and seventy two.  Try writing that on a check once or twice (for those of you younger readers, checks are what we used to pay for cards on ebay before PayPal came along).

It's tough to fathom really needing that many cards, isn't it?  Yet, with all the sets I have on my want lists, that's what the total is.  So, like any person that needs to trim a few pounds off their frame, I have decided to try and trim a few cards off of the want list. 

How do I do this you ask?  Go on a diet.   A pack diet.

2 copies, one for set and one for PC.  36 cents.  Thank you Sportlots!

That's one of my overdue resolutions this year, which I'm about to present now:

1.  90 days without buying one new product, or one pack of cards.  What I like about the first 3 months of the year (in non-leap years) is that there is a total of 90 days.  Very easy to remember.  Therefore, until March 31st, I will try to buy no new packs of cards.  Anything I buy has to knock cards off of my want list, or someone else's want list. I started this on January 1st, so by the end of March the goal is to have knocked the want list down by going cold turkey.  I'm sure I'll have the shakes by Valentine's Day.

2.  Clean up the Blue Jays/Maple Leafs collection for good.  I've got the Jays started, which will be the bigger project of the two.  Need to get the bulk of the collection sorted by year for easier entry into the Trading Card Database.  Once I get that done, it's only a matter of time.  The only date I'll set for myself is having it done by the 31st of December at 1159 PM. 

3.  Keep the PC blog rolling.  For those of you who do read my Player PC's blog, don't laugh, but I love doing it.  Yes, it's pretty easy when you think about it, writing 3 or 4 bullet points about a card and the player associated with it.  But, it's done a couple of things for me over the past 2 years.
A)  I've really enjoyed adding cards to my original PCs (Sakic and Thome) and B) I'm actually looking at the cards I've bought in the past, not leaving them sitting collecting dust in binders.

My goal is 400 posts on the PC blog this year.  I've come close each of the first two years.

4.  Five and dime contest.  I plan on running a contest during the 1st quarter of 2018, and I promise I will not punish you by making you write posts consisting of less than 100 words (although some of you did quite well with that!!).  I'll probably shoot for February once I get some credit card debt paid off and have a little bit more $$ to spend on your want lists, so be ready to do some hunting...

5.  The National.  It's in Cleveland this year, and I'm itching to go.  So much so that I thought about booking my vacation today at work.  Sadly, August is in our next fiscal year, so I can't do it yet.  But I plan to be there.  I would really enjoy meeting a blogger or two there as well.  I've not met any of you yet, but would love to do so.  More to come on this as it gets closer.

That's it, only 5 resolutions this year instead of my normal 7.  Less pressure....

Thanks for reading, and have a fabulous 2018!  Robert

Working on the resolutions

Yes, it's still only 15 days into the new year, but I am trying hard to keep my resolutions intact.  I've actually spent the past few evenings printing out checklists for my Joe Sakic (4884 cards total) and Jim Thome  (8725 cards total) PCs and crossing out what I have already accumulated.  Now that this task is finally accomplished, I can go about rewriting my want lists (since my "have" lists seemed to create some confusion among a couple of people) for these two guys.

In addition to getting those two guys cleaned up, I've decided to start a 3rd player PC, Brett Lawrie.  I've always wanted to stay away from guys that were on the current Jays roster, and now that Lawrie is wearing the Kelly green and gold of Oakland, I'm free to get that collection started.

I spent about 30 minutes last night digging through the box of Blue Jays duplicates, and found 8 cards to start off the collection.

Not a whole lot, but hey you have to start somewhere, right?

Speaking of resolutions, I mentioned a couple of sets that I wanted to complete.

You may or may not have looked at the Serial Numbered Insanity want list recently.  If you haven't, it has really shrunk in size, as I only need 192 cards to finish the set.  Scott Rolen above was the 50th card for the Cardinals, making them the 9th team to be completed. 

I also have quite a few in my COMC cart (27 to be exact), so rest assured that I'm taking this resolution seriously. 

I also spoke about this set....

Merritt Ranew was one of 9 cards in my last COMC order, bringing the want list down to 90.   This set will most likely be a little more of a drain on my budget than the SNI, but I'm hoping to whittle it down piece by piece over the next 12 months.  7-8 cards a month and I should be right on target.

So while I really haven't written a whole lot this month, I've not been inactive on the card front.

On the contrary, it feels like I'm really getting on a roll with my collection.  That's good, because there's only 350 days left in the year to keep the resolutions going.

Yikes...

thanks for reading, Robert

Let 2015 begin

I'm not going to go overboard with my card collecting resolutions this year.   There are a few things that I'd like to do, and if the last quarter of 2014 is any indication, I believe that I can complete and/or start these items.

1.  Finish the SNI project.

Good ol' Edwin Encarnacion is serial # 173, and is one of the 1294 cards that I have towards the set.  My next COMC delivery, which should be sometime next week, will knock the want list below 200 cards.  The final push is on, and I have a feeling that as the set nears completion things should get interesting. 

2.  Finish the 1964 Topps set

As of this writing, I still need 99 cards.  When I receive my next COMC order, that will drop to 90.
Forty out of the ninety are the dreaded high numbers.   A bargain hunting I will go.  It will be very nice to finish this set and be able to show it off sometime during 2015.

3.  Clean up/organize my player collections

Neglected for the past 2-3 months, I need to spend a weekend going through both my Thome and Sakic collections, and get them fully in order.  It's bad.

I also want to start a Brett Lawrie PC this year.  I can do this now that he's no longer a Blue Jay.   Yea, I'm weird like that.   Stay tuned.

If these three items don't keep me busy enough through 2015, then there's always other vintage sets such as '73 & '59 Topps to work on. 

First 3 things first.   Let's see if I can stick with that credo.

Have a great 2015 everyone.

Robert