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

2017 in review

OK, there's a lot I want to say in this post, so let's get to it.

2017.  Not a bad year collecting wise.  I made a few decisions on how I want to go forward with my collection.  I also made 7 resolutions at the beginning of last year.  It's funny how things change as the year goes on.

A quick review:

1.  Set completion:  64 Topps, done.  88-89 OPC hockey.  Done.  73 Topps, 2 cards away.  I also mentioned the remainder of the 80's OPC hockey sets, getting them started and want lists on the blog.  That got started, somewhat.  Well, overall this is a B- for me.

2. Video posts.  Have to get back to these....F

3. COMC.  No longer want to sell on there, just don't see the upside in all that maintenance.

4. Jays and Leafs collections, sorted and catalogued.   As the year progressed, I figured out that maintaining a spreadsheet for both of these is both a lot of work and very tedious.  The TCDB is the way to go, and I've got the Jays collection started on there (just over 1000 cards entered).  Looking forward to getting the collection together, finally.  Grade:  Incomplete

5.  100 words, 100 cards contest.   Success!!  Grade:  A

6.  2016 Allen & Ginter completion:  Close, last card is in the mail on its way to me.   A-

7.  $2k.  I did pretty good up until September keeping track of what I spent.  At the end, just like a lot of things that you start at the beginning of the year, it became a bit tedious.  I know that I didn't even spend an average of $30/week, but I did get a good idea of what it will take to go to $40 a week like I thought I would last year.

I also wrote 160 posts, which I am happy with.  My days as an everyday blogger on this blog are gone, but double digit post totals each month is a very attainable goal. 

I'll write my goal post tomorrow, still have to think of how I want to get myself more organized and focused in 2018.

One card rule:

Waiting for the Mattingly card from A&G to arrive (hopefully tomorrow) and this set will be done.  That will be the first set of the year (and maybe the only, more to come on that) for me to list my top 10 cards...

Thanks for reading, and have a great 2018 everyone!!

Robert

Inbound and Down #32: Too Many Verlanders

Those of you who follow Dennis' Too Many Verlanders blog know that he sent out a boat load of packages just before Christmas time.   The other day I was fortunate enough to become one of the lucky recipients, as a large priority envelope jammed my mailbox!!

By the way, I'm just curious, now that Justin Verlander is in Houston, will the blog become Too Many Cabreras?  Inquiring minds want to know...

The big portion of the envelope is what you see in the photo above.  Dennis is thinning out his Beckett magazine collection, and sent me 5 that featured Blue Jays covers from back in the 90's!  While I loved getting them (and have display ideas already, thanks to my better half), it was quite depressing looking at the prices of vintage sets 20 years ago.  Oh if I only had the forethought (and the $$) back then, my collecting process would be a lot different today.

Needless to say, the Beckett's weren't the only item in the envelope.  There were a trio of Joe Sakic cards, unfortunately I already own two of them.   The third one I have already posted on my other blog, and it was a good one (Donruss Press Proof, limited to 2000 copies!). 

The big chunk of the card goodness is a boat load of serial numbered cards for the SNIH set.  Dennis was a great contributor to the baseball version, and the hockey side became a lot bigger thanks to this super lot of cards.

Today, I'm going to show off the cards that did not come from Pacific brands...

What's great about this group of 9 is that I've heard of every one of these players.  A lot of the serial #'d cards so far that I've picked up is of rookies that never got more than a cup of coffee in the league, so seeing some more established players is great. 

I think Dennis found a vein of serial #'d cards somewhere as I have over 20 more to show off, which I'll do in the next post. 

Thank you very much Dennis for the very generous envelope, it is really appreciated!!

thanks for reading, Robert

Christmas Cards

I love my wife.  I had to start this post with that sentence, because she has supported my insane love for collecting cards the entire time that we've been together.

She's shown appreciation for the older stuff that I've brought into the house (especially the 64's and 59's) and never complains when I hit the card aisle at Target or Wal-Mart when we go together.

But she's never ventured into buying cards for me at Christmas time (or any other time of the year).  She's admitted being nervous about getting the wrong thing for me, which is understandable.  She knows I'm picky at times.  But this year she took the plunge.  

My wife actually hit my trash can to check out the wrappers of packs of Upper Deck hockey to make sure she was buying something I wanted. 

In my stocking, there were two fat packs of this year's UD waiting.  She had better luck picking than I have had so far...

I've bought 3 fat packs, a blaster and a couple of single packs, but hadn't hit an Auston Matthews.   Bang, first pack there he is!!  The first pack also contained a David Pastrnak Shining Stars insert, which is available if any Bruins fans need it.

I pulled a couple of Young Guns in my blaster, but nothing in the other packs.   Sure enough, there is Nathan Walker's card in pack #2.  William Nylander has also been nowhere to be found until now; I love that photo from the Winter Classic warm up.

This last card I'm going to show is already a double, but is perfect for the goalie mask frankenset.

What a great photo!  I wish there were more cards like this for the set. 

I may have to ask her to pick packs for me in the future.  Her luck is better than mine...

Thanks for reading, Robert

The last of the COMC order...PC's please

First off, I hope that those of you out there who celebrate Christmas had a very merry one and spent it in the company of loved ones.

It just wouldn't be a COMC order without a dose of cards for my player collections.  Often inspiration for picking up a card of Sakic, Thome or McCutchen (and now Ichiro) comes from seeing cards on the site while I'm writing up posts on my other blog.   I end up finding parallels, or as you'll see in this post, serial #'d cards from sets that I don't purchase much of.

I did pretty well with my #1 PC, Joe Sakic, picking up 8 more base/parallel cards:

Love how well the emerald parallel for Pacific Dynagon scanned.  OK, that was a bit of sarcasm as the scan doesn't show half of the dark green that the card contains.  The bottom and top portions of the card, as well as the "starburst" lines are all emerald and the card looks fantastic in hand.
I'm becoming more and more intrigued with the Beehive cards from the mid 2000's.  I totally missed out on that set when it was released, and I'm picking up cards here and there at shows or online. 

It's also getting tougher to find Sakic cards under a dollar, as I'm now more into the parallel/serial #'d portion of the cards I need to collect.  Half of the cards on these 2 scans were in the $1 to $1.50 range; still not exorbitant but it starts to add up. 

I did a quick count of my Sakic cards, and was stoked to find that I'm up over the 700 card mark now on his PC, and I'm looking to hit 800 in the new year.

In what had to be a moment or two of insanity, I grabbed a handful of Moments and Milestones cards from 2008 for the Thome and Ichiro PCs.  Yes, they were all below a buck, and add more cards to the PCs.  I need to make sure that I don't get carried away with chasing all of these, because there are so many cards with variations that it's absolutely head spinning.  

Well, with the end of the PCs from that order, I can say now that I've hit the 1600 post mark for the blog.  Now while 1600 posts is nothing compared to a few other bloggers out there that have passed the 2000 mark a long time ago, for me each time I hit a "milestone" post such as this one, it makes me happy because I realize that I'm making an attempt to entertain people. 

Why do I do this?  Just because I enjoy cardboard, as all of you do.  

Here's to many more milestones....

Thanks for reading, Robert