Collecting Goals Progress Report

The year sure does move fast, doesn’t it?

It feels like just yesterday that Series 1 came out.

Has it really been more than 2 months since our last contest?  Part of that is we stopped getting boxes from Panini for whatever reason, but we can still think of something.

It’s been almost three months since our last video box break and review?  We have to change that very very quickly.  That used to be our bread and butter.

Almost 4 months since our last group break?  Sure the wedding made it tougher to arrange another one, but heck!  Even that was already over 2 months ago fer cryin’ out loud.

I can’t possibly be more than 6 months since I posted my 2011 Collecting Goals, can it?  Well, I can’t necessarily rectify all those long delays right now, but I can at least take care of that last one.

Like a lot of bloggers out there, I made up a list of resolutions and/or goals that I thought would be practical enough.  I wasn’t looking to put any sort of pipeline, wish list, lottery-winning-will-make-this-happen type stuff.  I wasn’t realistic, obtainable goals that I could synchronize my swatch to.  My swatch is telling me it’s been over half a year, so how am I doing?

BOX BREAKS/REVIEWS

What I said:
I want to do a bunch of this.  I’m a critic at heart and by nature, and one of the things that appealed to me most about starting up this blog was having another forum where people could read my bias.  We’ve been at this for about a year now (as of January 11th), and we’ve had a whopping 18 reviews!  I want to get a couple group breaks going, which will allow more box breaks/videos/reviews on here, and we’ll be opening plenty of new stuff (mostly to flip) as we’ve been doing.  It’s going to be a very exciting time for us.  We have big things planned for this blog and January should show the beginnings of it.  Hopefully you’ll be there to share it all with us.

What has happened:
Well, as I mentioned, we’ve slowed down recently.  The first 4 months were pretty strong, but that was mostly due to the seven box group break I held.  12 video breaks in the first 7 months is okay, but I was honestly hoping for more.  Especially new stuff.  Now that we’re a retailer, we’ll hopefully be buying more to open and flip, starting with Bowman Platinum next week!  We missed out on a couple key releases, because we were waiting for our licenses to go through.  Anyway, I’ve been toying with the idea of hosting group breaks for new product for everyone.  We should be able to offer a decent price, so if people are interested in this type of thing (and are reading this post), please let us know.

In terms of reviews, we’ve only done 7 of them.  I never got around to reviewing anything from the group break, which is a shame.  We’ll hopefully pick up the pace in the second half as I’d like to end with an average of 2/month.

CONTESTS

What I said:
I want to hold more of these as well.  The Pack Lottery Contest (your chance to enter is ending tomorrow night!) is going to be intense and a hell of a lot of fun.  We want more contests, more giveaways, more interactivity, more fun, more free cards for everyone!  It’s about time we bring the Community to Community Gum.

What has happened:
The Panini boxes were a big boost.  That well dried up, apparently.  We haven’t contacted Tracy Hackler or anyone else over there to see if we can be considered in the future.  It was fun getting free cards, but it was even better giving those cards away.  A lot of bloggers that get boxes from manufacturers don’t do what we did, or at least to the same extent, in terms of giveaways.  I would like to start that up again, but if it’s not “in the cards” then so be it.  We’ll find other ways, through ambitious type efforts like Pack Lottery Contests or more traditional leave a comment and we’ll random off a prize fare and everything in between.

POSTING

What I said:
I want to at least to maintain my current output of blog posting on here.  I know as the wedding gets closer, it will be tougher to find the time, but I stay up late and get little sleep as it is, so we’ll see.  No set numbers on this, just keep the blog moving along.

I wish I could say I’ll be commenting more.  I simply don’t think that’s realistically going to change for the time being.  As I’ve mentioned before, I typically only have time to either read people’s blogs to catch up, or write my own post.  I can read during lunch at work, but can’t login anywhere to comment.  Also, I’ll blame the wedding here too to cover my bases.  Maybe the second half of the year, I’ll be a more active presence and chime in along with what you guys are talking about.

I also want to post 25 packs on A Pack To Be Named Later in 2011.  This averages out to about one every other week, which seems manageable.  I have plenty of older packs that haven’t been featured, especially non-sports and I’m sick of seeing –David beat me to the punch on them!  Even though he does a great job with his write-ups!  U.S. of ALF should have been mine!

What has happened:
I think I’ve done about as well as I could have expected.  Life and business tends to get in the way a little too frequently, but what can you do?  Some nights I have to spend all the free-time I would have had to blog or to read blogs by filling and packing up orders from Sportlots and/or Ebay or loading new cards up for sale.  It’s not a bad problem to have by any means, but I like to tell myself that I should be able to still do both.  All things considered, the status quo has been maintained in my eyes, although I’ll still strive for improvement.

In terms of A Pack to Be Named Later, I’m doing alright.  The group break certainly helped.  I also posted virtually every variation of retail Topps Series 1 pack you can imagine.  I have the same planned for Series 2, I just haven’t sat down to write the witty quips accompanying the scans yet.  Hopefully nobody takes those in the meantime.  I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet.  I currently have posted 13 packs on there, so I am on target to meet this goal.  Unfortunately, I haven’t gone through and done much in the non-sport arena yet.  Hopefully that’ll change in the next 5.2 months or so that’s left.

PLAYER COLLECTIONS

What I said:
Number:  Currently, I’m at 3 players.  I’d actually like to increase this to somewhere between 5-10, leaning more towards 5.  Part of the reason is I feel my collection is a little unbalanced.  I’m only collecting pitchers so far.  Two of the three are current Cubs.  I want to branch out.  I want a slugger.  I want another older player, so I have more to look for in the old boxes I rip besides Greg Maddux.  I have thoughts on this, but I’ll go more in depth on another post.

Current collection size:  I’m going to use my Progress report post from a little more than a month ago as my guide here.  I was at 6 months, so by 1 yr, 6 mo I hope to have my collections reach somewhere around…
Marmol – Currently 26 (30.59%), Goal 50.  I feel most of these newer cards will come in the form of 2011 products/parallels
Dempster – Currently 30 (17.34%), Goal 75.  Again, a lot of 2011 will help.  I wouldn’t be too surprised if I’m able to break 100.
Maddux – Currently 236 (3.97%), Goal 275.  I’m keeping this number more conservative in anticipation of adding other players.

I also want to complete 2 years worth of cards for each player.  Maddux may be the easiest as I only need 2 more Sterling cards to finish 2010, and early junk wax years may not be too tough.

What has happened:
Number:  I doubled the amount of players I collect by adding Kerry Wood, Frank Thomas and Tony Gwynn.  I did add another pitcher, so it’s not an even split, but it is 3 active and 3 retired.  I don’t think I’ll add anyone else until at least next year if not later.

I mentioned that I wanted to complete 2 years worth for each player.  I’m not sure if that’s going to be possible with my current financial situation.  I know it wouldn’t be incredibly expensive, but those shipping fees will add up and I have to hone in on the discretionary funds.  I’m revamping this goal so that it only applies to Greg Maddux.  I am only 2 cards away from getting all his 2010 cards (the Cubs Sterling White /50 and his Topps Blaster Commemorative Patch – so please let me know if you have either), then I’ll have to pick an early junk wax year and go crazy one of these days.  I can afford to do that for 1 player, not all 6.

Current collection size:
Marmol – Currently 44 (38.60%), Goal 50.  I’m on my way.  With A&G out, that should help.  And if he’s in any other Topps product from here on out, that should put me over the edge.
Dempster – Currently 63 (29.58%), Goal 75.  New products = new cards to grab.  I tend to pick up a lot of parallels on ebay, but you guys have helped me out considerably through trades as well.
Maddux – Currently 370 (5.94%), Goal 275.  ACCOMPLISHED! Wow, this is almost all you guys out there, so thank you very much!  I did pick up about 40 Moments & Milestones in a lot I couldn’t pass up, but the other 100 or so is almost all trades.  I love blogging.

For all of the above three, the percentage of cards I have has gone up very nicely even considering the amount of cards each person has to collect has also grown.  For instance, I now need 6228 different Greg Maddux cards, when before it was much less because Beckett hadn’t listed all the Topps Tek variations and there are currently thirteen new 2011 cards that fit my criteria.  Still I’ve grown almost 2 percentage points, which is amazing.  I should also note that these percentages are based on the cards that I deemed were not in need of an upgrade.  If I included those as well, they’d be even higher.

Kerry Wood – Currently 98 of 2845 (3.44%), End of year goal, how about I keep it light and say 110.
Frank Thomas – Currently 109 of 6322 (1.72%), End of year goal will be 130.  I’m keeping things conservative since I won’t be buying much myself and will rely almost exclusively on trades.
Tony Gwynn – Currently 55 of 4766 (1.15%), End of year goal will be 75.  Again, not actively pursuing many purchases at least until 2012.  It would be great to say 100, but I’m not sure if I can go that high in 6 months.

So there you have it.  Not too bad.  It’s nice to go over this list and give the collecting bug a specific boost.  It’s easy to loose focus sometimes, but when money gets tight, it’s good to reset your priorities.  How are the rest of you faring so far in your goals?