The State of the Blog, 2011
January 3rd, 2011 by slangon
2010 is a deader. The Christmas decorations are down. 2011 has begun.
Last year, I spent some time writing a post about how I wanted to focus my collecting habits a bit, and surprisingly, I think it actually helped quite a bit. I say surprisingly because usually I’m not one who’s good with resolutions and what have you. Somehow, though, putting my thoughts down on the screen really helped me focus on what kind of cards I really wanted in my collection and what cards I wanted to avoid. For the most part, I was pretty good about sticking to those goals. Of course, I still ended up acquiring scads of cards that really have no place in my collection, but to a much smaller degree than before.
I figured since it seemed to help last year, why not lay out my New Years resolutions for my card collecting this year too.
First of all, I resolve to continue to try and curb getting cards that I don’t really want. I’m not certain about this, but I suspect most collectors are guilty of buying cards that they don’t need. I don’t know how many times that I’ve perused the card aisle at Target and haven’t seen anything that tickled my fancy but ended up walking away with a pack or 2 of something in my hand regardless. I guess that’s where the fine line between collector and pack rack gets a little blurry. I especially find this annoying considering the price of packs these days. I mean, even a plain old retail pack of some not so fancy product is going for $4 or so. For that I could probably cross off a couple of vintage needs through eBay or Sportlots or something instead of having 7 or 8 more cards that I don’t want cluttering up my house. Somehow though, I can’t see completely forgoing buying random packs just because there is something to be said for the act of opening a pack of cards.
Secondly, I would like to purge my house of some of the thousands of cards that I don’t want. The obvious problem with this is that chances are if I don’t want these cards, most other people probably don’t want them either. I mean what do you do with boxes and boxes of junk wax? I’m really tempted to say just toss them. After all, technically if half the people threw out all their old 1988 Donruss cards, the other 1988 Donruss cards would actually be worth something. Going back to the fine line between collector and pack rat, I just can’t throw out baseball cards, no matter how crappy they are. I’ve heard tell of donating baseball cards to childrens hospitals and things like that. That’s probably the way to go, although I think I would still feel a little guilty about dumping all that junk wax on some poor sick kids.
Thirdly, I would like to focus a bit more on through the mail attempts this year. I started doing TTM shortly after I started this blog and had some pretty good results. I’m not sure why I fell off on it, but I did. Looking at my track record of sending requests out, it seems like my slackatude happened to perfectly coincide with the start and finish of the baseball season, so maybe it’ll be unavoidable. I would like to at least make an effort though.
Fourthly, I would like to focus a bit more on trading this year. This one might be a bit tough since the way my card buying habits have shaped up over the last year or so, I tend not to acquire a lot of cards that I don’t want/need but would still be desirable to someone else. Like my number 3 resolution, I would like to at least make an effort. Not to sound corny, but aside from the getting cards that I need aspect of trading, I truly enjoy the interaction with other collectors.
Finally, I would like to concentrate a bit more on making custom cards. I feel like I did do a good amount of work on customs in 2010, but in combination with resolutions #3 and #4, I would like to step up my efforts a bit. I generally much prefer getting one of my own cards signed by players and it seems like other collectors who I’ve sent my customs to in the past seem to enjoy them, so it would make sense to me to keep it going. Also, whatever time I spend making them is that much less time that I spend in the card aisle at Target. Just from seeing custom cards that other folks have made throughout the card collection community, I always thought it would be pretty cool to set up a custom card swap. If that sounds cool to anyone out there, let me know.
All in all, I’m pretty pleased with the direction my collection took in 2010 and I hope to keep it up in 2011.
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