In organizing my collection, I felt that the first thing that I needed to do was to really figure out what I was trying to do with my collection. Up until this point, it consisted of a bunch of baseball cards in boxes, sitting in a bigger box on the floor of my office.

After a bit of thinking, I decided that I need to put some restrictions on what kind of cards I would acquire in the future. I already had the whole Mets thing going, so that would be number one.

Also, my favorite player of all time happens to be Keith Hernandez, and I already have a good amount of his cards, so that seemed like pretty good number two. My goals would be to collect every Mets card ever mad and every Keith Hernandez card ever made. Luckily, since Keith spent a good portion of his career playing for the Mets, that would severely cut down on the number of cards I would need to get. Good for me.

Somehow, these two goals didn’t quite satisfy my cardboard itch, though. One other thing I realized that I really enjoyed about cards were vintage cards. I’m a graphic designer by profession, and I went to college for art, so I’ve always appreciated pretty things. I don’t think too many people would argue with me when I say that modern cards just don’t stack up (hah!) against old cards. So I could add vintage cards to my list of things to collect.

But what exactly constitutes a “vintage” card? Looking through the boxes of cards I have, I decided that I would determine when the designs of the cards stopped being eye-pleasing to me. It ended up being a bit of a gut-wrenching, soul-searching battle, but I finally decided on anything before 1980. Now before anyone, flips out and starts yelling “BUT SEAN, 1983 TOPPS TRADED ARE AWSOME LOOKING!!!! WTF!?!!?!?#?R!?!?R!??F”, I want to elaborate. I do think that there are many fine, wonderful looking sets that were made after 1980. I too am a huge fan of the 1983 Topps Traded set. What led me to pick 1980 as my cut off was 1) I felt that the cards stoppedconsistently looking cool, and 2) that seems to be when 1000 other companies sprouted up and started making 1000 different sets each. This particular goal is much more relaxed than the first two, though. I don’t feel the need to complete every single set made before 1980. More like, if I come across some cheap vintage cards of a great player or a notoriously bad player or someone I never heard of but their card looks cool or funny for whatever reason, I will get it.

So now, my card collecting manifesto includes three directives:

1. Collect every New York Mets card ever made.
2. Collect every Keith Hernandez card every made.
3. Collect vintage (Pre-1980) cards.

Those are some pretty loft goals, no?

Well, thats not good enough for me. Since I’ve returned to the hobby, I’ve gotten a bad case of the Retro Card Set Flu. I have no idea where I picked it up. (I’m looking at you Goudey. Allen. Ginter.) So now, I’ve also decided that I would collect any retro sets that come out that year. I finished the 2008 Goudey set and almost finished the 2008 Allen & Ginter set last year. This year, I’m 95% done with the 09 Goudey and 09 Topps Heritage and cracked a few boxes of 09 Ginter. I’ll try and finish those sets out but going forward, I think I’ll just pick one retro set to finish, and maybe get a few random packs of others that look cool. This years Allen & Ginter are definitely awesome and worth collecting, but in retrospect (hah! again) 09 Goudey are kind of crappy looking. 

The only thing I sort of like are the 4-in-1’s, and for what I spent on 09 Goudey, I totally could’ve gotten an original 1935 4-in-1. The 2009 Topps Heritage is cool looking, but I’ve come to the conclusion that a 500 card set is too big for me. I even think A&G’s 350 cards is too much, but, damn, they’re so sweet.

Okay, so where are we at now? I think the manifesto is done.

Heres where we sit:

1. Collect every New York Mets card ever made.
2. Collect every Keith Hernandez card every made.
3. Collect vintage (Pre-1980) cards.
4. Pick one cool looking retro set per year to collect.

Well, now we have a good idea of what we’re doing with this collection going forward, now we just need to figure out what to do with what we already have.

Tags: Allen & Ginter, Goudey, Keith Hernandez, Mets, prime directives, retro sets, Topps Heritage
Filed Under: Organization by slangon
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