2018 Collective Awards

Last year this show was cut short due to disinterest in current products.  This year wouldn't be much different, so the writers (me) chose to expand the categories into other areas.  This may turn into a review of my collecting and blogging year.

First up, the award for Best Thing About 2018 cards.  The list of candidates wasn't huge for Product of the Year, so we generalized.

The winning answer is "Consistency".  Which means that this year's stuff wasn't much different from last year, and it didn't totally suck.  Stadium Club was good enough to dive into, A&G was pretty decent too, and flagship had a nice base set.  Maybe it should be "Predictable", since those are the products that I forecast at the beginning of the year as being the only promising options for me, at least.

One of my major points of contention has been the lack of creativity in (Topps') insert sets.  I boycotted all the flagship inserts since they didn't show any originality at all and discontinued a couple good ideas that had spanned multiple production years.  I figured out where all the talent went though.  The Totality Of Exclusive Innovation Award went to the Allen & Ginter team.

Apparently, there are completely separate creative teams that work on flagship and Allen & Ginter.  And the A&G people have an exclusive contract for all the innovation that was promised with exclusive contracts.  Ideas like Baseball Equipment, Superstitions, Exotic Sports, and even the star-laden World Talent and Fantasy Goldmine inserts explored some distinctive aspect of the game instead of just recycling ways to say "This star player is amazing 'cause he did this or that."

Moving on, the next, much more prestigious award goes to the Blogger Trader Of The Year.

Congratulations to P-Town Tom!  Among several worthy blogger candidates, he had the most assaults on my critical wants.  There are several posts where he killed a set or knocked off one of my most elusive singles.

Along those lines, we present the trophy for Blogger Commenter Of The Year.

With kudos to Jon and Night Owl, who probably ranked 2nd and 3rd, our winner is Fuji.  He appears the most on my blog and so many others.  Can't say enough about what he does to further the blogging cause.

On the Flip Side, it's the award for my Most Viewed Post.

I figured this would be one of the many offerings of a beautiful woman's image, but it actually turned out to be my burning question about when the next actual paper reference book documenting all the cardboard issued before 1980 would be published.  Who's Cataloguing The New Stuff? soared off the charts in readership numbers.  Not sure where that one got linked besides the blogroll and fellow supporters, but it went crazy.  Haven't had three crooked numbers since.

Continuing that theme, My Most Popular Series award goes to...

The Cardboard OCD series.  I wrote these tutorials about my little habits and preferences with the idea that they'd be good for a laugh and maybe give a fellow collector a little tip to make their collecting better.  Must have worked out, because the reader numbers were pretty decent - even compared to the Leading Ladies customs.  The comments were up too.  The best posts are those that prompt interaction with others to tell how they do things.

Now on to the cardboard happenings of 2018.  The next statue will be in honor of the Best New Shop Owner.

New Orleans native Bruce came to town this year and set up shop in central Frederick.  He handles as much autographed memorabilia as he does cards, but it's all good stuff.  PrimeTime Sports Collectibles has been open since September or so.  It's so nice to have a local shop again.  He's still building his inventory of singles, but has plenty of game-used, autographs, new wax, etc.

Staying in the favorite merchant category, next we have the Shop That Became The New Clio Award.  (Pronounced kly-o).  This is a tribute to the shop in Michigan with the most sheer volume of stuff that appeals to a set builder and player collector like me.  They just have tons and tons to choose from (and dig out).  I found one kinda like that a lot closer:

The newest incarnation is the booth run by Kevin and his Dad at Rocky Ridge Collectibles between Hagerstown, MD and State Line, PA.  I found it via YouTube video.  They have a huge inventory that is organized to some degree into sports, years, sets, products, etc.  I've been twice and still haven't gone through it all.  And I spent the better part of two days in there.  Didn't even walk around the rest of the store yet.  I'll be back soon!

Let's turn to the merchandise itself.  The big idea is to show cards.  Here are some categories that revealed themselves as the loot poured in.

Set That Signifies That I've Taken It Up Another Level goes to 1950 Bowman.

This set kinda landed in my lap.  A friend's neighbor needed some cash and had a batch of these to sell.  I looked 'em up on eBay and made an offer.  That started me out.  Then I was suprised to find that I could add singles for much less than I anticipated.  There are several white whales in the set, but overall, it's really doable.  I've been working my way back through the 60's and did '59 last year, but never thought I'd go back this far this soon.

One new development this year was obtaining several sets that you could say combined set building and player collecting.  Most Fun Oddballs go to the multiple Cal Ripken sets that started with one and blossomed into a whole binder's worth. 

Cal Jr. is a unique player in that there are so many tribute sets to him that no one else has.  And they span several years instead of just being confined to the moment of his milestone.  His career has become an institution of its own, complete with official logo.

 

Speaking of boxes and sets, I'll throw in a modest winner for Box Break How It Ought To Be.

I didn't actually buy an unopened box of this stuff, but it was confirmed by many sources.  Not flashy or high end, but Topps did it right.  2018 Topps Opening Day yielded a complete set per single box.  Any smaller set like this should be crafted this way.  And I was able to snag most of the inserts in one shot relatively cheap too.  Simple, painless, and won't haunt my want lists for the next several years.  In gratitude, I won't go into them naming an insert in the main flagship set the same as this product....

The reverse was also true, when we discovered the Worst Collated Boxes Of All Time.

During the time when my trading buddy Stuart was here, we found several boxes of 1992 Ultimate World League football cards for five dollars or less.  Unfortunately, even after four boxes at 100 card apiece, we couldn't finish his set (three cards left after several boxes previously opened) and collate another for me - only about 3/4 of a set - from 400 cards.  (I ended up buying them on SportLots.)  Complete sets are only 200 cards.  This is probably why they were one and done.  Not to mention that the league folded too.

Another adventure into minor leagues happened when, in the same SportLots buy that finished the World League sets, I found the Coolest New Player Collection.

With a name like Pookie Bernstine, how can I resist?  The tough part is that all his cards are from the minor leagues.  But I will prevail!

And rounding out the presentations tonight, the last award is not for something I started, but something I finished.  Coolest Non-Sports Set Completed in 2018 is the 1969-70 Topps Man On The Moon set.

Thanks again to Stuart for putting the capper on this one when he went back into a shop we were visiting in the summer.  This was the last card that I didn't have, though technically my set is a mixture of the two years' issue.  I hope to expand the Apollo & Space binder in the coming year as well.

Homeward Bound is an appropriate card, as that is where we are headed.  Good night everyone, and my all your want lists shrink farther than ever in 2019!

Happy Birthday To Me & These Three

I have now lived a year for every card in a standard deck, (not a sports set).

I celebrate like I have been doing for the last several years.  Showing others who also celebrate birthdays today and who are much more attractive than me.

Kate Middleton, born in the same year I've been documenting - 1982.

Simply exquisite.

The Duchess welcomed a couple new additions to the family this year, Her third child, Louis, in April...

And sister-in-law Meghan in May...

Nina Dobrev was born seven years later in 1989.

Nina's turning 30 this year.  It doesn't show.

Nina's got a new sitcom on TV - "Fam" - starting Thursday night.

And can usually be seen with her BFF Julianne Hough.  

And the youngest of the trio, Nicola Peltz.  Born in 1995.

She's been in some well-known sci-fi flicks - Transformers: Age Of Extinction and The Last Airbender.

More recently she's done a few movies that I don't recall getting a lot of press.

She's taken a lot of photos with that (over-?) stylish brooding look.  Seems to be a thing with the younger set.  Smiling too much isn't cool.

But there are several that are quite nice too.

Collector's Log: Stardate 198203.6

(The second entry in my 1982 chronicle of card trading & buying, playing sports, games, and other kid's stuff back in the day)

There was an old abandoned barn over the hill from our housing development.  I'm guessing we tried to play a form of paintball-type war (without involving actual projectiles).  Apparently it wasn't very entertaining.

Then I moved on to Billy's house.  He had a significant volume of the Classic Space Lego sets with the old-school minifigs etc.  I think I had a few sets too, but we ended up combining all ours together.  Those were great fun.  This was before minifigs were custom and collectible.

I know I had this set

But the big event in this entry is the documentation of how many cards I had at that point. 

3515 baseball and 2269 football cards.

It sounds like a lot, but if you break it down, it isn't that much - at least to a set builder.  I probably had these complete sets:

Baseball                                Football
1980 Topps - 726                1979 Topps - 528
1981 Donruss - 605            1980 Topps - 528
1981 Fleer - 660                  1981 Topps - 528
1981 Topps - 726                

Total 2717                              Total 1584

Remaining baseball - 798     football 685

The remaining numbers were vintage singles and stars, player collections, Redskins, and other oddballs like Fleer stickers & team action cards.  This early in the year, the '82 sets hadn't come out yet.

Of course, that inspired me to try to count what I have now.  The bulk of my stuff is still sets or partials, so I won't have to sift through every box I own.  There will be a little bit of estimation and guessing, just so it doesn't take all year.  The player collections are mostly in binders, so it's really a matter of counting the empty spaces and otherwise calculating multiples of 9.  The Redskins collection will be the hardest, since it's all bulk singles and there's no way to count them in big chunks.

I might also have to break it down into regular cards and hits (GU & autos).  I'm not separating serial numbered cards, that would take forever, even though the majority would be in my player collections. 

Hopefully, there will be a few weekends with lousy weather (or how about SNOW DAYS!) that will be perfect times to get started on this project.  I will keep you posted.

Collector's Log: Stardate 198201.30

As I previewed in my Reminiscence post, I came across a little travel book that I had used to jot down my daily activities in 1982.  I will be highlighting entries from it that are card related.  This is the first in a likely long series.

Since the book was from 1979, the days of the week didn't apply, so they are crossed out.

The sample page above is pretty typical of what the whole book is.  I should give you some background on certain things.  The names will be somewhat obscured because this is on the internet.

• "D&K refers to my (former) step brother and sister.  They would come over to visit, but wouldn't necessarily hang out with me and my friends.  I didn't dislike them particularly, but sometimes it was awkward.  D didn't come over much after the first few entries - his disappearance was noted later.
• My main trading friends in the neighborhood were Bill H. (most often referred to as Billy), Mike, Bill S., his brother Marc, Bill C., and Johnny.   There were a lot of Billys in my 'hood.
• The little notations in the corners were my record of the trips we made to the local arcade.  In our case it was at the nearby Putt-Putt golf center.  We could walk from our house and would usually help Bill S. distribute newspapers to the houses in between.  He would sponsor most trips, hence "$5 BS".  That notation didn't appear too much in the book after about March or so.  That was the heaviest that I was ever involved in video games.  I never really owned any of the major home consoles or anything after that.
• "Collectibles" is what I called my player collections at that time.  There weren't quite 50+ of them then, but they slowly built up over time.
• If I talk about a ball game I watched, the circled team won.
• Along with cards, I was into comics, model trains, model cars, and Legos back then.

Some of the things on the sample page:

Star Castle was my favorite video game at the time.  It appears my first experience was on Jan. 29th. 

You fly a spaceship around a centrally located enemy ship that is defended by rotating walls and pixely clusters.  If you fly off the screen, you come back from the opposite side.  This is a major tactical advantage.  If you keep moving and firing as you pass, you can whittle down his defenses and destroy him before he can turn and fire on you.

The player in the video is really good.  Don't think I ever got to this level.  The traffic at Putt-Putt wasn't heavy, and we would go several times a week when the weather was good, so high scores were rather common anyway.

Feb. 3 notes that I "resorted album".

This means I went through my one and only binder at the time and sorted my star cards in it.  I probably had all the vintage cards I owned and maybe my player collections in there at this point as well.  Ultra-Pro wasn't around yet, so there were a couple variations on this binder, but that's all you saw.  This one is still my misc. star card binder.

It also mentions making tags for special cards that I needed for my collectibles.  My friend Mike had several hundred of these business cards with Chessie System train logos on one side that I used to note cards that diverged from the regular order of base Topps sets.  When those ran out, I just cut up index cards.  A few of these are still in my PC binders.

The most significant card related entry is Jan. 30.  A trip to the Hanover, PA card shop.  Looks like I picked up some PC cards of Joe Torre, Claude Osteen (CO), and Jim Fregosi, 1981 football, misc. Redskins, and must have ordered the new Topps set.  Later in the book, it says Mom came home with it.

I'm not sure if the $8.30 is for the cards or the shirt.  Probably the cards, which looked something like this:

Our friend Mike was an exclusively Angels team collector, and his PCs were Jim Fregosi and Nolan Ryan.  I guess I got the Fregosi RC before he did, and apparently Billy blabbed it to him before I could.  Not sure which Torre cards I got, so I just picked out an online image of a few of them together.

February 4 also denotes another video game high score.  One of the first games I remember playing was Scramble.

A simple joystick and two buttons.  Any more than that was too complicated.  I remember now that the saucers always lined up at one level.  Keep it there and you could blast most of them.

GAME OVER.  Thanks for playing.

Next time ~ How many cards did I have in 1982?

Yearly Goals Assessment

It's always fun to see what's changed over the last year, especially when you write down what you'd like to do at the beginning like a lot of us bloggers do.  I'm not the biggest go-getter goal setter, but I'm interested to see how I did.

It's a goal post.  Ba-dum-pum.

2018 Goal #1 - Keep a steady blogging pace.  Well, I topped last year's number (146) with 160 this time out.  I was a blogging machine until a couple hitches in June and July, and would have made it pretty good if it weren't for a lull in mid-to-late November - the "dog days" of blogging.  I finished out strong and the first of the year makes it easy to finally get a backlog of posts ready to go.  Goal #1 - Accomplished.

2018 Goal #2 - Be more positive and creative in my posts.  I think I did OK on this one, but not great.  There weren't as many rants that I can recall, but I didn't come up with too many really original ideas either.  In tallying up my posts for 2018, the overwhelming majority were Loot/Trade posts (53) which is pretty much the point of a card blog - to show cards.  (And of course, there was no shortage of incoming cardboard around here!).
The next highest categories were experience posts (Things I did and How I Do Things) and commentary posts, including the OCD series.  These two almost overlap, but they comprised 38 posts all together.  Again, not too many negative essays, but more things like the renovations to my card room, product reviews, and how I make lists, arrange and decorate binders etc. 
The rest were game-in-real-life and Baseball History types of things, blogger participation (Bat Arounds and common topics among us), and posts that showed gorgeous women.  A couple goofy things sprinkled in here and there, and that was really it.  I only created one single custom except for the Leading Ladies.  Gotta ramp it up this year.    Goal #2 - Accomplished, though not spectacularly.

2018 Goal #3 - Clean Up and Put All The Stuff Away!  At the beginning of 2018, I had piles and piles of purchases, box breaks, and supplies all over the card room (and beyond).  I have since straightened it up - mostly because I added new furniture in April and basically had to evacuate the room.  So now it looks like this:

 

Early 2018 on the left, Dec 2018 on the right.

 

 

It's a whole different bunch of stuff on the sorting desk, but the volume is almost the same.  I had all my player collection cards that needed to be added to binders spread out on the whole desk, but had to pick them up.  In the meantime, I had to put more incoming set stuff on the cabinet.

So it's really just as congested as it was.  Just with different stuff.

 

The couch is a lot better.  Only a couple bobbleheads I got for Christmas on there.

The other catch is that most of what was on the desk in January was moved into the other room in a big foam tray/box.  And it's mostly still sitting there.

So Goal #3 - Deferred.

Goal #4 - Complete the 1960, 1970, and 1972 Topps sets.  This one was a win!  In July at the Chantilly show, I finally killed all three.  This allowed me to start on 1964 Topps in earnest and start on '68 and '57.  Goal #4 - Accomplished!

2018 Goal #5 - Ramp Up The Trades With My Original Group & Keep Up The Blogger Trading.  Got this one half right anyway.  I'm pretty sure I made more trades with fellow bloggers than I did with my Yahoo! group friends.  My most wanted list took multiple beatings from my kindred composers.  I did get in a few trades with the other guys, most of which I don't post on here.  This goal is still in progress.  Goal #5 - ½ Accomplished.

2018 Goal #6 - Knock Out A Lot Of Old Want Lists. I made a backup to my site pages and stored it on my work computer in January last year.  Looking now at my Baseball page side by side with the current version, there are a lot of sets that aren't there any more, but the majority of them were down to a few cards and were the ones I posted on my most wanted list.
That would be fine, but the catch is that I've added just as many new sets this year as I have taken off.  And most of the other listings haven't changed much.  Some that were Have lists are now Needs with names by the numbers, but the whole thing is basically the same length.
Goal #6 - Accomplished But Negated.

That should be plenty to think about this year.  I'm not sure at this point whether I'll make it to Cleveland for the National.  I liked it the first time a few years ago, and would love to meet a few of the other bloggers and traders I deal with.  I'm also on the verge of just stopping the collection of certain sports and narrowing my focus a bit.  (Mostly because my house won't hold it all for much longer.)  At least it seems like the dog doesn't like to chew cardboard....

I didn't end up going to the National in Cleveland, but I do plan on making Chicago again.  I've missed the last couple, so it will be good to hit one again.
As for restricting my collecting, that didn't happen either.  I finally added a couple hockey sets - both new and vintage, and a couple vintage on the football side too.  I alleviated the storage problem with the new shelves, which are about full already....

 

I just have to clean up a bit and there will still be room there.  And I do have room for bigger boxes again, so some consolidation is in order soon.  After my birthday in a week or so, things will settle down and I'll get into the cardboard swing again over in that room.  The dog didn't work out, so that isn't an issue.

2018 was a great year for collecting and blogging.  It was rather "meh.." for just about everything else.  My job is fine, and my friends are still around, but not much else went on, really.  Except for my Capitals winning the championship, the other sports (including fantasy) continually disappointed.  I've always been more of a fan of cards than the actual sports they portray, but this year made that rift a lot wider.

Looking forward to more activity in 2019 - the cardboard kind and otherwise....