Happy New Year everyone!
2019 had its ups and downs collecting-wise, I wanted to get 2020 started with a quick review of my
2019 Collecting Goals. How did I do? Well, we grade on a curve here at the ol' Arbitrary, so everything is Highly Subjective.
My first goal was to organize my wantlists, player collections, and mini collections.... HAHAHAHA! Well, I definitely
did not achieve this goal, and if anything, I'm in worse shape now than I was last year. Some things I did in 2019
did help my collection get more organized - I added some
new Hockey and Basketball binders, and I updated my want lists on this site at least once each... Hoo boy, that's a low bar. But I cleared it!
I made a 2019 commitment to my bat rack mini collection, and now I have a fairly healthy stack of cards to place in pages. At the beginning of 2019, there were just 2 pages of bat rack cards in my bat rack frankenset. Now I have posted
up to page six, and there are more pages on the way in 2020. This was a goal achieved without any argument from me.
I added a new mini collection in 2019 for cards featuring phone calls, and made a modest stack of these as well. They are much less abundant than bat rack cards, they seemed to be most likely found on NFL sidelines in the late 80s, and then again in the mid to late 90s Fleer and Upper Deck sets. It technically started in December 2018 with
this Secret Santa post, but it wasn't until 2019 that I started adding phone cards intentionally. I look to continue this mini collection and add a new one for 2020, which will come in a future January post.
Any suggestions?
2019 was going to be the year I finally finished the 1959 Topps set build. I am very very close now, with
a small checklist remaining of mostly high numbers, including the very pricey Bob Gibson rookie card. If I can find a good deal on Bob (and Willie and Warren and Mickey), then I should have this set completed in the next few months. I'll be looking to do a similar weekly review of each team's set in 2020 once I complete the darn thing!
What else for 2020? I've let my "
I Love the 80s" posts wither on the vine a bit in 2019, I will be looking to pick those back up again and start moving from 1981 Team Reviews to 1982.
I also want to start another set build, and since I've worked on 1956 and 1959 after completing the oddball 1965 O-Pee-Chee set, I thought I would go with a 1970s edition next.
Hey, here's a random contest with a very long fuse. I haven't decided which set I'm going to try for next, but
maybe you can guess which one it will be in the comments below?
Let's say up to 5 people can win this contest, so if you wanted to pick a year that someone else picked, go ahead.
Winners will receive a custom-made-by-me re-pack of those
100 card (+1 pack) boxes you find at, say, Walgreens. Each box will have a "hit," and I'll add some 1970s vintage singles in there, too.
Winner(s) will be announced when I finally pick a new set, probably in February or March.
