2014 - State of the Blog Address

Wow another year has come and gone.  And to break up my Super Bowl contest posts it's time to look forward to the New Year and what 2014 might bring for me and for collectors in general.  If you're sick of these blogger New Year's resolution type posts I won't blame you for skipping this one. After all this post is mainly for me.

This year is going to be huge for me. But not in sport cards. No in a few short months I'm going to be a father.  That means that the meager fun money I had to play with and spend on trading cards and other doodads will sadly drop to just about zero.  That doesn't mean I won't be blogging. Of course it doesn't mean I will either.  After looking at my total post output for the year, it's apparent that I  hit  the 4 year slump. Yep this little experiment in creative writing turned 4 back in October and I hardly noticed. I might have to do something for the big 5.  But I definately slowed down.

I recently reviewed my 2013 goals, if you missed it you can find it HERE. I did OK is some areas.  This year will probably mark a big turning point for me as a collector.

1. This one pains me the most, but makes the most sense.  I still want to collect my Topps Baseball and Football flag sets. For as much crap as I give Topps those two sets are still the benchmark for set collecting. And I love building sets. But building sets from busting wax hasn't been economical for years now. Not when a jumbo box cost over $100. Sure you usually get a full set out of the box and the hits, which most of the time I sell off to help pay for the box, but that means my base set of Topps baseball costs me about $200 to build. I don't know if you ever check out Wrigley Wax, but he posts a monthly report on what set prices are doing with a running 12 month average.  You can check it out HERE. What I find interesting is that the last three years sets can be had complete for about $30 or less.  So sadly I most likely will be buying sets. I really do like the building of the set. The collating. The ripping open of packs. Checking out the cards and players. But alas Topps has priced me out. That doesn't mean I won't rip a pack here or there, but I think my box breaking days are over for now.

2. I would still like to attempt putting together the T206 Milwaukee Brewers team set.  I think my goal might just be getting one card for the set this year.

3.  Posting more.  Really? Am I going to have the time?  Hell if I know, but I've slowly been revamping my Robin Yount and Rollie Fingers Blogs.  Instead of just posting whenever I got a new cool card, I wanted to try and make the blogs more of a collecting resource for other like minded player collectors.  That means featuring individual cards and small tidbits about the card, the set, and the issue. I also wanted to be able to link my comprehensive collection list to a blog post that had a high quality scan of the card. Can I do that here? Probably not. When I first started this blog I had the idea of making it a place where the novice collector could come and learn things. I found that most of my visitors and readers are you well seasoned collectors. You don't need me to tell you to put a penny sleeve on a card before putting it in that top loader.

4. Reinvent the wheel? Probably not! Like I said up in #3 I revamped my Yount and Fingers player collection blogs. I don't think I plan to do that here. Over the last 4 years I've slowly found my voice, what I want to say, what I want to post about, ect, ect. And I've found I like having Collector's Crack be a clearing house, with a wide variety of topics covered. From personal box breaks, set reviews, trades, contests, you get the picture. So #4 this year is that I plan to try and stay the same.  And while I will confess I'm a terrible writer, blogging has made me a better slightly less terrible writer.

5. Sampler.  I've been hemming and hawing about doing this. I've seen other bloggers do something similar if not exactly the same. I'd like to put together a nice Topps Baseball sampler album. Starting maybe with the 1951 red or blue backs and working forward.

6. If you happen to read my Robin Yount blog, thank you.  You might have noticed I have a page dedicated to all the cards and collectibles I've amassed in my 25 plus years of collecting. Right now I sit at just over 950 items. I've been digging through a few of my oddball boxes, boxes I keep over sized items, and every now and then I find a card or collectible not on the list, but my goal is to reach 1000 unique items in the collection. Honestly this won't be too hard. I picked up 30 new cards from COMC's Black Friday sale alone.

7. Lose about 30 pounds. Because I need to and I'm feeling old.

All right I'm done. Back to Super Bowl contest posts.

cb out